We went to some pretty gnarly places.
It was like,
"How are we gonna make that?"
sh*t, that's the throne.
I was so excited at the idea.
It feels like it's gonna hit you in areas
I don't think you want to be hit in.
You are awe-inspired by it.
You're just kind of like,
"Oh, my God. This is serious."
Right from the beginning,
we had to live up to the huge,
almost unscalable expectations
of the original series.
Game of Thrones was its own thing.
And it was a cultural phenomenon,
and it was brilliant.
This is something else.
It's a different story.
The scale of this story
is told in a different way.
Something that set
the original Game of Thrones
apart from any other fantasy
series is that, ultimately,
you cared about those
characters.
What I liked was that it still
had the Game of Thrones flavor,
but actually was a different take.
This is our journey now,
and we've got to make the most
of our experience on this show.
I can't tell you how many conversations
there have been about,
"Let's start at Thrones,
and then let's be good at Thrones,
and let's evolve it out."
And I realized that we need a
combination of old hands and new blood.
It was quite a lot of pressure
because the work was so good,
of course, on Game of Thrones.
We've got a standard to live up to.
And we talked a lot about,
"How can we make this different,
but still keeping it within
the Game of Thrones world?"
The intention was never
to do season nine of Game of Thrones.
It was to try to find something
new and different.
It's always a weird moment
because you get that great call,
which is that we're gonna
go make this thing.
And you're happy for a few seconds.
And then you realize, "Oh, sh*t,
I now have to go make this thing."
The Great Council felt like
a good way to start people off.
So it's the first scene of the pilot.
It's the opening scene.
It's really important to get it right.
Go, two, three.
One, two, three. One.
Viserys was on one side
and Rhaenys was on the other side.
And literally,
in front of the whole court,
the council voted
for who was going to succeed.
Rhaenys is standing there feeling like
she's a contestant on Blind Date.
That's great. And then, Paddy,
if I could step you out.
So we're gonna do the same thing,
but without Paddy in.
So I'll tell you a secret. It's actually
been shot in the Throne Room.
Halfway through building
the Throne Room proper,
we get them to paint it mostly green.
And then build the stand and the throne.
A lot of VFX work, so it seemed we don't
need to spend a load of money
building the whole Harrenhal
as a kind of practical set.
What we need is the background,
the throne.
So we built one end section
in a green-screen stage,
and then the rest is placed virtually.
Harrenhal is semi-destroyed.
So you're seeing outside of the hall
itself into the environment outside,
which is fully CG, which is great.
Harrenhal had been seen
in Game of Thrones,
but what we had to do in this one
is invent a lot more detail.
If you look closely, you can see there's
a number of English cathedrals
and churches that we referenced.
There's a bit of Whitby Abbey in there.
And we integrated key references
in George R.R. Martin's books.
It's meant to be a huge hall,
so we've tried to get that sense
of scale in the opening shots.
You are awe-inspired by it,
and it's kind of like,
"Oh, my God, this is serious."
I remember we spent the whole day on
that with the crowd and the maesters
walking the box up to the old king.
And the actor who played the king
did not want to do any speaking parts,
but loved the idea of doing
a non-speaking one.
It was actually Michael Carter,
Bib Fortuna from Return of the Jedi.
So I was losing my mind
and telling myself to be cool,
and not go start quoting Huttese
to him or anything like that.
Our reference for this was
a really royal, flamboyant,
kind of wedding almost.
And so, I wanted to sort of bring
that element of grandeur to it,
but obviously in a space
that's quite derelict.
It was one of those kind of, "I hope
this all looks okay when we're done."
Because if you saw that set,
it's kind of insane
when you see the finished product that,
"Wow, this is really epic."
'Cause so much of it was green screen.
It is declared that Prince Viserys
remain heir to the Iron Throne.
In the original books,
George always described the throne as
being made from thousands of swords.
I wanted to make a hybrid version
that still honored the throne
from the original series.
The throne kind of spread out
and became this carpet of swords.
Suggesting that, at some point
in time, the throne changes.
So Ryan had said to me, "This throne is
made from the swords of the conquered."
And somehow, that was a key thing,
that this was all about the power
of this Targaryen dynasty.
When I first approached it, I just
duplicated lots and lots of swords.
And that sort of k*lled
the computer, basically,
because there was
just so many swords.
It looked great in concept, but it was
like, "How are we gonna make that?"
So my idea was, basically,
to create a structure out of steel rods,
and we wrapped the whole
thing in plaster bandage.
So when it was wet,
it just sagged on that steel structure.
So it looks like it was melted already.
This is the biggest hero prop I've made,
really. And it's the most recognizable.
We probably had about six or eight people
for four, five months of that.
I think we purchased, made,
and cast about two and
a half thousand swords, minimum.
And there was a lot of logistics
and working out how that can
be done safely as well.
There's a lot of blades
poking out of the ground there.
When we showed up
the first time,
there were these signs
that just said, "Danger."
They were terrified that somebody was
just going to trip and impale themselves.
We realized we needed to change
the columns in the throne room.
And that needed to be
a way in which we could show the past.
So we did a lot of artwork
before Conrad and his team got those.
And then it was turned
into a three-dimensional model
before we then cast
into the bigger scale.
They look great on a drawing that big.
But when that is a six-meter item,
you have a lot of planned area.
So we wanted to put some detail in those.
We looked at the history of the Targaryen
battles and dragons
and all that kind of stuff for what
that history and that tale could be.
It had a lot of emotional impact as well
because when Viserys sits on the throne,
the weight of history
is on his shoulders
because his previous kings
are looking down upon him.
And then at the end of the room,
there's the partially carved column,
which will eventually become him.
It speaks to how important the history of
the lineage is to the Targaryen dynasty.
I mean, that whole set is fantastic.
It does exactly what it's meant to do.
It's big, it's intimidating,
and it looks cool.
It is one of the most beautiful sets
I've ever seen in my entire life.
And I think because that throne
is so iconic,
to be able to build on what has already
been established
has been pretty unbelievable.
When I walked on that stage
the first time,
it was an emotional moment, I think.
Seeing that realized, and realizing that
we're actually making this thing.
It was just kind of like,
"Oh, sh*t. That's the throne."
When I walked into the throne room
for the first time,
there was a sort of moment
that I had of like, "Oh, wow."
And then the first thing I did, you know,
was climb up the stairs and sit on it.
I did not get to sit on the throne,
and I'm furious about that.
I'm disappointed
that I'm not sitting in it right now.
And I was a bit, sort of,
like, precious on it.
I didn't want to turn around
and see someone sitting on it.
I want to sort of sling 'em off.
This is the age of dragons.
At this point in the history,
there have never been as many dragons
in the world since the time
of Old Valyria when there
a thousand dragons alive.
And what we really tried to do
was create a world where dragons existed.
I think that dragons in this
are symbolic of a number of things.
The reason that the Targaryens
are considered
as being closer to gods is
because of their dragons.
So symbolically, they have this role.
Father, has something happened?
Balerion was the last living creature
to have seen Old Valyria before the Doom.
It's greatness and its flaws.
When you look at the dragons,
what do you see?
Cut.
-A big fat
-A dragon.
You see Balerion's skull
and you see the size of dragons.
Because the size of dragons then
were much larger than the dragons
that you saw in Game of Thrones.
I mean, that thing is epic. You would
not want to face down the Black Dread.
We did some very rough original sketches
that very quickly went
to the concept artists.
I sculpted it in ZBrush,
and then we 3-D printed a version of it.
And that was really useful
for the sculptors.
That was a brilliant thing to make.
And it was about nine meters long,
so it's huge.
A shortcut, structurally,
when you make something big,
is let the teeth rest on each other
and become columns, effectively.
To make this look more aggressive,
we wanted thinner, spikier teeth.
So we made the teeth separately.
We rigged out the mouth with metalwork
so it would stay open of its own accord.
We made it over about seven weeks
with about four sculptors.
And then, of course, at the end,
there's a lot of painting to do.
Texturing, alterations, you know.
These things can go on forever.
Powerful, but not invincible.
At the time that Game of Thrones
took place,
there was less respect for the dragons.
And therefore, we felt this time,
it should be in more
of a respectful cathedral.
So we build this set
with a big dome ceiling
and placed it on an altar so that
it paid due deference
to the importance
of the dragons in our story.
Straightaway, if you want to just frame
up on the whole of Balerion's skull,
you're sh**ting off the set.
You can only build a set
to a certain height within a stage.
In most of the shots in there,
you're looking slightly up
at that enormous skull.
So we're adding ceiling to that.
On the set,
I like to sort of doodle
and figure out how we're going
to do a set extension.
So I do a bit of photoshop paint mode.
And it allows me, occasionally,
to actually turn it round and show
it to the director and say,
"What do you think of that?"
And then sort of get sign off
on a concept art piece.
And then that goes to me and it goes
straight to whichever vendor
we're gonna use to do that work.
It's turned out beautifully.
A Targaryen must understand
this to be king or queen.
When you see her there,
it is a bit of deer in the headlights
because her father's told her,
"The fate of the world sits
on your shoulders.
And oh, by the way,
you're gonna be queen one day."
I, Viserys Targaryen,
protector of the realm, do hereby
I'm so sorry.
Rhaenyra sees it as the first time
that she's good enough for her father.
Her dad has spent her entire life
trying to get a male heir,
and then it's like,
"Oh, wow, you see me."
It was funny 'cause I'd said,
"It's important that we see
a combination of fear and pride."
She was like,
"Well, how am I gonna play that?"
And I said, "Don't f*ck it up."
She brought so much
modernism and power to her dress.
The way she was wearing it
was Medieval French. It was so
That's where I tried to get back
into some Byzantine element.
Because it was supposed to be a robe,
which had been worn by three,
four, five generations before.
The robe that Rhaenyra wears took
three people ten weeks to embroider.
It really is a work of art.
Quite a stark sort of looking
makeup for that.
We've embraced that look of, like,
she doesn't know what's gonna hit her.
We use lots of platted pieces to create
a beautiful sort of off-the-neck look,
which allowed the headpiece
to sit onto that.
It worked wonderfully
with the costume.
The crown was beautiful.
The cape was beautiful. It was a fun day.
I took the crowning sequence
off of Cersei back in the day.
So we've got some nice little bits
in there that were mirroring things
from previous episodes
that we've done on Thrones.
There's a wish fulfilment for an
audience of things they want to see.
We're not here to not give it to them.
We're here to give them the thing
that they want,
just not in the way that
they're expecting.
Let's try that. All together.
Three, two, one, bow.
And two, three, and up.
And turn, Milly.
We really wanted to ground people back
in the world that they knew
from the original Game of Thrones,
and bring fans back to some names
that they knew from the original series.
I, Rickard Stark, Lord of Winterfell
and Warden of the North,
promise to be faithful to King Viserys,
and to his named heir,
the Princess Rhaenyra.
I promise this
to the old gods and the new.
This is very much the same world that
you left behind the last time around.
I do hereby name Rhaenyra Targaryen
heir to the Iron Throne.
Father-daughter relationships sometimes
seem to be the other way around.
Viserys is struggling
with his role as king.
And Rhaenyra has the sense and thought
to come up with solutions and plans.
It's a real final moment for her,
being forced to say goodbye in that way,
and having it put on her to do it.
She's basically cremating her mother
and her brother.
It's quite traumatic,
actually, if you think about it.
That certainly was a favorite location.
If you just see the image of it, it just
sort of sings House of the Dragon.
One of the things I learned
in Thrones is the practical nature
of the sets and locations.
It's worth holding onto.
So as a result, we go to lots of places.
The producers turn to me and say,
"Oh, but, you know, it's so this,
it's so that."
I just think,
"That's why this is the right place."
I mean, the amount of effort that
went into that prior to sh**ting,
to set up a base there, to make
this all work, I think is insane.
The logistics of it were huge.
We went to hotels,
and then we had a bus to the location,
and then we had a variety
of different vehicles.
The Land Rover Defender ride
into that place,
seeing mud kicked up six feet
over the high windows.
We were using a beater trailer that they
use for shoots to bring everybody down.
And then from there,
we had to sort of walk out to the set.
We went to some
pretty gnarly places
throughout the course
of the sh**ting of the show.
But I think that might have been
our most difficult to access location.
And then we found out that throughout
the coast of Cornwall,
you're not allowed to use fire.
Which is a bit of a bummer
when you're trying to sh**t a funeral,
especially when it's cremation.
Location work is always a trial
because people don't want you
to make a mess or change
the landscape or burn anything down.
But thankfully,
due to modern filmmaking techniques,
it rarely knocks you down for too long.
The dragon interaction in that shot
was a really good example
of collaboration between departments
because, obviously, the special effects
team had to be involved in that.
We were using assets
from Game of Thrones.
Dragon fire and comped that in where
we can, and the rest of it is just CG.
It's convoluted, but it's turned
into a really beautiful thing.
Dracarys.
One of the challenges of telling
a story about a time
where there's great decadence
and a period of very long peace is:
how do you create drama out of that?
And we really knew a tournament
felt like a great way to do that.
May the luck of the Seven
shine upon all combatants.
When I first read about the tournament,
I thought, "Oh, it's going to be
in a field with some trees around it."
And maybe there'll be some flags.
I talked to the guys
about the tournament very early on
because I wanted to bring
something stronger and more powerful
to support the Targaryen dynasty.
Jim produced this drawing
of basically the Colosseum.
And I said, "Really, Jim?
Have you got the money to build that?"
And he goes, "Yeah, yeah."
Which I should never have listened to.
As soon as we saw the mirrored half-moon
shape that he did, it was glorious.
And we saw a real need for it.
They would, of course,
have royal tournament grounds.
It would be in the city surrounded
by the buildings. It just made sense.
Probably one of the biggest
challenges was:
where do we sh**t the tournament
and how big do we make it
and where do we
build that set piece?
That was obviously,
eventually, put on the back lot.
We had to make a level platform
to build the set on,
because obviously,
it's on quite an incline.
So we had to prepare a whole,
like, farmers field out there.
The difficulty there is creating a
tournament that's suitable for the stunts
that are going to be enacted out there.
Especially with horses,
you're gonna need soft ground.
You don't want the horses
or the stuntmen to hurt themselves.
So the huge layer of mulch
was there to make a soft landing.
Suddenly, we have this huge stadium
that we have to fill in.
And with all the COVID restrictions,
extras only amounted to 150.
And it had to look
like we had thousands.
So where we have to put crowd into a shot
that doesn't have enough crowd in it,
you can either go full CG
or you can use sprites.
Yes, c'mon! That's the way to do it!
For that, what we do, as we're sh**ting,
we're pulling the extras away.
And we film the sprites from all sorts
of different angles
with all sorts of different actions.
Cheering, crying out, sitting down,
standing up.
And then, we literally
populate them like little cards.
Good fortune to you, Cousin.
I would gladly take it
if I thought I needed it.
The Royal Box itself is this huge,
great dome.
Which gives us a nice,
intimate area for all the dialogue
that goes on between
all the various characters.
I wanted that to be the dominant
part of the arena.
And it was quite a costly thing,
that box.
I promise,
you will not be disappointed.
It's the best spot to watch
the jousting
and to see the knights clashing
in the center of the arena.
-That's a wrap. Well done. Great!
-Cut!
We ended up putting just under
40 armored knights on the field.
That in itself was one
of our biggest bills, definitely.
With tournament armor, it's all displays
of wealth, power, and ostentation.
And I decided armor
with a lot of different influences.
Elements of oriental armor,
Persian armor, Greek armor.
And I will say that Simon
did incredible work.
Ser Daemon will now choose
his first opponent!
Daemon's armor was
a sophisticated build.
We're talking sixteen weeks
to originate the shape.
Another eight to ten weeks
for manufacture.
And that involved probably
ten to twelve people.
So if it was a single person,
we're talking years, definitely.
The dragon helmet probably went through
seven or eight different incarnations.
I loved designing that one.
I kept on putting elements on the design.
If you look at the early design, there
were even more dragon elements on it.
Jany was very keen to have the eyes
at the front
so it's looking at you all
the time.
Obviously, visibility with opening
a panel to the sides of the eyes,
while still wrapping for protection
around the sides of the face.
And then you can't even see
who they are anyway.
The helmet kind of helped us, really,
in the sense that when we kept
the hair tied up at the back.
It just worked well with
when he was riding the horse.
We were able to know it's him.
Yeah, that's a beautiful helmet.
It's quite striking, that armor look.
That's a department
who are operating on a really high level.
The thought and planning that goes
into trying to make it comfortable.
It's quite heavy, but it's armor.
It's not really meant to be comfortable.
That is one of the sort
of mental challenges
when you're in that all day,
every day.
You've gotta prepare yourself
for it in some way.
Even though it's not
the first time you see Daemon,
seeing him walk on screen as a quote on
quote "living armored dragon"
was a pretty powerful image.
The way he He's fantastic.
It's beautiful.
This was obviously
the first action set piece.
And to me, it was a little bit like
approaching Battle of the b*stards.
It's something that I really wanted to
try and achieve something a bit special.
And action.
I'd never seen anything like it.
Stuntmen with jousts,
going at each other at what feels
like a million miles an hour.
The first joust, which is
what we call "a jerk back."
So what we did was we took the drum
off of what's called a descender.
And it's what we use
for people jumping off buildings on wire.
So we hashed it about so that
we could actually look in profile
at the guys going together like that.
And when they hit together
and broke the lance,
we could hit the break, and it would jerk
the guy off the back of the horse.
Jousting is risky against another guy
in full armor on a galloping horse.
I think you just have to give it a go.
We used over 30 horses.
We worked extremely closely with Rowley
because the tournament
is when our two departments
really kind of come side-by-side.
Rowley loves horses.
That's a big thing for all of us,
as for how to keep it interesting
and feel dangerous, but at the same time
be incredible safe for the horses.
We had our pure horses.
Stunts don't ride them.
They're purely for the actors.
And then we'll have
three repeats for the stuntmen.
So the horses will do five runs,
then they get a rest,
and then the next horse comes on.
So it's all on the stuntmen
because there's only one of them.
They had me ride for about 50 hours
at The Devil's Horsemen.
Which is this old institution
that has been teaching actors
to horse ride for years.
Ser Criston Cole will now tilt against
Ser Daemon Targaryen, prince of the city!
So Daemon fights Cole.
It's scripted they have two passes.
What are we gonna do that gets Daemon
off his horse and embarrasses him?
So then I started thinking,
what if he fell onto the tilt rail?
'Cause I've not seen that before.
And what we did is ran a cable cam
down the middle of the tilt rail.
We got it really up close and personal,
so you feel really close to the action.
And watching the guys do that
with everyone cheering,
the horses rearing, it literally
gave me chills. It was so cool.
Action!
We know Daemon's a great fighter,
but we need to know that Cole's
a better fighter.
He used the flail,
which there's a real art to using it.
The morning star is incredibly difficult
to fight with.
It tends to have a life of its own.
It constantly feels
like at some point,
it's going to hit you in areas
I don't think you want to be hit in.
My main aim was to just learn to use
it well enough
so that I wouldn't lose
important parts of me.
And let him get to the thing.
And really telegraph when it's coming,
'cause then he can go
Matt and Fabien
did a great job on that particular fight.
I think a lot of it was to do with they
knew that they had to prove themselves.
It was the first Game of Thrones fight
we were doing on the show.
And they were like, you know,
"We better not f*ck this up.
We've got it. Well done. Brilliant.
Go home, rest.
Thank you all.
The tournament is really one
of those places where you get to see
everybody you hired
on your crew earning their paycheck.
Because it requires
all departments to work together.
Visual effects, the art department,
production design, props,
horse wrangling, stunts.
All those things coming together
and trying to make
a richly realized sequence.
It's really incredible and
really orients you into the world
in a way that I think is very memorable.
Well done, everyone. Thank you
very much, ladies and gentlemen.
That's a wrap.
Well done, you guys.
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