Original subtitles

We went to some pretty gnarly places.

It was like, "How are we gonna make that?"

Shit, 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.

and it's kind of like, "Oh, my God, this is serious."

Right from the very 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."

I realized that we needed 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.

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 and 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, shit, 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 we 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 to the throne.

So we built one end section in a green-screen stage,

and then the rest is placed virtually.

Harrenhal was 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 a whole day on that

with the crowd and the maesters walking the box up to the old king.

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 be made 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 was just duplicating lots and lots of swords.

And that sort of killed 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 for 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, shit. 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 were 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 artist.

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.

In order 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 shooting 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 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, I mean,

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 fuck 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,

you know, 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 shot the crowning sequence 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 the 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 shooting,

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,

you know, 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 shooting 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 shoot 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 shoot 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 to hurt themselves,

you don't want 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 up.

And of course, with all the COVID restrictions,

extras only amounted to 150.

And it had to look like we had a thousand.

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.

For that, what we do,

as we're shooting, 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.

But 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. That was great. - ROWLEY IRLAM: 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 years.

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 up panels at 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 a quite striking look, 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 on some level.

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 Bastards.

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 incredibly safe for the horses.

We had our hero 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.

And 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.

And it was the first Game of Thrones fight we were doing on the show.

And they were like, you know, "We better not fuck this up.

We've got it. Well done. Brilliant. Go home, rest.

Cheers, boys.

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.