The first time you walk out there, it's jaw-dropping.
♪
It's completely shocking and unexpected.
Oh, it was a great day.
♪
Brilliant set.
Catherine Goldschmidt: It's really badass.
Thank you very much. Drinks on me.
It was a storm inside.
Oh, my God.
It's unbelievable!
(epic music playing)
(music fades out)
This is a very iconic moment in George's books.
The Battle of Burning Mill.
Two houses that were pitted against each other.
And it's the metaphor for the history of violence
and how you get to a point where there is no forgiveness.
And that's where we find ourselves this season.
♪
Matt Smith: Morning. Morning. How we doin'?
Geeta Vasant Patel: Jim Clay, in collaboration with
the special effects department,
created a place that truly felt real and haunted
and brought the book to life.
Jim Clay: I was well pleased when Ryan said
we're going to feature the interior of Harrenhal,
so that was one of the first things
we went to work on designing.
Harrenhal, "It's a cursed castle designed by a deranged mind,"
was the sort of brief I got.
And so, it's dilapidated.
It's haunted by its past and its present.
Smith: Oh, it's huge. It goes on and on and on.
Jim Clay has just done brilliant work.
The texture and the scale
and the vision behind
a lot of his work is really superior.
Melissa Bernstein: It's a set that I'd find myself getting lost in.
You'd turn the wrong corner and you're like,
"Wait, where am I?"
Like, you could get as disoriented as Daemon
walking through that set.
And I think that's really saying something.
Malcolm Roberts: It was pretty big.
I mean, it filled the whole stage.
From a structural point of view, mainly,
how are you gonna hide your integral structure
if you've got a steel frame that,
obviously, you can't see in shot,
then we've gotta try and conceal that.
That's what makes it fun, really, though.
Clay: I wanted to give the whole four-walled world
the advantages of tracking shots, Steadicam shots,
and the actors being enveloped in the entire world.
Dominic Masters: You can go where you like, shoot what you like,
pretty much 360 around the set.
Whichever way you look, you'd be covered.
And the idea was it should be quite a maze.
You shouldn't feel like you know where you are
at any given time in that castle.
Got lost in there most mornings.
Ryan Condal: This is honestly my favorite set
that Jim has built, to date,
because it's so well brought to life,
the idea of this ruined castle,
the fact that he made it rain inside,
the way he made the weirwood roots
break through all of the stones that you see,
that, slowly, the castle being reclaimed by the old gods.
This here is the guy who makes me wet.
- (laughter) - Yeah.
(indistinct chatter)
He's the rain punisher. Tom.
- This is it. - Screws me up every day.
Harrenhal, wetter than an otter's pocket.
- I know. But I do like a bit of rain. - (laughter)
Jason Rickwood: Harrenhal's supposed to be this windy, wet place
and we're doing some interior stuff
and we need it to be raining inside
'cause the whole idea of it being dilapidated
was there's holes in the wall and holes in the roof.
Condal: Man, did we soak that place.
But it really brings an incredible amount
of realism and texture to the place,
which was really important for the storytelling.
Mike Dawson: My brief was, "It's gonna be really damp."
That was it.
And in the end, my last brief was,
"It's gotta rain inside like it does outside."
And it didn't stop raining.
My God, it was horrendous.
But it-it looks amazing.
Masters: It was a slightly late-in-the-day idea to have the water
dripping into the set, so we weren't totally prepared
in terms of tanking the set,
which we normally would if you had a lot of water.
But we coped, and special effects did a great job
with soaking up the water around the set
when it was all pouring in.
Dawson: It was too late to retrospectively fix it,
so we had to just minimize damage.
So, we did individual tanks
and tried to contain it that way,
which worked really well and it looked real.
♪
I thought, "Matt's gonna freak out, ya know,
walking around in his armor all day long with rain."
But it looked so good, and he was lovin' it.
Smith: We were wet from, like, eight in the morning 'til eight at night,
which was quite fun, actually, to be honest.
I love all that. Like, gettin' sort of properly wet,
and I hate being really hot,
but I quite like being really wet.
Rickwood: To make sure his continuity is correct,
he's gotta be soaked all the time,
and the best way of doin' it is
turn the water on and say,
"Matt, can you go stand under that, please?"
In my experience with working with Matt,
he likes to embrace all the challenges
you throw at him, in that sense, so it was good.
Goldschmidt: The script is describing the character can't see.
What does that mean for the audience?
So, that sequence wound up being incredibly fun
to light and conceive and shoot
because, obviously, it's raining and lightning,
and we were playing a lot with shadows
and silhouettes and film noir
but the way it looks when it's completely wet and dripping
and he's standing there, I mean, it's really badass.
Smith: Quite fun, though.
♪
Condal: The Brackens and the Blackwoods
are the Hatfields and McCoys of this time period.
We don't really know why they hate each other.
They simply just hate each other.
And they're always ready to fight each other.
That guy's gonna rip your face off.
- actor: Okay. Yeah. - Okay? Great.
Directing that opening moment of episode 203,
where you find all the bodies dead after a battle
took quite a bit of prep.
Aeron Bracken is a human one minute
and a prosthetic dummy the next,
but you can't tell.
Waldo Mason: First thing we did was scan his head.
- So, we gonna just lie you on the floor. - Cool.
And then we'll do a couple of options of, like,
mouth open, eyes closed, uh, eyes open
maybe, head back,
and then, we'll run it past Geeta
and she can tell us what she likes.
And we'll process whichever
version of that she likes.
- Amazin'. Cool. - Cool.
And we're off.
We've just literally finished printing his head,
ready to be remolded and cleaned up.
The shoulders in two halves on another printer.
Just assemble it like a, like a jigsaw puzzle at the end.
It's so lifelike. It's so real.
Rickwood: It was incredible. I mean, the fact that
we were doing an extreme close-up
on the prosthetic dummy of an actor
that's in the scene before,
and you can get away with that,
just shows the quality of Waldo's work.
So, you're lying on a body bag, by the way.
- Oh, great. - speaker: Surprise!
Goldschmidt: Geeta always imagined it as one simple, elegant shot
where we're on Aeron Bracken's face,
and you just raise up and there's dead bodies
as far as the eye can see.
And on the morning when we shot it, it had rained a lot.
And so, it was incredibly misty and sort of spooky-looking
and it wound up being the perfect weather
for a scene like that.
Mason: It's one of those ones where you don't really know
what it's gonna look like because we knew it was gonna be in the water,
and he's kinda semi-submerged
and the sword is going through his neck,
which meant getting in the stream, having to dress it in.
And luckily, we had some great props guys in waders helping us out.
The Aeron Bracken sword is shot in extreme close-up,
and is actually one of the most important shots in the show, for us,
because it's the closest we ever get to a sword.
There was a lot of discussion about how we get the sword to stand up.
We ended up just driving it so far through his neck,
it would just stand up in the ground
which was fantastic for us.
Oh, that looks so good over there.
That (sniffles) bare back of someone. That's great.
Dadi Einarsson: In visual effects, the rule of thumb is
you do as much practical as you can.
With Waldo, the bar is pretty high with him,
so he does amazing stuff, and we can take it from there.
There's quite a bit to do. Uh, there's obviously
a windmill that's not there that we need to put in.
Setting fire to the mill, and boundary stones,
and then we get to that end shot,
which is the aftermath of the battle,
but we're expanding that enormously.
So, yeah, it was a fairly big shot for us.
Tim Lewis: When the camera tilts up
and we see the aftermath with that beautiful sword,
just tells the story without actually showing
any physical violence whatsoever.
Patel: It was one of my favorite days of shooting
because all departments came together so quickly that morning
to create the tone of that epic moment
in George's books.
- No, it's good. Tight. - (indistinct chatter)
♪
It's genuinely been the best time I've ever had on set.
Ever. It's so much fun.
♪
Condal: Moondancer's a brand-new dragon,
so the description that I gave to the designers
was simply, "David Bowie."
And we ended up with this like tiger-striped,
green punk rocker with a mohawk,
and I'm thrilled with the outcome of it.
She is the coolest of them all.
I am biased, but she's really, really slender.
She's pale green. She's so fast.
The Crownlands sequence
where Baela is chasing Cole and Gwayne...
it's just a very fun, classic chase scene.
Everybody has to use their imagination in those moments,
but ultimately, it's down to the VFX team to make it real.
So, it's essential that they're right next to you
and what you're shooting is going to work for them.
This is what happens behind the scenes.
I'm just goin' on a practice joy-- (laughs)
practice joyride.
Rickwood: Katie, the DP, and the guys in the buck
and all the lighting technicians are working there
with the manumatic rig and all that technology,
they get together and work through everything
to make sure they getting what
the VFX department need for the post work.
Thomas Horton: So the whole dragon process was incredibly complicated,
as they are characters acting within a scene,
and we have to work out their performance
before we get to the actual location.
A lot of moving parts in terms of scale, size, speed.
So really a lot of logistics about how this is gonna
come together from a practical point of view
and what can we actually shoot,
and then, what actually really needs to be happening
in the shots at the end.
So there's a lot of science involved in that
in terms of dragon speeds and distances,
in terms of that chase.
James Thompson: We have developed a system,
so, through camera, we can take the footage
and we can apply it to a CG scene
using Unreal Engine.
And what that does is allow us
to see the solved camera move on the buck
recomposed onto the dragon in CG
for a sort of slap comp, if you like,
just so they can see in video village
that the move is working correctly.
It's hard work.
- Dragonriding, you know? - (laughter)
Goldschmidt: Because we shot the buck work of that sequence
before we had shot the location work,
the main challenge, lighting-wise, was we didn't know
if the location was gonna be sunny, if it would be cloudy.
So, we had to do one pass for sun
and one pass for shade.
Patel: It's fun filming on the buck.
It's incredibly strategic because you have to understand
the difference between fantasy and naturalism.
So, thinking about how much wind goes on someone's face
when you're actually going at terminal velocity,
how someone moves on an animal.
All of these things are really important.
I don't think there's much you can do in a profile shot.
(laughing)
Unless you turn to the camera and go, "This is amazing!"
(laughter)
You get shown a mock-up of what you look like on the dragon,
like a half-hybrid cartoon version of you
doing the whole sequence,
and then, suddenly, you're really, like,
digging your heels in as though it's a horse.
It's bonkers.
Goldschmidt: It's great when you get an actor like Bethany,
who loves the experience
and is putting their all into it
because so much of what you're doing is imaginary,
so everybody has to be on the same page.
Bethany Antonia: Nothing can prepare you for what
that first day on the buck is gonna be like.
It's the most insane thing
I've ever done in my career so far,
and being so high up and bein' able to see
how many people it takes to make this show,
and you're just all on your own on that dragon.
I was like, "Wow. This is a really cool thing that we're doin'."
She was havin' an amazing time.
She couldn't wait to get on the buck every day,
which makes everyone else's life a lot easier.
(laughing) It's like goin' to Disneyland
at, like, terminal velocity,
only you're dressed like this. (giggles)
It's the best day at work ever. (chuckles)
♪
Do you like me gold bits?
- speaker: Fancy gold bits. - Well, ya know.
Condal: Aegon is obsessed with namesakes
and symbols of legitimacy.
He has his father's Valyrian dagger,
which, of course, he doesn't realize the full significance of.
He has Aegon the Conqueror's crown, he has his name,
and I think he's trying to legitimize himself
now in the absence of Otto saying, "This is my reign now,"
and he wants to cut this image of this warrior conqueror king.
So we see him having this ancient armor
that's probably been pulled out of some dusty corner
of the armory being fitted to him.
What's it actually called?
- A gorget. - A gorget.
- Like a courgette that you eat.
Oh, it's way better. G-Gorget's way better.
Condal: We hear a lot about Valyrian steel weapons.
We don't hear a lot about Valyrian steel armor,
but it felt like that was something that
Aegon the Conqueror would've had
from his time in Old Valyria
as, like, a House Targaryen family heirloom,
a suit of armor that would be, in theory,
very light and very strong because of its make.
So the assignment that I gave to Caroline and Simon Brindle
was that I wanted an ancient suit of armor made of Valyrian steel
that seemed like it was from Old Valyria.
And I think the execution is dazzling.
- Hello. - Hello.
- Nice armor. - Yes!
Joanna Lynch: Aegon's armor was a huge challenge for us.
In the designing and the making of it,
I've never had so many meetings about a set of armor in my life.
Simon Brindle: It was a significant undertaking
in terms of Aegon the Conqueror
is a really major character in the whole Westeros universe,
so we wanted to create something that was iconic.
Caroline spent a lot of time designing it,
and then, we developed it.
- Whoa. - (laughter)
- 'Kay, great. Thank you. - speaker: Shout for help
- when you need to get up. - I will. Turtle.
Brindle: Ordinarily, a build like that
would be somewhere between 16 to 20 weeks.
It can be shorter, but if you're doing a bespoke piece,
with every element sized to the actor,
you, essentially, have to make every piece from scratch.
So that was 20 weeks of work.
It's got quite architectural shapes
within the forms and outline.
And then, probably, another good four weeks plus
just putting on the Valyrian steel detailing.
A lot of work, but great to do.
The first thing was practicality,
so it should be as flexible as possible.
So I looked at every sort of armor you can imagine.
It needed to feel like an ancient culture,
so there's some Greco-Roman influences.
I wanted the dragon reflected in its design,
so that there's a scale-like quality to it.
Brindle: It's Aegon I,
so it's still an ancient piece,
but being Valyrian steel, it's immaculately crafted.
We wanted to create something ancient and otherworldly.
There's an element of almost brutalist architecture in there.
It draws a lot on the architecture of the Targaryen dynasty.
It wound through three processes.
We started with the initial armor build,
individually fitted and crafted and sculpted
to the shape of Tom.
Then we introduced the angularity and sharpness
and a lot of referencing to dragon forms.
With it being Aegon, there's a lot of talon
and scale forms in there that run through the tassets and the skirt scales
through a lot of small detailings.
And then we got into the whole Valyrian steel,
which was (laughs) like adding an additional build
on top of everything
because we then come back to our original
forms and shapes, lift patterns
from the surfaces of every piece,
create artwork for the Valyrian steel,
and then apply it to every surface.
So, it was quite involved.
speaker: Give it a bit of a shimmy, I reckon.
- That's it. - (crosstalk, laughter)
They work so unbelievably hard on
creating the armor and the helmet
and everything that goes with it.
The attention to detail is mind-blowing.
It is satisfying when you can see them enjoy the costume
and it works for them and it's helping them
develop their character.
And he looks incredible in his armor.
Tom Glynn-Carney: Heavy. Conqueror's armor is very heavy,
but it looks amazing, Valyrian steel.
It's got the crown sort of built into it, which is amazing.
It took a little while to get right,
but I've never felt more heroic in my life.
I'm as fearsome as any of them.
♪
(indistinct chatter)
It's just so rainy. So rainy and so wet.
Clay: Driftmark Harbor is a dry dock.
The Sea Snake boat has come back from war and is being repaired.
The harbor itself is quite high.
It's about five meters high, going down into the mud
and the silt of the dock when the sea is out.
And then, obviously, that has to be surrounded,
so you can shoot 360 degrees.
From start to walking on the set
was probably 16 or 18 weeks.
Masters: Jim is the master of the grand scale,
so it started off an already big project to take on.
A lot of structure in that because we built up to,
I think, probably, five meters high.
A hell of a lot of plaster work
involved in a set like that.
And then the props came in with some lovely dressing
to make it feel like you're in a boatyard
because this was a ship under repair,
so it needed to have that feel of guys heavily working.
Condal: It's the biggest set that I think Jim ever built.
It's massive and expansive.
I mean, all that stuff that you're seeing
is in camera, including the ship.
Really only the extensions out to sea and beyond
into the next slips that are virtual.
And it just blew me away the first time I walked on it.
Eve Best: (laughs) I've totally forgotten what I have to say
- because there's so much rain all over-- - All on my face, yeah.
Patel: We had spent months preparing for the scene,
and then we found out that the day we were gonna shoot it,
it was going to be torrential rain.
So, we moved the scene and we added rain machines.
After eight hours of SFX rain, you're gonna get some leaks,
and the water started pooling in the bottom of the set,
and we had to keep digging it out.
For being such a simple scene,
it became actually quite complicated to shoot.
The fake rain was like a monsoon.
Dawson: If you ask Geeta, "How heavy do you want it?"
She goes, "I want Bollywood 10."
But at first, I was like, "I have no idea what you mean,"
but I did some research
and it's full-on heavy, big, and I love her for that.
And we did, did we not?
Best: That scene in the rain,
that was just such a (laughs) bonkers day.
And at one point, I said, "There is actual rain outside.
Are you sure that we need this extra monsoon?"
And we were all in kind of like Noah's Ark, with the water rising.
Steve Toussaint: The minute you get out there, pouring with rain,
then they'd go, "Turn the machines on."
I mean, you were literally soaked.
And by the time that you got under the shelter
to talk to her, you were drenched.
And also, I was leaning on a post
and there was, uh, like, a torrent of water coming down.
So as I turn my head away from the camera,
I was getting completely bathed.
It was, oh, it was fun, but it wasn't.
Best: That feels a lot of rain.
Patel: The scene that, originally, was very romantic
ended up still romantic
because now they were underneath this bridge in the rain,
so I think it came full circle in the end.
♪