I think that's what really gives this the proper kind of scale.
This used to be my favorite set.
Wow. Like, that's, that's it.
Eve Best: You know, I was nearly crashin' the car
'cause it was just so beautiful.
Pfft, blows my mind.
Someone told me that in Spain.
It gets messy.
It just makes everything a little bit more excitin'.
(epic music playing)
(music fades out)
(light piano music playing)
Clare Kilner: Episode five is called "Regent."
And it's, you know-- That, obviously, refers
to Aemond taking control.
And cut. Thank you, guys. Thank you very much. Thanks.
This episode is very much a power grab.
People vying for power,
but also, it's very much about that happening through grief.
♪
Steve Toussaint: So, when we meet Corlys
in episode five, he's devastated.
She gets the death, I guess, that she would want,
in the sense that-- I think Baela says it,
you know, she dies by dragonfire.
But, of course, that doesn't take away the pain.
Sitting in the Hall of Nine,
but it means nothing to him anymore
because she's gone.
Kilner: Steve is an incredible actor.
He has such deep soul to all of his performances.
When you're dealing with grief,
I don't really talk to them that much about it.
It's such a vulnerable place
to be mining your grief of your own personal life,
which is kind of what you have to do,
and then, let them find it and you see what they bring.
And, with Corlys,
I had no clue that he was gonna have this tear.
Like, this silent tear roll down his face.
It was incredibly moving to see it.
♪
Alejandro Martínez: Yeah, that was a beautiful scene.
Corlys was shot in the Hall of Nine,
which had to be a blue screen
because the original big set, we don't have it anymore.
So what we did is we built part of it
and then everything else was blue screen.
So that was a, a nice challenge.
Nick Heckstall-Smith: The advantage was we had shot on season one,
so we knew what the set was,
we knew how the set felt.
And also, the actors, or Steve himself,
obviously, had worked in that set extensively on season one,
so he knew kind of where he was, even though 90% of it was blue.
So, this used to be my favorite set...
and I don't know what they've done with it.
It's now a warehouse, and I'm embarrassed and hurt.
Personally offended by it,
but, uh, I'm sure with the CGI stuff,
it'll look wonderful.
Heckstall-Smith: The Cyclops was really helpful,
especially in sets like Hall of Nine,
because the cameras and us understand
exactly what we're seeing
wherever we place the camera in that environment.
Jim Clay: The Cyclops the visual effects guys use
is enormously important,
and, especially, for directors and actors as well
to be able to look around a blue screen stage
and then see what the final image will be.
- (indistinct chatter) - crewmembers: Rolling!
(gasps)
That's brilliant!
Aw! This is the best set, you know?
Thomas Horton: We had a fully textured scan of the set,
and I remember opening the scan and going,
"Wow. Like, that's, that's it."
You know, like, literally, the kind of the fine detail.
So it was a pretty straightforward rebuild for us
'cause we had all of the material.
Dominic Masters: The cost of rebuilding the whole set for that, uh,
as opposed to picking our angles and saying,
"Right, we need this angle, we need that angle, we don't need that,"
we worked it out what was essential to build
and what could be put in digitally
to recreate the set and not have to build the whole thing again.
And that, hopefully, has proved very successful.
Kilner: Cut. Thank you.
(tense music playing)
knight: Behold! The traitor dragon Meleys!
Freddie Fox: Parading Meleys's head, it's sort of grotesque.
It's also a reminder of a battle gone bad.
And also, Cole perceives quite quickly
has the reverse effect of what is intended.
It's intended to be a sort of rallying call
to the people of King's Landing and, "Look how we're doing."
But, of course, the people of King's Landing
see the beginnings of nuclear warfare,
and they're like, (scoffs) "I wanna get out."
townsperson: 'Tis an abomination.
Don't they realize we won the battle?
Strange victory.
Fabien Frankel: Yeah, I mean, it was amazing.
Any time I get to work with Clare Kilner is a joy.
And she makes me laugh very, very much,
and I think she takes some sort of small pleasure
in watching me and Freddie struggle on these horses.
It was, it was really, really great.
Martínez: The way we shot it is big parade, streets of Spain,
streets of Trujillo, and streets of backlot,
and the whole procession.
And it's Meleys's head,
which it was just, like, a big, blue
(laughs) head.
But I think once the whole scene is finished
and once you can actually see that dragon head,
it's gonna be quite amazing.
townsperson: Rhaenyra will answer this.
Horton: So that obviously will be a fully CG dragon head,
kinda more complicated than some in that-that, you know, there--
lot of blood and guts and gore.
In all of our sequences, the starting point
is always an incredible concept.
And so, we-- there was a lot of iterations
that went through to get the right type of dragon head,
the right amount of gore and blood,
and we'll, literally, be taking that, you know,
those concepts and, you know, making them real,
but the dragon head was created from our real dragon head model
and then scaled down a little
and we had the horns on it because it's got massive horns,
and it's a big show, big dragons.
(roars)
knight: Slain at Rook's Rest by your king. To Aegon!
Heckstall-Smith: The victory parade with the dragon head
was a massive amount of wagons and horses
and characters that needed to march through the streets.
It was a challenge to move that parade back and forth.
You could never turn it 'round and reset back to a first position easily.
You had to unhitch all the horses,
push the wagons back, push the horses back,
re-hitch again.
(neighs)
It was 15 minutes before you could roll
the cameras again, so that was challenging.
(all singing a tune)
Trujillo was built for medieval parades for sure.
A lot of our street, street-based shooting was actually done in Trujillo
'cause it offered these wider streets and these grand squares
and the right looks of the buildings.
So definitely lend itself, you know, very well to,
um, staging this action.
Knight: The dragon Meleys!
apprentice: I thought the dragons was gods.
It's just meat.
Kieran Bew: Shooting in Spain was surreal
because the set is just-- It's just there, you know?
(stammers) I can understand why they shoot there.
The other thing about Spain is it was an opportunity
to spend time with some of the cast,
and it's always nice to, to meet your costars.
But I find the stuff that they manage to do when we're away
like dressing up C-Các-- uh, Cáceres--
(softly) That's how you pronounce it. Someone told me that in Spain.
Don't tell anyone.
It's-- Pretend camera.
You know, to look like the "Game of Thrones" film set
or Trujillo, which we shot in as well, or, you know--
I-I find that stuff pretty amazing.
I think that's the key factor, to shoot on real locations.
It has the feeling of reality, of course,
but once you arrive here,
it feels like the birth of the sets,
where all of these locations started here,
so you really feel that you are in King's Landing.
And action.
Sofia Noronha: And also, going back to the stage,
back in England, it's weird because
you can feel that this is there, somehow,
so you kinda feel both worlds in, in the different locations.
Clay: I think you always go through that process
right at the very beginning.
Should this be a location?
So it had been my ambition on this season
to build part of King's Landing.
So, everything that you're about to see is season two.
So let's walk through.
And you can see the colors of the Red Keep
now blend into the sandstone
of Cáceres and Trujillo with streets going off
and, clearly, blue screens goin' behind the background there,
so we can extend and put in the streets that we filmed in Spain.
King's Landing, large set,
now occupying several acres on the backlot.
This section still remains dressed.
We complete photography in three more days,
and then, all of the dressing will go
and the sets will weather their way through the winter.
And now if we look back from here,
you can see the approach to the Red Keep
and how this set all ties together.
So it's quite an expansive set
and allows us to play a lot of action out
and to change it and dress it and replicate the, um, areas
of King's Landing to flesh out the story.
(indistinct chatter)
(light music playing)
Kilner: Oh, Aegon's story here is absolutely tragic,
so they hide Aegon's body.
I wanted to really shoot Aegon's litter
and really get the sense that he is dead, you know,
so that when they pull him out,
it's a shock, one, that he's alive,
and then to see the state of disrepair that he's in,
um, how burnt he is.
We also elongated that journey from the script
because we wanted to follow him with Steadicam into the Red Keep,
up the steps, through the hallways, and into the room.
Then, I wanted to sort of see the lid come off
but still not see what was inside.
So, really sort of tease the audience
with the mystery of what's inside that box.
Martínez: We always thought about it as a dark scene.
It's really gritty.
Even the script talks about curtains being closed.
It's supposed to be a grim and dark scene,
so we always saw it that way.
We wanted to leave a lot for the imagination
so somebody that's been-- half the body's been burned,
you can only imagine his wounds.
Dracarys.
(roars)
No, no! (yells)
Martínez: Things like breastplate being stuck to the flesh
or, you know, things like that that we wanted to show,
but not too much, so the dark environment helped
but it was a lot about the amazing prosthetic work that they did.
It's-- It looked really, really good.
I think people are gonna be,
uh, a bit in shock when they see Aegon.
Waldo Mason: When we did the return to the Red Keep with Aegon
after he's been burnt,
uh, him coming back and everything being peeled off him,
and I see wh-what's actually happened to him
was, yeah, a big one for Clare,
so we wanted to make sure we sold that enough
and made it kind of disgusting enough.
So we start with our kind of pussiest version
because he's been brought straight off the battlefield.
So that would've been time for infection to set in,
so we've got a lot of pus going on, a lot of wetness.
Then we kind of reveal, in stages, how burnt his chest is
and how extensive the damage is.
- It's all fuckin' melted. - What's happenin' here?
What's this? Oh, psoriasis. Sorry.
- (laughter) - I don't like that bit.
My self-esteem is rock bottom.
Move it there.
It was great. Tom was really into it as well.
The whole thing of his burn is it's not a direct burn.
It's not a burn from the flame.
It's where his armor has become super hot
and it's burned into his face like a, like a hot plate.
Valyrian armor, in "Game of Thrones" lore, is flame-resistant,
as opposed to a normal armor, which will just melt.
Caroline McCall: So, that was a big breakdown job for Tim,
our chief of breakdown.
And so, he blackened it.
He did some really lovely techniques on it.
And then, David, who does sort of specialist jewelry
and he made some of the chainmail look like it was melted,
tried to make it look as, as real as possible
of somethin' that had been up in flames.
Amanda Knight: We love getting to those moments in the script.
And you see that and you think burns and think,
oh, well, we-- you know there's gonna be burns in a story like this.
With dragons, there's gonna be some burns.
And it's great because that's allowing us to play
and to find those characters and to research.
We've gotta think about the shooting schedule as well.
It's gotta be viable that it can work every day.
With the severe burns, it's a six-hour makeup.
You can't sustain that over the course of a whole show.
Tom's been brilliant. He's been amazing.
He's sat there and allowed us to do it.
(laughing)
It's amazing. The team I have around me is--
are just phenomenal.
They're an absolute dream team.
The, the detail they can see that
they go, "Oh yeah, this needs doin'."
I just can't see that sort of thing.
But we've all got to know each other very well.
There's been a lot of time in the chair.
We had a day where it was, like, close to seven.
It's a process, but these guys are so good at what they do.
If it looked rubbish, then you'd be devastated
that you were in the chair for that long, but it doesn't.
It looks incredible. I mean,
these guys put their heart and souls into it.
Pfft, blows my mind.
Daemon Targaryen: The hour is late and my dragon is hungry.
Our terms are simple, Lord Bracken.
Renounce the false king Aegon as a usurper
and bend the knee to me.
Or your house burns.
(tense music playing)
These are not a people that can be forced into submission.
And then he's shocked here to learn that the Brackens
would rather burn in dragonfire than submit to the Blackwoods.
And he's frustrated, but he also says,
"Hey, I-I kinda like these guys
and I could use people like this on my team."
We really believed in that scene.
Um, we really thought the tone of the scene
can be really fun, but yet really sarcastic.
We created a lot of tension
but it was just, like, a really nice acting scene.
I would sooner be the Lord of Bones and Cinders
than bend my knee before some heathen Blackwood cunt.
Martínez: There was a lot of help from VFX.
We previs'd that scene because that dragon was,
you know, played such a big role in the scene
and it's just a dragon standing,
which we haven't seen much.
So it was very challenging
but it was really, it was really cool.
- We choose fire. - (horse neighs)
(Caraxes grumbles)
Dadi Einarsson: It was storyboarded by Alejandro and Clare,
and we-- with the Cyclops there on the day of,
that was quite kind of involved in setting up
just the staging of the scene.
How big is Caraxes in that space?
Is he gonna fit? We kind of previs'd that.
And on the day, it just, with every shot,
it's kind of, you hand over the iPad and you can line it up.
Kilner: So we talked with Matt about this buck,
so he could sit really, really high up in the saddle
on this mechanical buck that would move as he moved.
Horton: Yeah, that was an interesting one where
we started as a blue screen,
you know, shot at the studio, and we were like,
"No, no, we-we wanna do it there."
And the location was just stunning, so,
you know, the performances were all heightened,
I think, because of that.
Heckstall-Smith: It was very different from
our usual buck work.
Matt, he enjoyed it. He loved it.
Every location gave the, gave the show the scale
and these amazing landscapes, so it was great.
I just love being on a big, grand location like that.
It was lovely to be outside.
And it was raining and I was on a plinth.
And it was, like, sideways rain.
I think that's what really gives us
the, the, the proper kind of scale,
those beaches and those vistas,
and it's a show that really needs that.
And so, it's good.
I think as much location as we can have, really,
I think really adds to it.
(tense music playing)
Having North Wales as this really dense set of locations
that could play Dragonstone and the Riverlands
and the Crownlands was really useful.
And I-I, honestly, I don't know that we would've been able
to produce a season two as, as we did
without the abundance of North Wales.
Danny Gulliver: It just opens up the doors
'cause, you know, as wonderful and as beautiful
as these sets are and designed,
you can't fit a dragon in Dragonstone,
but you can definitely fit it
on the Welsh countryside hillsides.
Philippa Goslett: I spent a lot of time on the Welsh shoot,
but any time you're shooting on location,
the thing you're gonna come up against is the weather.
And Wales gets e-every kind of weather there is.
And I think that we have been, overall, very lucky
in that the weather we've got
seems to have perfectly, uh, matched
the scenes that we had to film it in.
Kilner: This rich scenery.
You know, we're on top of mountains with the wind in our hair.
Like, you can't fake that.
There'd been torrential rain,
but we were lucky not to be in that torrential rain.
Clay: Locations are a big logistics, uh, operation.
Just creating the, the facility to be able to shoot what you want
and build what you want there.
Ryan Condal: They are headaches and those, those places
are often inaccessible to equipment,
and we are not a small footprint.
We have heavy equipment and cranes that we haul everywhere.
Masters: Some of these locations are quite tough in that
they are special places.
A lot of them are SSSI locations,
uh, which means they are protected.
Um, and so it limits some of the work, you know.
Some of our greatest ideas, you can't achieve them.
crewmember: And action.
Roger Holden: There was a lot of, uh, remodeling, recontouring
of the landscape to get those sets in.
Other problems there is they're all SSSI,
which is, you know, special s-- uh, sites of scientific interest.
So, certain plants you can't move,
you can't touch, you have to protect.
So, there was a lot, a lot of juggling going on there,
right, and that was just like a bit of a playground for us.
Clearing, leveling, bringing in, redressing,
just changing it to, to what we required really.
Kilner: I think whenever you go to a different space, it informs you.
You know, the history is ingrained
in the woods and the stones of a place,
and that just influences you. You can't help it.
Kevin de la Noy: When I saw the work and I saw the artwork
of season one, I said to guys, "You, you have to go to Wales.
"The mountains are bigger. It's, uh, visceral.
There's something magical about it."
Phoebe Campbell: This does not belong to humans.
It does not belong to us.
And I think that fits in the world
of "House of the Dragon" so well
about what is ours and what we can claim
and what is bigger than us.
Uh, staring into nothing but landscape and nature
with no man-made things, it does something to ya.
(indistinct crew chatter)
It's amazing shooting in Wales.
I mean, first of all, it's incredible
that those kind of landscapes,
we don't have to fly a million miles away.
They're right here.
I remember I was driving up and I was like a tourist,
you know, I was nearly crashing the car
'cause it was just so beautiful.
Unimaginable of-- how they, how they got an entire crew of,
I don't know, maybe 2,000 people up a mountain
that was kind of almost impassable,
I don't know, I-- Yeah, brilliant.
It makes you feel like you're in that period of time.
There's not really any cars.
There's no roads. It's all just scenery.
♪
It's nice to have a change of scenery.
I think if we was all in the studio for the whole shoot,
we would start to go a little bit crazy.
It's like going to school and goin' on a school trip
because it just makes everything a little bit more excitin'.
♪