I was running all day with Seasmoke.
Obviously, there is an element of "anything can go wrong"
but it doesn't, it won't.
Very good Health and Safety on "House of the Dragon."
I can't believe they got away with that.
I was so lucky to watch it firsthand.
We're always ready for whatever they're gonna throw at us.
I'm a Targaryen, baby. Ya know?
When I got my script and I realized that
Paddy was in two of my scenes, I was really thrilled by that.
Did you say it?
"The Heir for a Day."
I love Paddy, I really do, and I miss him terribly,
and I miss what he brought to the show and also to the set.
The things you don't see on camera.
Have you got your pictures?
- Thank you, love. - Lovely.
Ryan had hinted at me coming back and I was like,
"Well, how you gonna manage that one?"
And the first day that I came to set, there were actually people
when I arrived, who were a bit like,
you know, you could feel this reaction like,
"The king's here, the king's here!" It was kind of odd, really.
And seeing these giant statues, now you're dead.
You're just this giant carving. Well, I'd walked past it about 20 times,
and then I just sort of caught it and went, "Whoa!"
I told my wife about this and she said, "That's amazing. Can we have it?"
And I said, "No, we can't put that in the garden.
You can see it from fucking space."
If we don't build a small version,
then we never have a quick way of working out our mistakes.
And then, when it comes to the big version, we know what to do.
Our chief sculptor got the likeness absolutely perfectly.
And when you're talkin' about working in a piece of
four-meter by four-meter polystyrene,
it isn't always the easiest thing to get somebody's likeness.
It's so much more difficult
when it has to look like someone
'cause it's easy to have all the features of someone's face
and it not look like them at the same time.
So, it was great to actually feel proud about something you've worked on.
Daemon's dreams are an interesting aspect of this season.
I think it was very important for both Paddy and for Matt
to ground the dreams in reality.
There's the second dream where he comes across Viserys
who is mourning Queen Aemma and their son
after the tragic cesarean section of season one.
Why is my son wrapped in a shit rag?!
- That's the scene, innit? - Yeah.
Because the Silent Sisters' set has a wall of candles,
the challenge for us and the art department was
that they needed to be lit all the time, but they would burn out.
So, we came in in the morning and Vanja had said,
"Listen, guys, we need the candles lit all day
'cause I'm using them for lighting."
I have to keep the candles going the whole day?
And Vanja was like, "Yeah."
We could only work when all the candles were on,
so we couldn't make any decisions
before all the candles were lit.
So many candles. I can't believe that
there's a single candle remaining in England
after our show comes through here like candle locusts.
I wasn't nervous because I knew I was in good hands,
so compared to some other fire work that we were doing,
this was, it seems, very safe.
Lick the-- Fuckin' hair goes all...
We were in CÃ¡ceres and the exterior of the Grand Sept location
which has a steep staircase that comes down the front of it.
Rickard Thorne gets Alicent from the Sept
and they come outside and we have a large crowd.
It was definitely one of the most challenging scenes.
Fifteen or 20 horses, 180 extras,
day and a half to shoot it, and the sun's going down.
One thing that really stood out to me was the passion and energy and love
that the background artists work with.
They really take it seriously.
They really want to get into character. They really want to give you 100%.
We're asking them to create these little stories
within the scene where they're arguing over food,
or they're having conversations,
or running in different directions.
One of the early decisions for the riot scene
was that we wanted to shoot it almost like a documentary style,
as if we were reporters hidden inside the crowd
with the handheld cameras and long lens,
which we could only do because the stunt coordination
and the way the crowd was directed was so realistic
that we could employ that approach.
We wanted to stage it with as many cameras as possible,
so she can really run down the stairs and do all the actions continuously
without us interrupting her for different angles and different shots.
And we wanted to see Alicent bein' pelted with fish
by the starving townspeople.
And, obviously, they couldn't be good fish otherwise they'd be eatin' 'em.
We were concerned about how many times
we're going to try to hit Olivia with the fish.
Even though it was a prop, it was still nasty.
We had this methyl cellulose that we mixed into a kind of pinkish, gray sludge.
We then have a nominated stunt performer
who's the fish thrower.
Olivia, who's not only a fabulous actress,
but very generous and giving with her performance,
and she's like, "Yeah, just hit me with the fish. It's fine."
You know, "Let's not use the double."
By the way, the person who threw the fish used to be a pro cricket player.
When I say my head swiveled 360,
I'm not, I'm not jokin'.
We'd done one fish hit and I thought, "Oh, that was great!"
But I don't think it was quite perfect for Andrij
and he needed it again.
The second hit was, like, really gooey and juicy,
you know, and we got her, so it was worth it.
They spent all day running down these steps and I'm like,
"Oh, how many times are we gonna run down these steps?"
We ran so much up and down those steps
in the heat, in this dress.
Olivia, there's a bit where she falls down the steps at the end,
and it was always planned that
she falls towards us onto a mat.
Rowley's just like, "Just fall." And I'm like, "Yeah, but
I'm running down some steps."
He's like, "Yeah, yeah, you'll be fine. Just fall."
I'm like, "Okay."
We put some decent knee pads on her and she did a really convincing fall.
I mean, if this acting doesn't work out, she can come work with us.
It was fine. It was fine.
In the middle of the sequence, we have an elderly man that asks for food,
played by a very seasoned stunt performer called Terry Cade,
who's in his mid-70s and still performing.
He grabs hold of Alicent and gets his hand chopped off
by one of the Kingsguard.
This is the trigger for the crowd to erupt and go crazy.
Prosthetics gave us the arm,
and we used that for the arm landing on the floor shot.
We do a shot with a blue sleeve,
we do a shot where Terry physically grabbed Olivia,
and then we did the sword coming down,
but obviously stopping short of Terry's arm.
Action!
You have to do a combination of shots
to deliver the final effect for something like that.
The guy having his arm chopped off is this much in the script,
so you're spending a lot of shooting hours
for a very small moment.
Fuckin' escalated quickly, didn't it? Someone lost his fuckin' arm.
It was really fun. It was really fun.
I'd look back at Phia and we're both runnin',
and she's got this massive smile on her face.
We'd got the adrenaline rush of almost like it was like a roller coaster.
Like, every time, I kind of believed it was real
because I think if I had stopped, I would've been trampled.
It was, like, pretty scary. But I don't get to, like,
do the running around stuff in this show very much,
so it was really, really fun.
Prosthetics, stunts, Olivia's contribution.
That was a really good team effort.
You go through all the emotions in a day as a director.
Hopefully, you leave sort of relieved or satisfied,
and it was definitely that feeling at the end of that.
Okay, folks, so, we're gonna break for lunch here now. Thank you.
Alyn and Addam of Hull, the bastard sons of Corlys,
and they have very different attitudes about Corlys.
Alyn's the one that has the Targaryen blood,
the silver hair that he needs to shave every day
so that no one else recognizes it.
The challenge is that person can shave only one time
before we have to wait for a couple of months for the hair to grow.
I remember reading the scene and thinking,
how are they gonna do this?
When I read the script, I was like, "Oh, this is gonna have to--
ya know, how are we gonna make this work?"
The haircutting scene with Alyn of Hull was probably one of the trickiest scenes
that we had in the episode.
I think we had as many meetings about the riot in Spain
as we did about the haircut.
The hair and makeup team here are just on another level,
and they came up with this really cool idea
of, essentially, spraying my head with white hair,
but it would stick on end and we'd get this dull razor
that allowed me to shave it with water and take it off,
and it looks incredible.
We ended up with a double
who was actually one of the props department,
who was a really good match for Abubakar and the hair.
Obviously, we had lovely Steph who's a crew member
and he was just walkin', mindin' his own business.
I think he was getting scanned by Waldo to be one of the ratcatchers, I believe.
Every time you see somebody cut their hair, it was a double.
I've never had to shave my head in my life,
but this is something that Alyn has done religiously, every day,
and so, I had to make it look like it was a ritualistic act.
We even got one of our barbers, as well, to come in
to tell us how to actually properly shave the head.
I'm imaginin' that the blade will be wet, right?
So, I'll be wettin' the blade and then comin' back
- and then comin' down-- - No, you wet your hair.
I'd wet the hair, so the hair would be wet.
And so, to have the right people around to tell me that,
I didn't have to really think about the act of it,
all I had to think about was the scene and what I was doing.
We cut from Abu and we actually used a close-up of Steph,
and then we used Mark as the hand to use the cut throat.
So it involved, like, four different people
to achieve this one look.
So, I feel like, after this,
I won't be able to walk around with my hands up
because everyone's gonna notice it and be like,
"Hey, those are the hands!"
Like, even me as Clinton, I'm like, "Why would you shave
that beautiful silver hair?"
If I had that hair, I'd be rockin' it every day.
- Stand up straight. - Yeah, you're with your f-- your dad.
Rhaenyra, in her desperation to have a dragonrider,
goes into the archives in the Valyrian temple
and finds out that Darklyn's ancestry is connected
with the Targaryen ancestry,
and therefore, thinks that it's a good idea for Darklyn
to potentially be paired with Seasmoke as a rider.
We have the sense that Seasmoke is missing his bond.
That's why Rhaenyra seizes upon that idea that,
perhaps, he's lonely to try to give him a companion
in Ser Steffon Darklyn, who becomes Ser Steffon Sparklin'.
The Dragonmont cavern went through a lot of process
in terms of getting the right space, getting the right height for the gantry,
getting the right extraction systems in place so that we could use the fire.
So technically and logistically, there was a lot to do.
Dragonmont is a big network of caves, so what do you build that connects it
to the human space of Dragonstone?
This gantry could exist in this giant cave and dragons could come up to it,
and that's how you step on and step off.
This set, built by Jim Clay, is 15 feet, 5 meters off the ground.
Everyone at the beginning was questioning why it was built so high.
And then you stand on it and you understand why it's built that way.
It's scary.
We were so high up from the ground
that we had to worry not only about the fire,
but also about nobody falling off the plinth.
It was the first time Rhaenyra attempted this,
and we didn't know what was going to happen to Darklyn,
so the idea was to be as shocked and surprised
with his death as Rhaenyra would be.
So, what do you reckon to this lookin'
anything like me, do you think?
I think they've got the nose.
Maybe it's a bit bigger there than here.
Stunt masks provide a protection for the stunt guy,
which means a thickness of silicone, which means that we're never gonna be able
to make it look convincingly like a person
who hasn't been attacked by bees.
Do your best Michael Myers impression.
Then, to be honest, like, once they're up in flames,
all you're really aware of is
that he's got black hair and he's got two ears,
and the rest of it is down to your imagination.
On season eight of "Thrones," we learned that with prosthetics on,
it felt like havin' a fire mask 'cause the silicone would protect you.
So this year we went, "I know what we'll do."
We'll assume that people have been fully engulfed initially,
so they would be burnt and have lost their hair.
So, we got Waldo and his team
to make prosthetic masks that covered the ears.
And it's the ears that always get burnt when you do a burn without a mask on,
that go 'round the back of the neck,
so that we could literally have people on fire
without masks on, but stood up.
- That was a bit innovative for us. - And action!
I think that it's al-- The knife's already on there. And then you go...
like that.
That's prosthetics on a prosthetic.
So we have to stick the neck on first
with the tube, that wound, running down his back,
and out the bottom of his trousers on a pump,
and then, while he's on fire, he has to find his mark
and cut that
and then, fall to the floor and all this sort of gushes out.
That was Levan. It's one more piece for us to stick on,
but Levan has to hit all these marks while he's on fire
'cause, obviously, he can't see what he's doin'.
Yeah, props to Levan.
Levan, are you okay? Lee, you alright?
Having thought that I was up for most things,
having watched it, I thought,
"Oh, it turns out, I actually don't want to be set on fire."
We provide the fire gel.
We make it ourselves.
It's almost like a protection. They have their own protection on,
but just the top burns rather than the costume.
They put the gel on underneath and then on top of the costume,
and then special effects paint them up with IPA and alcohol and off they go.
We ignite them with a flamethrower, which is scary.
We used a podium one, which is basically a powder,
like a pollen,
and we fire that out and ignite it at the same time,
and it burns very clean, very yellow, and it's very limited.
You can't be panicky, though, can you, 'cause it's not a good look.
You gotta be really positive and like,
"Yeah, it's gonna be great. It's gonna be fine and..."
It's just alien to do that.
It's alien to squirt somebody with ignited gas, isn't it?
But you've got to plan it,
you've got to build it, you've gotta show Rowley.
We have dummies that we dress up,
put them there, squirt them on, show him how it burns.
He likes it, he doesn't like it.
And then, we go to the real people.
Action!
One, two, three,
four, five, six,
seven, eight, nine, 10!
Out, out, out!
You have to be conscious of when you put people out
because you can blow burning stuff off them onto other people
because they're not out.
They would burn for a lot longer.
And then we put some cold towels on them and stuff like that just to keep 'em cool.
But if they do that, we know we're alright, you know?
Definitely won't be becomin' a stuntman anytime soon.
That is mad.
Felt the heat from there.
It's always better to do things in camera. But fire is one of the things,
just because how it reacts to wind and movement,
it's really hard,
and I don't think it's yet convincing for that to be computer generated,
certainly not in its entirety.
You can enhance, but I don't think you could replace real flame.
Not just yet. Maybe 20 years,
we won't be setting people on fire anymore,
but right now, thank goodness, we can do it better.
Top man. Thank you, Lev. Great work.
Addam is walking home after a day of fishing
and there's a chase scene between him and Seasmoke.
You look at a storyboard and go, "That's not so bad."
And then you go, "Oh, hang on, it's still going.
"Oh, it's-- Oh, it's still--
The shot's still going, oh, the shot's still going."
We planned the route, as you do always,
as to what does the background look like.
And often, it's the route that's the most uncomfortable
or awkward for the performer.
Clinton, fantastic actor, great athlete.
He did all his own stunts. We provided him with a stunt double
and he was like, "No, I'm doing this."
When an actor wants to do their own stunts,
I'm at the monitor going like.
Clinton was so exciting and he was in such great physical shape.
We tried to have long takes and long choreography,
and for somebody to repeat that a couple of times,
running up the hill, running down the hill,
could've only done it with him.
I don't know how we'd do it with another actor,
and he was happy to do it every time.
Shootin' that scene with Seasmoke
was a dream come true for me.
As a kid, what did we all imagine when we were, like, playing,
you know, make-believe? It's always a dragon.
We have this bit at the end where he falls down this rock face.
So it was a real rock face, which we covered
with a fake rubber rock face, and he did a great job.
It's always better if it's in camera and it's the real person.
Visual effects cover the dragon overhead.
We had then picked him up on a drone,
so we built a drone shot in
where he runs through the woods and we track him.
And then, of course, we had some local mortar cannons
that shot debris and tree branches.
So we had some physical effects.
When the dragon comes crashing through the trees,
we had something to blast through the shot,
so that we don't rely completely on the digital aspect of that.
And then, of course, when the dragon comes face to face with Clinton,
that's when VFX were reintroduced,
so that we can have that moment where Clinton and the dragon are nose to nose.
When we storyboarded the sequence, and we previs'd it, and we budgeted it,
we're like, "Okay, it's big," and then we shot it.
It went amazingly well, but when we got into post,
it was so good that the scene doubled in size,
so we got twice as many dragon shots.
And can I tell you, you know, each dragon shot is very expensive.
I mean, it's like owning a dragon.
The scene is incredibly dynamic.
We shot it in a very similar way
that we shot the Steffon Darklyn moment just before he's burnt.
At the moment that Seasmoke kinda goes in for Addam,
we cut out of it
leaving the audience wondering what's gonna happen next.