-[people chattering]
-[waves crashing]
[ropes creaking]
[crew member] Uh, sorry.
Rob, Rob, and Ben.
Could we um...
[Loni Peristere]
Good morning.
Hope everyone
had a good weekend.
Uh, I did because
I went to editorial
and watched our stuff
all cut in,
which is exceptional.
Everything is really
delivering,
so keep working
at that high level.
We continue to push ourselves
to get the best work.
Alright? Go, team.
Three, two, one!
Action!
[actors shouting]
[♪ thrilling music playing]
♪♪
[wind blowing]
[people chattering in distance]
{\an8}When we kicked off 301,
{\an8}on the page, Ryan Condal wrote,
{\an8}"In the vast landscape.
{\an8}"In the windy hills
of Westeros.
{\an8}A sheep bleats."
[sheep bleating]
[flames whooshing]
{\an8}The very first scene
in Episode One,
{\an8}we shot in Wales,
a beautiful remote location.
[Liam Lockspeiser]
We were toing
and froing about
{\an8}what would actually be the best
conditions to sh**t it in.
Should it be bright sunshine?
Or actually,
should it be this
incredibly kind of oppressive,
overcast look?
And, of course, in the end
that was given to us,
opposed to choice.
[rain pattering]
We want this to be
a scenic painting of horror.
This is a turbulent space
that the character of
Rhaena Targaryen has inhabited
alone on her quest to claim
the wild dragon.
{\an8}When I was at drama school
and it was like,
how to deal with CGI
and acting with things
that aren't there,
you detail it as much
as you can.
Give them like specific
features, yada yada.
And, like, lowkey,
Tina looks like Sheepstealer.
So, that was really helpful
to be like,
"It's just the baby."
Tina's auditioning
for House of the Dragon
to play Dragon.
{\an8}Yeah, I mean, it's more of
a scream, but yeah. [laughing]
[screaming roar]
[growling, roaring]
[Rhaena screaming]
[Phoebe Campbell]
The buck is
the best-kept secret on set.
I don't know why people
don't talk about it enough.
And they're snakes
for not doing it
because it is
the coolest thing ever.
[screaming]
Buck work can form
quite a generic workflow.
But actually that
was very different
because we had to build
the side of the dragon
to allow Phoebe
to then get handholds
to climb up
the side of the buck,
to be on the buck,
to then ride the buck.
[Rowley Irlam] This is on
the six-axis motion base.
And one of the protocols
is that you put somebody on it,
you tether them on for safety,
you mount all around it.
But then it was, well,
we want her to get on
{\an8}to the six-axis motion base,
in camera, all in one shot.
{\an8}So, it was like, "Okay, right,
so how do we do this?"
Because I hadn't
seen one before,
I sort of assumed everyone's
looked like mine. [chuckles]
The changes, we put the boulders
on there for your hands.
That's for your right foot.
Just before we start moving,
can I just try climbing up?
Yeah, you can do it now
if you want.
-Is that right?
-Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, go on.
[Phoebe] You know,
you do this thing of like
all this prep of like,
"Oh, and I have to imagine
it's this and this."
There was none of that
that I had to do
because it's just there
and it's massive.
[Loni] One of the things
I want to make sure
that we think about
as we're laying this out
is it's spread out.
So you have little
bits and bobs of interest
throughout this view
that we're looking at.
-Stray horses...
-[horses nickering]
...stray battles,
mutilated head,
head being cut off a lion,
bodies being thrown
into inferno.
[crew member 1]
Here we go, stand by.
[crew member 2] Stand by.
Pre clearing, please!
Here we are in Episode One
and we find Daemon on fire,
literally!
[♪ dramatic music playing]
{\an8}You know, my big thought
this year
{\an8}was I wanted
a lot more violence.
-[weapons clanging]
-[punch thuds]
And they gave it to me.
[PJ Dillon] We wanted
to give it some action.
So we built some
pretty interesting shots
to convey the idea
that there's been a battle.
It's just tailing off now,
and we're coming in
right at the end of the action.
[♪ dramatic music playing]
{\an8}Look what I found.
{\an8}[laughing]
{\an8}It's amazing what you find
in Surrey.
[Loni] We should also give
a big shoutout
to the prosthetics team
for the Lannister lion,
which was
absolutely gorgeous.
[Waldo Mason]
So in the case
of the lion we made,
Darren Robinson sculpted
the lion's head.
The teeth were made
from dental acrylic,
so once we'd sculpted them
and molded them,
we made the teeth and the gums
as one big set of dentures
which fitted
into the lion's mouth.
And Maria Cork then flocked it,
did all the hair punching
on the mane,
and then we put the teeth in
and add all the gore
into the stump underneath.
We did have a fair bit
of mess on the lion.
It has to look like it's been
hunted down and hacked a bit,
so we wanted it to be
kind of quite weathered
and broken down.
We staged it as if
someone's sitting on it.
Like this, kinda chopping it.
There was an extra guy here
just kind of pulling it.
Got ahold of the mane out of it,
pulling it out.
We just really want to see...
-[crew member] Okay.
-...all that.
So we'll get him dressed
and, um, looking as it should.
We do loads of arrows, blood,
mud, the works.
-On all of them.
-Yeah.
[crew chattering]
There we go. We're in.
Oh, God, I'm sorry, lion.
[crew chattering]
[crew member]
Continue checks back there...
Give it a go. In like...
[Tommy Flanagan]
Can I hold above?
Yeah. Go on, try it.
-Yeah. That'll f*ck' launch.
-Yeah.
[♪ dramatic orchestral
music playing]
[crew member]
f*cking on the money!
[Matt Smith]
Come on, mate!
[all laughing]
[overlapping chatter]
f*cking, come on.
f*cking get in, I love that.
[laughter]
{\an8}Then old Roddy walks up
with Lannister's head
{\an8}and he says...
We have come to die
for the Dragon Queen.
[Matt] We've got
Tommy Flanagan, who's come in,
he's a brilliant actor,
who is Daemon's ally.
He's one of the Winter Wolves.
-[horn blowing]
-[crew member] March forward.
To battle!
Get in there, Wolves.
[crew member]
Cut there. Cut there. Cut there.
The Winter Wolves.
There you go.
[Matt] And he's just been
a great addition.
He's really understood
the tone of the show
and what it is.
Hey, it's been great
having you here.
I have to say,
it's made my life
infinitely better.
It's been a pleasure, Matt.
It's my favorite character
this year, yours.
[all shouting]
[shields thumping]
[director] Alright, cut.
[actor howling]
Come on.
Just a bunch of f*cking lunatics
-coming out of the forest.
-[laughing] Yeah.
{\an8}[birds chirping]
[Ryan Condal]
Just a reminder that at
the start of every day,
a writer on set is going to do
a brief tone recap
just because there's going
to be increasing distance
between those tone meetings and
the scenes that we're sh**ting,
especially once we get
into the summer and the fall.
We wanted to get everybody
together and kind of pitch out
the sequence
exactly what it is.
And the great thing about
this sequence,
as you'll see, is,
so much of this
from this moment
is practical, it's in camera.
And that's what
makes it so exciting.
And I think that's what's gonna
make it really visceral.
[shouting]
[weapons clanking]
[shouting, grunting]
[screaming, splashing]
[Ryan]
The Battle of the Gullet
was such
a sea-change moment
{\an8}in the story,
{\an8}and I knew that we had to do it
{\an8}and we had to do it well.
[Kevin de la Noy]
So often with filming,
you're coming into a stage
and you'll hire it.
{\an8}Or you go to a location
which exists and you film that.
{\an8}This particular episode,
we had to build
the outdoor stage
to mount the scene.
I had very fixed ideas
on how to do that,
based on previous experience,
when I was a young man
on Titanic,
and what I learned there
from Jim Cameron
and Jon Landau.
[Loni] In the early stages
of production,
Kevin had this idea
of building
both a dry and a wet tank.
And I asked him, like,
"What do you need a dry tank for
and a wet tank for?
Why can't you just
use one tank?"
And he said,
"Well, you want people
to go into the water,
don't you?"
And I said,
"You built the Titanic,
I trust you."
[Danny Gulliver]
We wrapped Season Two,
{\an8}having developed the ground
that was on the backlot,
{\an8}ready for future set builds,
{\an8}to then come in at Season Three
and Kevin say,
"Just so you know,
we're gonna dig two big holes
"and we're gonna fill one
"full of three million
liters of water.
"And the other one,
we're gonna put
a huge rolling sea gimbal in."
And you go, "Okay."
[Kevin] The dry tank had
a massive gimbal in
which would allow
pitch and roll
and from bow to stern.
So we could have
that huge motion of a ship
going through the ocean.
The first ship that went on it
was The Queen That Never Was
which is over 125 feet long.
And action!
[♪ dramatic music playing]
[Kevin] At one point,
that whole ship was moving
with 115 people on board.
What's interesting
is that if you're on it,
the camera movement
eradicates it.
So, in our dry tank, we tend
to keep away from the ship
so we could see it have lots
of things moving in the shot,
and that will give us
the transit.
{\an8}The issue is that
it's too much fun.
{\an8}[chuckling]
It feels like you're on a ride,
and you're having to quell
the excitement
and giddy feeling
of wearing armor
and pretending to play pirates.
-[bell clanging]
-[pirates shouting]
[cast and crew chattering]
[indistinct chatter continues]
[Rowley] Hello! Listen up,
listen up, listen up.
Just-- I just want
to reiterate, okay,
it's a ten-second count.
It's a short burn.
When you guys get put out,
I don't want anyone
being cool as a cucumber
standing up all casual.
Stay down just to make sure
nobody reignites, okay?
We're not just gonna do this
willy-nilly.
We want to make sure
this is ex*cuted
with clinical precision.
Very-- You're clear guys, yeah?
-[stunt team] Yeah.
-Alright, good. Have a good one.
[♪ exciting music playing]
[Loni] Rowley and Team Stunts
put together
an extraordinary bit of action
where we get to see
the live deck of the ship
come alight with fire.
We ended up doing a ten-man
burn on the boat,
and we'd never strafed
an entire boat before.
[Kevin]
So often we do these burns
and the men are all isolated
on a flat area of land.
Whereas here, suddenly you're
confined with all the rigging,
with all the dressing
on the set,
with the stuntmen.
Where do you put your safety?
There's nowhere to hide
on the deck of a ship.
Therefore, it had to be planned
much tighter.
We fully intend to set
ten people on fire.
They are not distressed.
[♪ exciting music continues]
[expl*si*n booming
over monitors]
Holy sh*t!
Oh, my God!
[Mike Dawson]
But everyone was
so impressed with that.
{\an8}When they came to see it,
they were like,
{\an8}"Oh, this is amazing.
This is so good."
{\an8}And I'm like, "The one
over there is gonna be
this on steroids."
♪♪
[Kevin] When you interact
directly with the water,
and you're in close,
then it needs to be wet.
So we built the second tank.
[Loni] Here we were
with two full-scale ships,
all put together
through movement and control.
[Dominic Masters]
Special Effects
did a marvelous job,
and we worked
very tightly with them,
making sure our designs
fit the gimbals.
And there was a lot
of collaboration
between swapping
of digital models between us
to make sure that everything
was gonna rock and roll
{\an8}without hitting various elements
of the other boat
that we didn't want it to hit.
[Mike] You've got one gimbal
driving The Bitchfist,
and then you've got
The Queen That Never Was,
which has now been
cut in half.
And each moves independently
to each other.
And it can give you
some really acute angles.
[Kevin]
No one expected The Bitchfist
to come in with such heft.
This thing not only accelerated
really quickly,
but then when it hit,
it then pitched and rolled
like one would expect
a ship to do.
There wasn't one person
who didn't see it
and their jaw dropped.
You could actually physically
see people drop their jaw.
[laughing]
It was really hard to, uh,
stop smiling as this thing
is tilting
and moving and shifting.
[Kevin]
We knew in the wet tank
we had responsibility
for cast and crew
working in the water,
that we had to maintain
the quality of water.
And back in July,
I designed a pipe system
so that we could pump water in
and we could pump water out.
[Mike] It takes us
two and half hours
to fill it from empty,
and it's three million
liters of water.
We changed the water
twice a day.
So that is six million
liters of water
being filtered every day.
[Kevin]
We have these huge silos.
We said we'd just put
a concrete pad down
for the water,
and by the time
the engineers came back,
they said, "Well, you've got
So the concrete is just
under a meter thick.
It was a big operation.
[wind gusting]
[ropes creaking]
[Abigail Thorn] We are
on board The Bitchfist,
{\an8}which is my ship.
{\an8}And we are about to ram it
{\an8}directly into that ship
right there!
{\an8}I think the title
of The Bitchfist
{\an8}was quite a sort of
guiding light
on what it should look like.
We did quite a bit of research
on early Korean boats,
Roman boats, and gradually
we built this pirate ship.
[Claire Nia Richards]
The dressing of The Bitchfist,
{\an8}I really took inspiration
from pirates.
{\an8}I mean, that just sort of
blew my mind there.
{\an8}I thought, yeah, we can just
go to the extremes.
I was bringing rustic colors,
very natural, earthy tones
to that.
But very broken down,
which is really great
because you can push
the boundaries with that
and actually just use things
that they would have picked up
on their journey.
Tonight, we shall walk
in the ashes of high tide!
[pirates cheering]
We essentially came up with
there are three theaters.
There's the aerial theater
with Jace and Baela,
and then later with Rhaena.
And then there's the sea
theater with Alyn and Corlys.
And on the Triarchy side
with Lohar and Tyland.
And as you watch the battle,
you will see we're not
just telling the story
of random ships
fighting each other.
So that was the big
structural challenge
of like building this thing
around those points of view
that we had
and telling their story
through this massive battle.
[crashing]
Take the ship.
[all shouting]
On your feet!
Prepare for the fight!
[all shouting, grunting]
[Abubakar Salim]
That was the moment
where I realized,
"Oh, okay, this is--
This is real. This is--"
[laughing] This is a--
This is a thing we're doing.
Do action, acting, close-ups,
all at the same time.
[all shouting]
This is good.
This is a challenge.
This is how we get better.
[Steve Toussaint]
As long as you get
the other person's eye
before you make a move,
{\an8}it is the safest place
on the set.
{\an8}It seems weird when you're
swinging blades and hammers
{\an8}and all that stuff at each other
and punching each other
in the face.
But as long as you have
that trust and that connection,
it is a dance.
Uh, yeah,
it was an absolute joy.
[Loni]
They're very real live stunts.
It's Abu's fist in their face.
[fist pounding]
I'm running this ship, mate.
It's Abigail's sword
in their stomach.
It is Steve with his arakh.
[indistinct chatter]
Over the course of a year
it took for them
to get ready
and Steve, Abu and Abigail
knocked it out of the park.
[all shouting]
[grunting]
[weapons clanging]
-[stabbing]
-[yelling]
[shouting, grunting]
[slicing, yelling]
[fire crackling]
[water splashing]
[Liam] Occasionally,
in this business,
you kind of stand in things
that makes you feel like
you're on a living
fairground ride.
[Loni] The below deck set
would actually sink,
and we had Abigail
and Abu in a...
[pounding fists]
...heavy fistfight.
-[water sloshing]
-[both grunting]
We're not having to do
a lot of work. [laughing]
I mean, we're fighting
in water, chest deep,
trying to get these hits
and punches in.
[Abigail] It's incredible.
I mean, when I was a kid,
I really wanted to be
in Pirates of the Caribbean.
That's one of the reasons
I became an actress.
I wanted to be a pirate.
And now, as soon as I stepped
onto my pirate ship
for the first time,
I was like, "Oh, yes, I'm home!"
I've done so much internal prep
to sort of create a character
and then get into them.
But I-- I'm gonna miss Sharako
quite a bit, actually.
[Alyn grunting]
[Sharako gasping]
-[stabbing]
-[Alyn grunting]
[Alyn groans]
Oh!
-[groaning]
-[director] 'Kay, cut!
Cut there.
Go on, step in
and grab the dagger, aye.
[Abigail]
That's me, wrapped.
That was actually
my final scene on the show.
But, I-- I just came
out of the tank.
That's three years of being
on House of the Dragon
and now I'm-- Now I'm done.
I'll always be
your Pirate Queen.
[chuckling] She lives on
forever in our hearts.
[♪ dramatic music playing]
[dragon roaring]
-[flames whooshing]
-[pirates screaming]
[pirates cheering]
[Thomas Horton]
The dragon battle
above the sea battle
is extraordinary.
{\an8}One of the things
we wanted to do
{\an8}was rather than tell that story
solely with the actors,
{\an8}you know, so, close-ups
on actors on dragons,
we wanted to be able to try
and tell that story
with the dragons themselves
and the choreography
of the dragons.
{\an8}We really found a kind of a,
a sweet spot of dynamic,
loose, organic
flying buck shots.
[Bethany Antonia]
It was amazing.
And Loni was in his element,
which made us be
in our element.
And he sent us off for
horse riding lessons
this season,
{\an8}and I think it worked.
I think it really helped.
{\an8}I think we were, like,
{\an8}really in tune with
the movements of the buck.
[Thomas]
We actually animated
all of those dragon battles
in advance.
And we actually
got editors involved.
Everyone bought in
with the overall story arc
because the battle
on the ships with the,
with the battle
with the dragons,
they were so interconnected.
So, we really had
to lock that in.
[dragon roaring]
Awesome! Awesome, awesome.
It's a green dot...
-Yeah.
-...that bleeps.
-Yeah.
-Which is for when
the grapnel goes,
"Whew!"
[dragon screeching]
[Dadi Einarsson]
Super tricky to figure out,
like, what's dynamic?
How do we build that tension?
How do we kind of foreshadow
or plant the seeds
of what's gonna happen?
{\an8}The buck really helped
with that,
{\an8}because every time
a sort of grapnel hit,
{\an8}you'd feel a big jolt.
[buck rig whirring]
So, I kind of didn't really look
at the rehearsals
of what the buck was doing.
So when I got on it,
I didn't want to know
what was coming.
[dragons screeching]
[screaming] Jace!
[Loni]
Three, two, one. Action!
Jace!
[Loni] Shorten it.
And, three, two, one, action.
Jace!
-[Loni] Shorter.
-[Bethany] Jace!
[Loni] Good. Cutting.
-[crew chattering]
-[bell ringing]
-I think he's dead.
-[laughter]
I think he's dead.
[laughing]
[Ryan]
Harry had it coming.
He's such a diva with his
pretty hair and all that.
Everybody wanted to see him...
No, unfortunately, I mean,
Harry's like, just like--
Like the nicest human.
You feel terrible doing it.
The guy, bless him,
is game for anything.
-Ready for this? Yeah.
-Yeah.
The rehearsal
was good yesterday.
Yeah, it looks awesome.
So, yeah.
-I feel good about it.
-Yeah, I saw you actually
-in the water. Good for you.
-Yeah. Yeah. [chuckles]
You're filming split-second
clips of the scene,
which is hard to keep
the energy up the whole time.
You can't-- I can't be
in one shot looking scared,
and then in the next shot,
looking erratic.
You've got to follow the same
energy the whole way through.
He will just look at me
and give me words of wisdom
for like two minutes
and tell me what's happened.
He'll tell me to get
my heartbeat up
or give me a minute before,
and I'll get my heart rate up.
And he really just keeps
the power going.
He's shouting down
this megaphone.
He's absolutely brilliant.
[over megaphone]
Three, two, one. Action!
Fight! Command her!
Save her!
Fly, Vermax!
[indistinct shouting]
[Loni]
I drowned him not once,
not twice, but six times.
The guy never cracked.
He just said, "Yes, sir.
Let's do it again."
By having your left hand
on the handle,
it makes this feel like you've
only got one hand to do it.
-Yeah.
-Otherwise, it's--
-It's much more achievable.
-Okay.
[Rowley] We had this harness
that's strapped in,
and he's getting dragged under
and he can't undo the clip.
So we have all of that
tension and the jeopardy
and he ends up
going under water.
[Liam]
We had to have a number
of tests with him
because he was sitting
on a-- on a dragon saddle
that was mounted on a gimbal,
so we could submerge him
as the dragon was drowning.
[Mike] We have an
underwater six-axis,
which gives you
a different kind of movement.
So you can go up and down
and thrash about.
Six-axis aren't made
to go into water.
They're not. They don't like it.
But this one does.
I think that will be really
exciting for him to be on that.
-[water sloshing]
-[muffled growling]
[fake crying]
I'm here to see him off.
[indistinct chatter]
Because that's just because
I'm actually just dead,
which is how I meant
to be, but...
There was something
really therapeutic
about the loudness of on set
and the waves.
And then when I get
dragged down underwater,
it's just silent.
So, I was actually staying
underneath the water
for as long as possible.
'Cause I could just
hear the diver,
"Harry, we've cut.
Harry, we've cut."
And I'm like,
"I'm just gonna stay
under here."
[crew]
Cut there. Cut there.
[gasping]
[Ryan] It's the real trick
with that sequence.
[arrow whooshes, thumps]
So much of it happens
in the spectacle
of flying on a dragon
and the CG.
[arrow thumps]
Really, it relies
on Harry's performance
to make you feel the tragedy
of this loss.
That's almost a k*ll shot?
-It would have been.
-It would have been.
-If I escaped, even...
-Yeah, yeah.
...wouldn't have
survived that one.
[Loni] Harry was
an absolute trouper,
and I think has
one of the most special
on-screen deaths
I've ever been a part of.
[water gurgling]
[♪ dramatic music playing]
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