01x02 - The Rogue Prince

[bunniefuu]

It looks like something out of NASA.

I said, "Big."

I don't know if I meant that big.

You couldn't tell that you weren't

walking around an actual medieval castle.

You just don't wanna get hit by that.

The dragons are visually very different.

My dragon's the best.

The Red Keep concept was

the jewel of the whole piece for me,

because that's where the bulk of the

action is taking place in this season.

The Targaryens are a very powerful

dynasty, so it's all about show.

It's all about, "Look how powerful

I am. Look what castle I've got.

Look what artifacts I've got."

That's the driving force

in all of the designs, I think.

Over a weekend, Jim pretty much

just cracked out a design

for the whole Red Keep.

And on the Monday morning, we're looking

at this thing thinking, "Blimey hell!"

I remember going there

for the first time and walking in,

and my jaw dropping to the floor,

and just thinking,

"Oh, I said, 'Big.' I don't know

if I meant that big."

That Red Keep set

absolutely blows my mind.

I was telling our mentees, "Go, really

walk that set and fully appreciate it,

because you really won't see anything

that big, that spectacular,

except for a few times in your career."

Jim Clay and his team built

a really completely-realized world,

almost 360 degrees.

So, really, until you

looked directly up and saw the

You know, saw the rack lighting,

you couldn't tell that you weren't

walking around an actual medieval castle.

They really went to town

and made it a universe.

And I think one of the principles behind

Thrones has always been,

particularly with sets is,

I need to be able to sh**t

in every direction without it

becoming a visual effect.

And you can certainly

do that on the Red Keep.

There was me designing

this enormous set,

which was going to take months and months

to work, and we had a schedule.

And there was a point where the guy said

to me, "This isn't going to be possible."

Our most challenging element, with

regard to the set, really, was the time.

We had 16 weeks to build this, which by

anybody's stretch, is some goal, really.

So, as a team, we got together.

Miguel and Ryan were hugely supportive.

They wanted to keep that set

and realize it as we designed it.

And so, they shifted the schedule around

endlessly and we achieved it that way.

But, you know, God bless the guys,

because they stood behind it,

and we got it built

as we had conceived.

The remarkable achievement from the

construction department, and, you know,

props as well, and set dec, to pull that

enormous, sprawling set together.

It's roughly about 62 meters long.

It's 39 meters wide.

And at it's highest point,

it's about 13 and a half meters.

We used 3,692 sheets of 8x4, 3/4 ply.

We used 52,038 meters

of 3x1 timber.

And we used 49,248 meters

of 4x2 timber.

And we also used gallons

of blood, sweat, and tears

The stage is a composite set,

which means, rather than build individual

rooms for individual scenes,

this is a set where all the rooms are

combined into one massive space

that is the interior of the castle.

I think the thing that threw me

is that it's all to scale.

You know, like, it's like,

you actually walk up in there,

and then you can go into my room.

You can go into the small council

chamber and into Paddy's room.

It's all, like, built-in.

It's not on separate stages,

which was really fun to play with.

And it made the world,

like, a lot more immersive.

It's like a little town

they built, essentially.

And it's weird,

'cause you walk through it

and you keep finding different elements

to it that you've never filmed on.

-Brother.

-Daemon.

Cool. It's cool. It's, you know

I like being on there.

The composite also allows

lots of positions to watch, to observe.

To understand the little pockets

of conversations that are going on.

To add to the, the intrigue,

and the conspiracy that must go on

all the time in those places.

Well, I went home to my wife and I said,

"We could live there, move-in there."

I feel like I do live there.

My father, the king.

It is incredible.

I mean it's a castle in a stage.

I've never been

on a set like the Red Keep.

We're establishing this weird,

twisted pirate called Craghas Drahar,

but nicknamed the Crabfeeder.

Stepstones is the stronghold

of The Crabfeeder.

And we filmed that down in Cornwall.

And this is a tidal beach,

so the logistics of working there

were pretty

challenging and restrictive.

Well, there's a reason that a lot

of films don't take place

right on the coast,

and that's because of tides.

There's probably, like,

150, 300 meters out, the beach goes.

You're like, "Oh, this is gonna be great.

No problem.

We'll just move up to here

when the water gets there."

But that tide comes in and

eats up the entirety of the beach.

Props, and set dec, and art department,

we just picked up shovels

and did what we had to do, I think,

to make it happen.

There was just absolute determination

from every single member of the crew.

Whenever he captures any

of the Velaryon sailors,

he stakes them to wreckage on the beach,

and feeds them to the crabs.

In the script, it's depicted as

a sort of swashbuckling character,

but Greg was keen to give him

a more monstrous feel.

So, rather than having a flashy sword,

he said, "I want him to have a hammer.

And I want him to use it as the thing

that nails the people to the stakes."

I designed something that has got that,

sort of, menacing feel to it,

and kind of fits-in with that character.

It's got two sides on it, a hammer side,

which everyone knows as the meat masher.

It's got those spikes,

and you just don't wanna get hit by that.

And then on the other side, it's got

a bladed section, which you know,

in a battle, it's just nasty.

It's nasty.

There's so much more

energy that has to go into it.

And they're so brutal,

and I think it just, you know,

it just adds to that character that he'll

wear his mentality and how violent he is.

We are creating makeup effects,

which relate to some things

that we did on Game of Thrones before,

such as the greyscale.

Stone Men!

Don't let them touch you!

Crabfeeder has greyscale,

which he's had for many years.

And the first time we see him, it's

fairly extensive. We see him topless.

He's not very happy.

He's got a really bad case of eczema.

You really want to pick it, though.

You really want to.

It's quite progressive

up the left-hand side of his body.

So, we had to really extend

the makeup on down,

which is probably about

a four-hour makeup.

Covering his left arm, going up onto the

side of his neck and into the, the scalp.

He wears a mask, which he's bashed

together from a Son of the Harpy mask,

and other bits and pieces he's found

in shipwrecks,

which covers the majority of his face.

So, we never really uncover and see

the extent of the disease on his head.

We had to make it look like

it was for a villain, basically.

You know, it had to look like somebody

would be scared by looking at the person.

We got a scan of the actor, and we

basically made the mask around his face.

We need to get a knife and just carve out

of it to look like it's been handmade.

Get sandpaper.

Just rub it down a little bit.

'Cause we don't want everything

to be sharp or perfect.

We actually made the costume

on him by adding lots of elements

that you could have find.

'Cause he's a pirate, so he find his

element and then he create himself,

his costume, by putting

those elements on top.

Very tall and thin, but wonderful.

He was causing havoc

in the waterways,

and this was kind

of the entrance to his lair.

You see though what he's

doing, staking sailors to the beach,

and the crabs come and feed

off the sailors.

Different elements of them

have been eaten away.

Hands, legs, arms, feet,

wherever they've been staked out,

the crabs are eating them.

Mary'll come and put on

these fabulous prosthetics,

but he always asks for orientation to

help it look like it should be lived in.

So, is it dirty? Is it sweaty?

Is it all of those elements?

We've got this stuff that we put on

to make you look

like you spent a day at sea,

and you get that, sort of, dry lip,

and little things like that.

As if I wasn't dead enough.

He was going to be

more of a a Boogeyman.

We wanted to create a silhouette,

a presence, a person.

The combination of the mask,

and the greyscale,

and his interesting gait and body,

all conspired to create

a memorable character who feeds

his enemies to the crabs.

When people ask me

about the show and they say

They just assume

I'm gonna be ridin' a dragon, and ask

And then they say,

"Oh, did you get to ride a dragon?"

And I go, "No."

They go,

"You're fightin' it, though?"

"No."

And then they say,

"What do you do?"

And I go

"I don't know Sittin' around

a council table all day."

Some of my favorite scenes

from the original series happen

in the small council chamber.

I love those palace-intrigue scenes,

and they're the most difficult to write.

But they're the most fun to write,

in a lot of ways,

where you're servicing all those voices

and everybody's kind of vying

for the king's attention.

The king is surrounded by a lot of people

with their own agendas,

whether that's saving money, or promoting

their own, their own family,

or doing the, you know,

the good work of the realm.

And it's on the king, just as it's on

the showrunner of the show,

to hear the voices

of the council around him

and try to make

the best decision possible.

I think we had something like 60 or 70

pages of scenes

in the small council chamber

throughout season one. It's a lot.

I really thought that we needed

something that had more grandeur to it.

And also something that was,

for the crew, easier to work in.

We had this room built that was

designed around the idea

that we should be able to sh**t

in any direction at any time.

Miguel and Ryan wanted

a different council chamber.

We wanted it to feel fortified,

so it has these huge columns.

And that was a bit more flexibility

to design something new.

Jim and I, we looked at different

finishes for the table itself.

And I had this really lovely round piece

of marble which had a hole in the middle.

And Jim picked up on that,

and said, "Well, actually"

And I had all these lovely stones

as well,

circular stones of various

different peaceful colors.

And he said, "Well, what about

if we put the bowl of stone into"

And then, I was like, "Yeah!"

It represented the council,

and them coming in and being

a part of the meeting.

Everybody essentially shows

up for work, and they punch in.

And I thought it

was really cool, and a

Just a way of visualizing the kind of set

formality of the small council chamber.

What would be quite nice

is somebody's talking.

And someone else takes their ball

out of their donut,

and they have to stop talking.

Dear me

It's enjoyable. We should have things

that we like in this world.

Why don't you take the princess

to see about the new Kingsguard

posting, Lord Commander?

This knight will protect you as well.

You should choose.

At the time that she chooses

the Kingsguard,

it's something that's not

quite an impulsive choice.

But it's her

first thing she's assigned to.

It's something that's done offhand

that does influence

the course of a lot of events.

In the original series, the heyday

of the Kingsguard had long passed.

But this is that heyday,

and you're trying to show that.

And show how important and how meticulous

they were over their decision-making.

So for these knights to come

all this way to King's Landing

to be even considered for the job

is a big deal.

So we wanted to put a bit of pomp

and circumstance around the selection.

That wonderful little chessboard

was a big piece of that.

Greg became obsessed

with this kind of chessboard of totems.

And he's like, "Well, what's that

gonna look like exactly?

And I said,

"I don't know. However you want."

And seven months later,

the most elaborate chessboard of totems

and sigils appeared on the set.

And they spent at least

three hours sh**ting just that.

It almost looked like a sundial,

and it evolved from different ideas.

So it was putting together all the

relevant ones for the different knights,

and who she was gonna choose.

Each one is a 3D representation

of the sigil,

as opposed to just

the sigil on a little pin.

When I pitched it to Greg, he liked that.

It made it more interactive for Rhaenyra.

All of these are 3D printed,

so there's no one that's

like more or less difficult.

It was all was very much like about

getting the design into ZBrush.

So Casey, the concept

artist, did all of that for us.

And then it goes out

to a 3D printing company.

And then it comes back to Ellie

the painter,

and she painted all of these

and references that I gave her.

How many of these knights

have combat experience?

This actually caused us

the most trouble,

because every time we made it,

it just looked a bit too phallic.

So we settled on this straight

little version you can't get lost in.

I choose Ser Criston Cole.

We have the biggest volume

set in the world, and it is spectacular.

It looks like something out of NASA.

It goes by many names.

Virtual studio, virtual set.

The new kid on the block at the moment.

What the volume provides

in its tool form is an alternative.

It's a way of bringing out

the action back home.

It has over 2000 LED screens,

it is completely enclosed,

it operates with the camera.

There are 92 motion capture cameras.

And what those do is solve the position

of where the principal camera is.

And that information gets passed into

Unreal Engine, which is a game engine.

It's the next evolution of the ability

to see your visual effects live in camera

while you're sh**ting.

Ultimately, on the set,

there was just this unadorned bridge.

Yeah, you've got

the castle behind the characters.

But then, above them,

still in the frame,

you've got this like smeared

castle across the ceiling tiles.

Which is correct in perspective

of the camera,

but to your eye, looks really,

really strange.

But then when you go over to the

director's monitor, the video village,

and just look at what's in the camera

You're transported to where

this scene is taking place,

and you're sort of brought

into the illusion.

It was so great to have something

the actors could react to in real time.

I mean, it's pretty surreal.

It's a lot easier,

'cause you're not imagining everything,

it's there in front of you.

Ser Criston, wasn't it?

Ser Criston Cole, my prince.

Ah, yes, apologies. I couldn't recall.

Perhaps my prince recalls

when I knocked him off his horse.

It was spectacular to look

through the lens and see

Really see where

the show the show comes to life.

And to give it

a real look and texture.

The real Dragonstone Bridge is completely

impractical to sh**t a scene on.

This is one of the bridges

that's been seen in Game of Thrones.

It's this fabulous zigzagging bridge that

connects the mainland to the monastery.

Because we were able to recreate it

from lidar scans from the actual set,

we were able to sh**t in any direction.

You can sh**t profiles, you can

sh**t wides, you can be above.

In the center, there was like a pivot

they could turn and spin 360.

So, we'd sh**t up the incline one day,

and then over night,

magically be sh**ting down

the incline the next day.

It can create a background

which is 10,000 feet up in the air

in the mountain.

And so, that gives them the opportunity

to be really visually creative.

What the volume gave us was

we could recreate the environment.

And control the lighting,

and have consistent lighting.

You can put the sun

anywhere you want, you can make

You can design

everything exactly how you like it.

But, you have to have a lot of restraint

working with the technology,

so it feels real.

I think the biggest challenge is always

trying to blend the elements

of the screen with the practical

elements on set.

And that's contrast, that's saturation,

that's the direction of light.

We're pushed to play with the fog.

This eerie strange light that goes

piercing through,

which I think helps to build

that atmosphere of tension

that is building around a scene.

That, obviously,

we couldn't have done in location.

It was the perfect technology,

and situation to try it.

What I will say about the volume is

it's amazing seeing all the wizardry

that goes on and that surrounds

that to sort of compose the shot.

We worked extensively with building

the environments

that you'd see on the screen.

The command center the brain bar.

And you see everybody working.

They're a very adept kind

of department on a show like this,

because so much of what we're trying

to achieve will come after in it.

Are you so desperate for the king's

attention that you resort

to just skulking about like

a common cutlass?

I'm simply keeping

with the traditions of my house,

the same as my brother did for his heir.

Matching the physical and the digital

is what this is all about.

There's a little bit

of trickery in design.

And so that was a real partnership

between the production designers

and the VFX crew to kind of figure out

how to do those little tricks.

Towards the end of the bridge,

where it has to join onto the wall.

We're extending that up, just 'cause

it you don't really get away with it.

And those are basically

seen directly from set to screen.

If you wish to be restored an heir,

you'll need to k*ll me.

I found the technology unbelievable.

My favorite part

of sh**ting dragons

You get a tennis ball, and you put it on

a fluorescent stick and you hold it up.

All the extras go bananas, 'cause they

know that that's meant to be a dragon.

So that part's fun.

-It's so silly.

-Pathetic.

I know.

There's probably about

17 dragons at the height of this story.

Knowing we were gonna get to do

so many different kinds of dragons

is just so, so fun.

At any time you're seeing a dragon

in shot, it's a big visual effects show.

Because we had so many

CG environments and CG creatures,

we were trying to find as many ways for

our directors to jump into post, really.

So you had to have something

like iPad with an AR function on it.

So he can see his actors

in the foreground, and he knows that,

"Oh, you know,

there's a giant castle there."

Or a dragon is gonna fly over

at some point,

and I need to be aware of

where that's gonna land.

The first dragon you meet is Syrax,

which is Rhaenyra's dragon.

She's built for speed,

she's very proud and honorable.

The next dragon you meet,

of course, is Caraxes.

My dragon's the best.

He's the gauntest. And he sort of lies,

and they call him the Blood Wyrm.

He's angry and snappy.

A bit like Daemon, to be honest.

He's a snake-necked dragon,

and he's also deformed.

But when he's in the air,

he's beautiful.

He flies beautifully, and he flies like

no other dragons that were built,

because of his shape.

He sometimes flies like sea snake,

almost, and sometimes, flies like a swan.

I think they're a bit like dogs,

they have their own personalities.

Give me your hand.

They are visually very different.

They have different color skin.

George R. R. Martin was very keen

he's always wanted the dragons

to be distinctive.

So we worked on their characters,

and we tried to, obviously,

do that through their design.

We're also trying to do that

through their animation.

We're trying to imbue

each one with particular quirks.

Their purpose in the story

is they're weapons of mass destruction.

These creatures

are not to be trifled with.

They were made out of magic,

they're extremely powerful.

And without them, we would not

be the house that we are.