01x09 - The Green Council

[bunniefuu]

Episode nine changed

the whole history of Westeros.

I don't know if my imagination

can do that.

It's unbelievably uncomfortable.

It's not very pretty.

And the whole time I was thinking like,

"Oh, I just shouldn't have done that."

And then this incredible

expl*si*n event.

Nine was a script that we very much

enjoyed writing because it's a thriller.

It's a race against time.

Finally, the king is dead.

And now what?

Viserys' death sets off this

whole domino effect.

Nine was a completely

different ball game.

I mean, basically, it's a coup.

And then this incredible expl*si*n event.

It starts with a bang,

with this information getting out,

and the council being called,

and the doors being locked.

The Small Council is always lit,

it's always active.

But this was totally mystery.

Like, they were plotting the coup.

It may not come to that.

A few decisions that we made: how

to sh**t it with cameras to be flowing,

to be about the characters,

what everybody's thinking.

So I wanted it to be about them,

about what they were saying.

The King was well last night.

By all accounts.

Which of you here can swear

that he died of his own accord?

It's a really dark environment,

with just focus of light at the table.

My inspiration was a little bit

of The Godfather.

- I will have no part

-Sit down!

There is a m*rder in between.

It's pretty brutal,

but it's pretty quick,

and then the whole conversation

keeps going.

The king doesn't wish

for the m*rder of his daughter!

He loved her.

I will not have you deny this.

One more word, and I'll have you removed

from this chamber and sent to the Wall!

Episode nine is primarily

Alicent's story.

It's a good departure for her

because she's seeing her father

for who he has become.

Clare Kilner watched that first

scene in episode one

when her father, Otto Hightower, sends

her in to visit Viserys in his grief.

And then, in episode nine,

she comes to her father and basically

tells him to f*ck off.

Our hearts were never one.

Rather, I've been a piece

that you moved about the board.

And we sort of drew a parallel between

those two scenes to show the arc

of what had happened between

the two of them.

From when she was a child to now,

when she's a woman coming and saying,

"I'm done with you."

Olivia is heaven to work with.

She's a weather system, you know?

She has such a vast emotional range

and can access any number

of paradoxical emotions in one line.

She has an incredible ease

and a deep relaxation

that she can just switch it on

and move into the character.

And blow your socks off, to be honest.

Reluctance to m*rder is not a weakness!

I have Aegon, and we will proceed

now as I see fit!

Cut. Thank you. Great.

Flea Bottom had been established

in Game of Thrones in Spain in Cáceres.

You walk into it and it just immediately

is King's Landing.

You can see why they

shot there before.

And also, it's this thing about

historic towns,

which are beautifully

renovated and kept up.

It's very hard to make them feel down

and dirty and seedy in the way

that we want to do with Flea Bottom.

You're into the red-light district

of King's Landing.

It's the poor neighborhood.

It's rough and ready.

You don't go down there

at night unless you know

what you're doing and you

can handle yourself.

All the windows were getting covered

up with tatty, old, wooden blinds

or pieces of fabric.

We were spreading dirty

and smelly things around on the floor.

It's not very pretty.

Aemond has an idea to go

and visit a brothel that he knows

that Aegon frequents.

They have an interesting conversation

with the madam there,

who actually, oddly,

was my teacher at drama school.

I was so nervous.

I was acting in front of her on screen.

Sometime last night.

Ah, I was really liking that one.

One more.

Mark up.

And the whole time I was thinking like,

"Oh, I just shouldn't have done that."

We got a little glimpse of the kind of

Flea Bottom that we wanted to portray.

Which is a far more lawless place

than it used to be.

There's a place called the "fighting

pit," which is a real sort of seedy,

underground club where kids fight

and terrible things happen.

And all this really sort of grim kind

of world that exists

beneath the sort of veneer

of royal life.

The fighting pit was really interesting.

Some of these gruesome scenes are

the funniest to do, weirdly.

We had to get special teeth

that were filed down

'cause the idea is that they bite

and scratch each other.

We had these nails.

We had to dirty the kids up.

I wanted to sh**t it almost like

what I imagine a dogfighting pit

or a c*ck pit would be.

Except it's done with children.

It's just really sad

'cause they're really feral as well.

And even the way in which they're

fighting with each other is very feral.

They look like monkeys or something,

going at each other. It was nuts!

We auditioned children from local Judo

and Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu clubs.

And then we just worked with them,

and we choreographed their

own individual fight beats.

It was more about having them looking

feral, screaming, growling, snarling,

than it was about the fighting.

It was a very, like, animalistic

atmosphere and energy in there.

Which was nice 'cause it was showing

the unhuman element towards Aegon

and where he was hanging about.

And I think that scene played

a big role on the episode.

Because we need to know what kind

of a king we're about to get.

You see now what he is.

You've not seen everything.

-Aegon's?

- One of many, I'd wager.

The Grand Sept was another environment

that we used the Volume for.

The key with the Volume seems to be

that you have elements of built scenery

which separate us and the actors

and the action

from the actual screens

of the Volume.

In terms of set dressing, there isn't

much that we can put in there, really.

Because you can't hang things

from the ceiling or the walls.

You are restricted

within a certain space.

Basically, we put all the foreground in,

and then the screen behind takes over.

I mean, it's pretty impressive,

innit, when you look at it?

It's the religious center

for the Faith of the Seven.

And I wanted the idea that

you look down the point of each star,

and there was the statue of each face.

It was beautiful because

it has such strong light shafts in it.

The influence was Daniel Libeskind's

design for the Jewish memorial in Berlin.

That was particularly impressive,

with his use of light with these high,

slat-y windows

which just shafted light through

into the center

and took you out of the

space and into the heavens.

I do regret this, friend.

This is a new Grand Sept.

This is not the one that we see get

blown up in season six in Thrones.

This is 200 years before it. At this

point, the Sept of Baelor doesn't exist.

So, we've built it as a CG asset.

We see it in our King's Landing

environment that we've created.

Fortunately, we found a great courtyard.

But we were replacing so much stuff,

we ended up building quite

an extensive green wall there.

When we arrived in Spain

and I saw those steps and that plaza,

I don't know, it made me think

of Romeo and Juliet.

And I just got obsessed with those steps,

and how could we choreograph

something on them.

So, we planned a sword fight.

Action.

You won't win.

The boys loved that scene,

and they threw themselves into it.

They wanted to jump

over the bannisters and the railings.

They were just really good at doing their

own fighting and some of their stunts.

They really worked hard with Rowley

to get those sword fights right.

That's when it's just fun.

A fight is normally five

or six punches or kicks.

And a sword fight is normally

five or six strikes.

We have to try and find a way

of making those moves

look interesting and exciting.

Because there's not an infinite

variation of what we can do.

It was like a crash course in sword

fighting, we'd never done it before.

We've obviously done martial arts

in the past.

It was just kind of getting our style

and flavor into the sword fight.

But to be fair,

I think we took to it quite well, innit?

I enjoy doing that side of things,

anyway.

All the physical stuff like that,

I think, is all good.

We have a bit of a scrap on the floor,

Aemond and I, and it gets pretty heated.

Let go of me!

We really wanted

to make it into, like, a sibling hatred.

And we thought,

"What if Aegon spits in Aemond's face?"

Me and Tom are like-minded people.

We knew that we were gonna go and give

everything that we had to that scene.

There's a bit where he grabs me,

and I said to him,

"I'm gonna bite your hand there."

And he goes, "Yeah. No, lovely, lovely.

We'll have more of that. Yeah, yeah."

I was on board, yeah.

Ah, great. Brilliant.

We've seen the dragon pit

in Game of Thrones.

But this is 200 years before, so there

is a full version of the dragon pit.

One of the sets you could never build.

You'd use your whole budget

to build that.

It's 250 foot long, 120 foot wide.

That is still only a fraction

of the floor space.

What we ended up doing was building

component pieces of the dragon pit.

One of the key elements being

the embossed, carved, bronze doors.

And action!

Those were one

of our favorite jobs here.

We wanted to have lots

of busyness in them

'cause when you make something big,

they can be very bland.

So we wanted to keep the drawing

in them quite simple,

so you could see

from a distance what they were.

But when close up,

they wanted a lot of detail.

There's lovely bits of sea.

There's some of the walls,

some of the castles are great.

And even, you know,

there's a sunburst in one of them.

We're just having a bit of fun.

The doors were only a third of the size

of what they would truly be.

So we know that the effects

are gonna have to add

the last two-thirds of the doors,

so that is all blue screen.

The effects was a big, big part of it.

Many conversations we had about what

we could do, couldn't do,

how to do what we wanted to do.

Logistically, we were working

in different parts of the dragon pit.

And we couldn't put them exactly where

they were in relation to each other.

So we had a number of problems.

For example, when we'd sh**t

one end of the dragon pit,

we could never look towards

the doors.

So we had to have a blue screen

in front of the doors

because we had to add

perspective to it.

Plus, having that separation from reality

of working in a blue environment

and having to keep people aware of

what they're looking at,

they're going to have an understanding

of what's going on.

The scenes were concepted so that

when you're on the stage in this space,

everybody can see what

you're actually looking at.

And we can lock

the two worlds together.

So that then anyone who wants

to interact with them can see a view

through camera with the creatures,

with the set extensions

They can walk the set

and see it all in stereo on the glasses.

Basically, anything that's not there

now that's important

to the composition of the frame, then

that's what we provide solutions for.

And it was the full 360 thing in the way

that they wanted all the shots in.

All the shots were included.

That was one of those moments

where I was like, "Oh! We're doing it."

With COVID, we couldn't have

that many people in there.

So it's a lot of adding CG people, but

also a full CG environment around them.

And there was a big line, over 100,

supporting artists who were playing

soldiers, with swords in the air,

creating this sort of archway

for me to walk under.

But I kept being reminded by people that

these extras are gonna be multiplied,

and multiplied, and multiplied,

and multiplied.

And they're gonna go for miles.

And they're gonna be up in the balconies.

There's just gonna be hundreds

of thousands of people.

And I'm thinking, "Oh my God! I don't

know if my imagination can do that."

Cut!

-Cut there.

- Okay, let's do the fallback now.

The crown of the conqueror passed down

through generations.

Aegon's crown is a 3D printed item.

3D printing is quite interesting 'cause

it's resin that's then copper plated,

and then nickel plated,

and then iron plated to get this look.

It's quite an in-depth experience

to get to this point.

And leather on the inside

to make it a little bit more comfortable.

And it definitely doesn't fit me.

I wish it did.

Aegon Targaryen is the true heir

to the Iron Throne.

This is the coronation scroll holder,

which the septon will open

when they crown Aegon.

The item goes back and forth between

us and Graphics for its sizes, looks

I quite like how things bounce around

all the time and how many people end up

being involved to get this thing done.

I'm very interested in the design

and construction of movie props,

and swords in particular.

And there are three Valyrian steel blades

in this particular story.

The first of those is Dark Sister.

And that ends up in Daemon's hand

when he's given it for his prowess

on the tournament field as a knight

and a dragonrider.

The second sword is Blackfyre that all

the Targaryen kings carried and wielded.

You know, Jaehaerys and Viserys

and, of course, Aegon himself.

So I hunted down Peter Johnsson,

knowing that he was a real

sword designer, and said,

"Hey, can you create something

that is a real weapon

that looks like it's from this fantasy

world that we're creating?"

When you make a sword,

the first priority is to make it

purposeful and well balanced.

a sword is also an object of power and it

has to express this power in its design.

And to show that these Targaryens

took on the faith of the seven gods.

Everything is built from the circle

to the seven-pointed star.

So everything is held together

by this geometry.

A mystical way to bind the power

of those seven gods

and the symbol of the dragon

into these objects.

When we make a weapon, we always

make it for real for the filming.

And then we will produce

rubber versions from that.

And we might make hard versions

from that, we might make soft versions,

depending on what

the stunt requirements are.

Peter had used Damascus steel

to make the flat filed sword.

So, step by step, we engineer the blade

and then transfer that into vector files.

Then to print that out,

lay the vinyls on, peel the sections off.

You then lay it into the acid

to let it eat away at the open metal.

So much effort has gone into the blade

at this point,

and it can just go wrong

by putting it all in acid.

Luckily, we got some really

fantastic blades.

Out of the way!

The old one that people should

recognize is the famous Catspaw Dagger

that we first met in season one

of the original Game of Thrones.

The dagger that is put into catspaw

hand to go m*rder Bran Stark

after his fall off the roof.

And after witnessing Jamie Lannister

and Cersei Lannister together.

We actually got the original

Catspaw Dagger flown over.

We looked at it, measured it.

And we decided to reduce it slightly,

but it's got the same silhouette.

But it has a different feel

in the way it's been manufactured.

The thought was, you know, between now

and then, it may have been re-hilted.

But at the end of the day,

it's got the dragon bone hilt

and the same Valyrian steel blade.

And we just really liked this idea that

the dagger that ends up passing

through hand, after hand, after hand

was a nice way to tie

the two series together.

-It doesn't matter.

-What do you mean it doesn't matter?

I don't want it.

We knew that we needed

a penultimate scene.

There had been this kind of, "Oh, well,

it'll be the coronation," et cetera.

And I just kept thinking to myself,

"We gotta do better than this."

I just remember we were in the

writers' room one day, and I was like,

"It would be awesome if Rhaenys just

came through the floor on a dragon."

The visual of it was so powerful

and so much fun.

It went in immediately,

and we never looked back.

Once Meleys turns up and all hell breaks

loose, then it's a lot of destruction.

A lot of dust and splinters

and pure chaos.

It's huge, that sequence,

because there's lots of physical

simulations to do.

First of all, you're building

an environment.

You've got CG crowd work,

simulated dust clouds, et cetera,

in there, so it's a lot of work,

a lot of integration.

You have Rhaenys on the buck.

It's such a brilliant showdown between

her and Alicent that's not verbal at all.

It's purely in the eyes.

When prevising drawing

and storyboarding and sh**ting,

you have to consider dragons,

although they're not even there.

Anytime there's a dragon in the scene,

all hilarity ensues among the cast

because, of course,

there's never a dragon.

Trying to act opposite a man holding a

stick with a ball on it with a dragon

And me shouting,

"Okay, Olivia, the dragon's gonna get

you! It's gonna take a breath!"

And then we'd have SFX blow the dragon

breath on Olivia's hair,

and Olivia's hair would just,

like, sh**t back.

It takes every ounce of creative

imagination going on inside your head

for that to work.

Rhaenys is a Targaryen, so I use

her color, red and black, for the armor.

It was a really nice one to make

in that it's quite understated.

It's deliberately very elegant.

It obviously shows wealth and power, but

it's not too in your face in that regard.

But it was probably ten to twelve

weeks in terms of modeling

to get the form right.

It's all perfectly tailored to her shape,

which involved a lot of repeat fittings.

Which I'm told looks amazing.

It's unbelievably uncomfortable.

One of the nice details that we

managed to incorporate

was the talon scales

on the front of the chest.

It was just a nice little really subtle

visual clue that you just need

to be a little bit careful who you're

gonna mess with.

We want a triumphal moment

for her at the end of the season.

And we see her being the one that's

going to take the news to Dragonstone

of the coup and of Rhaenyra's

throne being stolen.

It's a great, heroic moment

for her character.

When she wasn't picked

inherently right at the beginning

I think, inside, her spirit wanted to get

on a dragon and burst through the ceiling

and say, "f*ck you all!"

For me, it's all about how can we get

to the core of a character

and express that visually?

So it can go out to an audience

and they can feel a little bit

of what those characters are feeling

and go through their journey

with them.

Episode nine was my absolute favorite.

It has an evolution, you know?

It starts with a very specific event

and it ends with another one that changed

the whole history of Westeros.

It's got all the hallmarks

of an iconic Thrones sequence.

It was just big.