Original subtitles

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 want to get hit by that.

The dragons are, visually, very different.

My dragon's the best.

The Red Keep composite 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 Monday morning we're looking at this thing, thinking, "Bloody 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.

'Cause 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 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 principals behind Thrones

has always been, particularly with the sets,

is we need to be able to shoot 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 to schedule,

and there was a point where the guys said to me,

"This isn't going to be possible."

Our most challenging element with regards to set was 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 conceived.

It was a remarkable achievement

from the construction department,

and 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 its highest point,

it's about 13 and a half meters.

We used 3,692 sheets of 8x4, three quarter 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 was 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,

as the interior of the castle.

I think the thing that threw me is 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,

you can go 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 a lot more immersive.

It's like a little town they've 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.

It's cool, it's cool. 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 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."

It feels like I do live there.

My father is a 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 Crab Feeder.

Stepstones is the stronghold of the Crab Feeder,

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.

It was probably like 150, 300 meters out, the beach goes,

and 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 Valyrian 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

swash-buckling character, but Greg was keen

to give him a more monstrous feel.

So, rather than have 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, hammer-side

which everyone knows is the meat masher.

It's got those spikes and you just don't

want to get hit by that.

And then on the other side it's got a bladed section,

which, you know, in a battle it's... it's just nasty.

It is nasty.

There's so much more energy that has to go into it,

and it's so brutal and I think it just adds

to that character, where his mentality is

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!

The Crab Feeder has greyscale, which he's had for many years.

And the first time we see him, it's fairly extensive

when 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 a really extensive makeup on Dan,

which was probably about a four-hour makeup,

covering his left arm going up onto the side

of his neck, and it covers all his scalp.

He wears a mask which he's fashioned together

from a Sons 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 extents

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.

Because we don't want everything to be sharp,

we don't want everything to be perfect.

We actually made the costume on him

by adding lots of elements that he could've found.

'Cause he's a pirate, so he finds his element

and then he creates, 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've seen 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.

Barry will come and put on these

fabulous prosthetics, but he always asks

for our inclusion 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've spent a day at sea

and you get that sort of dry lips

and little things like that.

As if I wasn't dead enough.

- You mind if I?

Gracias, señor.

He was going to be more of a boogeyman,

so we wanted to create a silhouette, a presence,

a person.

The combination of the mask and the greyscale

and his interesting gate 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 going to be riding a dragon, and then they say,

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

And I go, "No..."

"Well did you fight in it, though?"

"No."

And then they say, "What do you do?"

And I go... "I don't know,

sit around the 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 family,

or doing 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 shoot

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, "Oh, actually..."

And I had all these lovely stones as well,

these circular stones of various different

beautiful colors.

And he said, "Well what about if we put

the ball of stone into--" And I was like, "Yeah."

It represented the council and them coming in

and being part of the meeting.

Everybody essentially shows up for work

and they punch in, and I thought it was really cool

and 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 the 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 King's Guard, 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 off-hand

that does influence the course of a lot of events.

Three Charlie take two, echo marker.

In the original series, the heyday of the King's Guard had long passed.

But this is that heyday, and you're trying to show that.

And show how important, 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

was a big deal.

So we wanted to put a bit of pomp and circumstance

around the selections.

That wonderful little chess board

was a big piece of that.

Greg became obsessed with this kind of

chess board of totems and he was 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 chess board

of totems and sigils appeared on the set.

And they spent at least three hours shooting just that.

It almost looked like a sun dial and it evolved

from different ideas, so it was pulling 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 always very much 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 from references that I gave her.

Do any 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.

It is spectacular. It looks like something out of NASA.

It goes by many names, the virtual studio, virtual set,

it's 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 the action back home.

It has over 2000 LED screens,

it is completely enclosed and 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 that next evolution of the ability

to see your visual effects live, in-camera,

while you're shooting.

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 smeared castle across the ceiling tiles

which is correct in perspective of the camera.

But to your eye, it looks really, really strange.

But then when you go over to the director's monitors

at 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.

It's pretty surreal. It's a lot easier,

'cause you're not imagining everything,

it's there in front of you.

Ser Crispon, 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 comes to life

and to give it a real look and texture.

The real Dragonstone bridge was completely impractical

to shoot a scene on.

This one is a bridge that's been seen

in Game of Thrones.

And it's this fabulous, zigzagging bridge

that connects the mainland to a monastery.

Because we were able to re-create it

from lidar scans from the actual set,

we were able to shoot in any direction,

you can shoot profiles, you can shoot wides,

you can be above.

Draw sword!

In the center, there was a pivot so they could turn and spin 360,

so we'd shoot up the incline one day, and then overnight,

magically, we'd be shooting down the incline the next day.

They can create a background which is 10,000 feet

up in the air in the mountains

and so that gives them the opportunity

to be really, visually creative.

What the volume gave us,

was we could re-create 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 pushed to play with the fog.

It's this eerie strange light that goes piercing through

which I think helps to build that atmosphere of tension

that is building around the scene.

That, obviously, we couldn't have done in-location.

It was the perfect technology and situation to try it.

I will say about the volume, is, it's amazing seeing

all the wizardry that goes on, that surrounds that,

to sort of compose the shots and stuff.

We worked extensively with building the environments

that you'd see on the screens.

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 it.

Are you so desperate

for the King's attention that you resorted

to skulking about like a common cut-purse?

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 you don't really get away with it

in those bits where you're seeing directly

from set to screen.

If you wish to be restored as heir, you'll need to kill me.

I found the technology unbelievable.

My favorite part of shooting 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's meant to be a dragon.

So that part's fun.

- It's so silly. - It's silly.

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 fun.

But any time you're seeing a dragon in the shot, obviously, 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 he has to have something like an 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's 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.

Because he's the grumpiest, and he's sort of lithe,

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, you know?

He flies beautifully and he flies

like no other dragon that we've built

because of his shape.

He sometimes flies like a sea snake almost,

and sometimes flies like a swan.

They're a bit like dogs, they have

their own personalities.

Give me your hand.

They are, visually, very different.

They have different color schemes.

George R.R. Martin was very keen,

he's always wanted the dragons to be distinctive.

So we've worked on their characters,

and we've tried to obviously do that through their design.

We're also trying to do that through their animation,

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.