Original subtitles

This an episode that Miguel and Ryan wanted

to push visually.

It's exciting because we've only teased Dragonstone.

There's so much. It's so big.

To see the work and the planning

that went into getting us onto the side of a mountain.

It's extraordinary. I don't know how they did it.

Dragonstone, in the original series,

was a northern coastal area at the top of Spain.

You only saw, really, one face of the island and the beach

in the original show,

but we needed this whole, realized world,

and we found that in Portugal.

We found our Dragonstone.

The news reaches Dragonstone in ten.

Viserys is dead.

And that's where my story picks up.

Dragonstone, we wanted to reintroduce a bit

as a new world in this

because we'd gotten a taste of it, I think, in the original series.

We never got a really full sense of the castle.

We're seeing it in its entirety, in all its nooks and crannies,

and everything that's here for the first time.

You're seeing more of this character,

and there's a couple of surprises along the way.

Dragonstone is, again, another style of architecture.

Uh, it's more brutal.

It's set on the island of Dragonstone

with Dragonmont, the volcanic mountain, in the background.

It's a very kind of tricky set to build, really,

because of everything being so angular,

and nothing was plumb, so to speak.

Nothing was perpendicular.

So it was quite a tricky one, actually, yeah.

Dragonstone 177 years before the original show is meant to be

quite a populated place, much like King's Landing.

It's a living place at this point

because dragons live in the Dragonmont.

There are many adult dragons, wild and tamed, living inside the Dragonmont,

that brings life to the castle

that does not exist in Stannis' time.

I want patrols along the island's perimeters,

looking for any small ships that might set ashore.

One bravo. Take one, make the mark.

There's steam inside the castle.

Even though it's a wind-blasted, seemingly cold place,

it's kind of heated from within, essentially, by the dragons.

It feels cavernous, grand, smoky, hot, bare.

But the singing, uh,

I quite enjoyed it, I think, actually.

It's quite an interesting beat,

that luring this very angry beast

out of the dark with a lullaby.

And it's a cut, everybody. Cut.

And we're gonna cut that there.

Rhaenyra's chamber is dominated by that dragon carving.

Lovely dragon carving on the screen again.

That was from the original Thrones.

We haven't gotten rid of that room.

We're just saying that room was the apartment previously.

Miguel and Ryan wanted this to feel as if it had been originally made,

carved in stone, and then clad in Valyrian steel.

The idea was that they wanted

to have adornments onto this dragon,

so it looked like it had expensive jewelry onto it,

to make this look as if it was an expensive work of art.

A bit that I loved working on was Rhaenyra's chamber.

I spent a long time working on that

because with that one we were trying to figure out

how the sort of set decoration would look

and, you know, within the architecture as well.

Actually, I do love the bed.

I mean, the quality of that,

that's kind of-- that's solid wood.

And they've literally chipped into that

and created the effect of scales of a dragon.

And because it is set underneath the dragon itself,

we've kind of done it in a shape

that really compliments the dragon behind it.

It's a lot more kind of scaly and textured in a sense of,

you know, rock and dragon and all those coming into it

to try and make it a bit different to the Red Keep and everything else.

We really wanted to expand stuff, move stuff around.

We decided that we wanted

to take the Painted Table out of the apartment,

where it was originally in the original series,

and move it into a larger, more grandiose location.

We're talking about spending a lot of time there.

That is the equivalent of our Small Council chamber.

And so, to have something that was more user-friendly,

as far as shooting is concerned, made a lot of sense.

We had talked about in the original

was that you never really got a good look at the table.

You never really got to see how the map worked.

And we knew the table existed,

but just thinking about what would've been the best days,

the glory days, of this table.

We took a casting of the original table

from the original series

with the intent of just, you know, recreating it and maybe showing it

with a little less age on it, or brighter paint, or whatever.

And this was completely a pitch by Set Dec

and the Art Department, which I love...

"Well, what if it was made on this polished stone,

and if we put fire under the table,

it would light a furnace

that then would light the table from within?"

And, of course, I just leapt at that idea.

Claire had this idea

that she wanted to make it illuminated

from, uh, volcanic fire, underneath the table.

I just wanted to make it come alive a bit more

in a sense that we've got all these contours within the table,

but you can't actually see them.

I really love lighting through things

and the kick that you get off certain things.

So, the main part of it was this obsidian rock effect,

which has a gold running through it. It's a bronze.

All the towns, and the villages,

and the roads are carved into the wood,

and it's illuminated from underneath.

I wanted to originally do fire, but it was too dangerous.

So, the idea then of the candles being rolled under,

and then lighting up some element underneath the table,

then made the table come to life.

So, we had to remold the table

and create a clear, fiberglass top.

So, it became a light box, in essence.

The LEDs that are in there...

a huge, massive process to get that set up.

And also because of the color

of the pigment of paint that we used on it

to get those contour colors.

You had to really mix the different light in to get it right.

So, we needed to put a bit more yellow into it

to make it a little bit more like fire.

So... yeah, it was a whole kind of process

of research and developing that.

The table looks fabulous, doesn't it,

when it all lights up and stuff.

But, again, there are challenges that come with that.

Because there's nowhere to sit.

When you read it, the Painted Table,

I presumed it was gonna be, like, just a map on a table.

And I'd have been like, "That's extraordinary."

But what they have, it's magnificent.

And that would look good in my garden, too, actually.

Anyway, just putting it out there.

In Portugal,

shooting all the exteriors of Dragonstone on Monsanto,

which is just a fascinating location, was a joy.

Miguel and Ryan had seen it about a year prior.

I got there, and we hiked up into this mountain.

And I was looking around, and I'm like,

"The only way we're going to be able to shoot here is

to carry everything or to helicopter."

Like, as though that was a crazy idea,

and everybody's like, "Yuck."

PEPE ÁVILA DEL PINO: Monsanto's amazing.

It's a very unique, strange place

where there's, like, these amazing boulders.

They seem like they fell out from the sky

on top of this tiny mountain where there's nothing around.

Got together, the first day we scouted it.

We had to park as high as we could drive the car

on the little pebble road,

and then walk up through this rocky mountain.

The first thought was like, "Well, if it rains,

this is gonna become like a slide."

And then, "How is the access gonna be here?"

It's very high up. The access is very bad.

We had to helicopter in, uh, the whole unit.

They built an amazing mini-base in the middle of the castle.

The crane, the platforms, everything was flown.

Everyone put their efforts together.

We asked if the Air Force could help us.

We literally took over the side of a mountain

and built infrastructure, uh, storage, ways to feed people,

everything to bathrooms, to equipment,

to be able to take over Monsanto,

to be able to film the work.

Picking the part of Monsanto

where we were going to shoot Daemon

intimidating the Kingsguards with the dragon,

the really first and foremost thing is, the dragon's humongous.

So, you have to find a place

where, believably, that dragon can be.

And because it's the Blood Wyrm,

it has this incredibly long neck.

It's important to be able to, um, find a space

and to have it reach down and really open its mouth

and be able to see the fire brewing inside.

Swear anew, your oath to Rhaenyra as your queen.

Or if you support the usurpers, speak it now.

Anytime that we have to do something that's completely CG,

you really, really need a lighting reference.

And, uh, we had the most beautiful heads made up

that were sculpted perfectly

and then painted perfectly

so that they look as real as possible

so that we get them in the light,

and we get all the reflections right.

And then when we give all of that data over to our visual effects companies,

they just need to match that as well as they possibly can.

Cool. All right, guys.

So, it looks like we're wide, and we're looking this way.

You had to be on top of a rock or wedged between two big rocks

to get the shot, but it was enough space to work with it.

- Longer lens from there? - Yeah.

Just being there gives everyone an understanding

of the scope of the show we're making.

Once you're on top of a mountain at sunrise,

then you see nothing but, like, an amazing foggy horizon,

an endless view of the sky, with this crazy rock formation,

and you're like, "Okay, yeah, this is unique,

and this is epic, and there's something larger than life

in the stories we're telling."

Monsanto did that.

We did it.

It's a beautiful spot, by all accounts.

And cut.

The low point in Rhaenyra's trajectory turns into the high point

as she cremates her unborn child.

She goes to commit the dead child to the flame,

as-- as befitting any dead Targaryen.

Her people gather around her, and her father's crown arrives,

in the hands of Ser Erryk Cargyll,

who's defected from the Red Keep

and brought her father's crown to her.

And Daemon puts the crown on her head and calls her "Queen."

We only had a few days there,

but we had one of the most epic scenes take place,

which was a real Thronesian scene.

I think Ryan even told me, he said,

"You know, if anybody asks what kind of scene they're in,

or what this scene's about,

you tell them, 'It's a Game of Thrones scene.'"

There's a funeral of a dead baby.

There's a knight showing up with a stolen crown

and an impromptu coronation.

There's-- Everybody at Dragonstone takes the knee.

It's pretty unbelievable.

What's beautiful about Ryan's writing is

that there's five scenes within every scene, you know.

And a scene like that is there,

there's a very quiet mom-and-dad,

husband-wife moment in there.

There's the watchful eye of Rhaenys,

who's watched Rhaenyra since she was 14, you know,

in terms of the moves she's making,

if she's worthy of Queen.

The cast just nailed it,

and barely a word is spoken in the sequence.

I actually was emotional at the end of Monsanto.

To go to these corners and edges of Dragonstone you haven't seen before,

and to understand how it's all put together, was important.

And when you're done, and you accomplish something like that,

and you've somehow conquered the side of a mountain,

and you've brought the show to life

in a place that nobody has ever filmed before,

it's one of those days you'd never, ever forget.

This is the joy of this series, I think,

is that there are so many different sets

and different architectural styles.

And Storm's End doesn't disappoint in that respect.

The clue is in the title, really.

It's at the end of the world,

and it's lashed by storm and lightning

and wind and rain the whole of the time.

So, another bleak place to inhabit.

I am Prince Lucerys Velaryon.

I bring a message to Lord Borros from the queen.

We backtracked in

so that the scenes leading up to Storm's End

would also be shot on The Volume or on green screen

so that everything kind of kept an aesthetic piece.

Storm's End was a volume set primarily

'cause there does not exist a castle

that looks like Storm's End, outside or in.

We wanted to give those final ten minutes of the show a particular look.

...with the eyepatch coming off

'cause that'll give us a real chance to see it.

Then a moment, and then come in, and you go and scoop it back.

When we're producing ancient monuments' interiors

with stone walls,

it's a more tricky element to do convincingly.

You can put a set in,

in that sort of semicircle,

and I think the trick there, obviously,

is where you merge reality

of a-- of a hard set into those screens.

They're just looking through the lens,

and they're sort of lining up a shot.

And, you know, the beauty of it is

they're able to line up that castle

that otherwise wouldn't be there in the frame,

and really make that a part of their shot composition.

We made the stone throne,

and we made the benches,

and then art department made the structures around the edge.

Um, and that was it, really.

And until they put something up there, it's like,

"Is this gonna work? Is this-- Is it..."

"Is it gonna make sense?"

They put an image up there,

and you stand in the middle and look around,

and you kind of go,

"Oh, yes, yes, I can see how this is gonna work."

Go home, pup.

And tell your mother that the Lord of Storm's End

is not some dog that she can whistle up at need

to set against her foes.

The key, really, to Storm's End is not so much

what happens inside as what happens outside,

which is, uh, our first dragon fight.

The dragon fight at the end of season one is our big grand finale.

And it's the first dragon fight put to film in Game of Thrones,

and we had to make it one for the record books.

And you care about, I think,

the two riders riding on their backs,

so it's-- it's a drama sequence, but it's also visual spectacle.

And it involves, you know, all of our best tools

with all of our best vendors and-- and visual effects,

and all that coming together

to hopefully make a-- a fantastic sequence.

No, I just told them, you know, uh, "Make sure it's really good.

Don't come back to me unless it is.

See you later. I'll be back on Monday."

To hear it from Miguel.

You know, I bought these dragon toys to use for the dragon fight

and kind of, with my iPhone, started to construct

and block out what would start to happen.

I was flying them with my hands,

and he was shooting them, and, um, that's how it all started.

It went through a process of first understanding what--

what the evolution of that chase would be

and what the characters are going through.

Or maybe get close so that we see

- Luke's face looking around. - Yeah. Yeah.

- And then... - We look down. Right.

And then I have to make it interesting visually.

You think Luke-- You know, Luke's fighting a storm,

and then, in this kind of horror movie way,

we start to reveal that Vhagar is lurking.

And now down. We're down for a few seconds, and Vhagar!

Then it becomes a dragon chase and a dragon fight.

It's really about getting, you know,

a more accurate, computer-controlled,

hydraulic buck that can move faster.

And then you've got quite a lot of roll,

left to right, as well, Dom.

But still safely, it's about finding ways

in which you can composite your actors from this buck

onto the back of a dragon, and it feel believable.

It's really about the interaction

that these different surfaces have with the wind and the rain.

We spent days shooting the actors

for the final battle in The Volume,

on the motion base.

And what made it really interesting is

we shot it in wind and rain and smoke.

This was new to us shooting in The Volume.

We were all very careful about how we shot in The Volume.

It's a very expensive space,

and so you don't really want to keep covering it in smoke.

You don't want to be getting them wet too much either.

So, then we talked a lot about, you know, how we could do

all the physical things that our series demands.

We have lots of atmospheric texture.

We talked a lot about how to do that in The Volume,

and, well, I think we overcame a lot of things.

It's so immersive, being in The Volume.

And even with the buck work,

to have the rain machine and the wind machine within it,

it really does encourage you to just lose yourself in the--

in the moment and in the character.

It was really cool going onto it, being lifted up,

'cause you actually get lifted up,

and you feel like you're, you know, flying in the sky.

It was really great fun.

How does it feel to watch a CG version of yourself?

I know. Well, that's to be beat.

ELLIOT GRIHAULT'S MOM: Oh, it made me cry.

I think what excites me about this show,

and what I'm gonna enjoy watching over and over when-- when it comes out is,

I love this element of surprise on this show.

And what I mean by that is

all the characters are dimensional.

They all have a heart that you can feel.

What I hope viewers will walk away with is

a deeply-felt and truly-told story of a family,

and I hope there are moments there

that are really human and relatable.

And that it's not about good versus bad,

that it's about people who are really all trying to do the best they can

with what they know at the time,

and how that sort of all goes wrong.

It's a great family drama,

but the epicness, and all the scale,

and all the things that people come to know

and love about the show are in service

of this deeply emotional story

that's taking place at the center.

It's so big. Like, you know, there are bits

that I have nothing to do with that are unbelievable.

Um, so, I mean, that--

all that size that we loved in Game of Thrones is-- is here.

I hope that it's gonna be, um, a new series

that just sparks the imagination and the excitement that--

that we've had before.

The first episodes of the show tried

to stick a little bit to the visual vocabulary

of what Game of Thrones did. But, hopefully, we want--

what we want to do on ten is

just push it to the edge a little more.

I genuinely hope that audiences are open

to watching a new chapter in the Game of Thrones saga

that will evolve to earn its own right

and have a place in, you know,

the Game of Thrones, the Westerosian world.

I'm really, really proud of, uh, the job that everybody did.

The crew seems to be, like, very at home here,

which is great.

Work's near my house, so it's great for me. It's--

You know what I mean? It is!

Genuinely, I couldn't have done this in a different country.

I wouldn't have made it.

There's just a few things I wanted to say.

Uh, firstly, um, from myself and Ryan,

we can't thank you enough.

Thank you so much.

You have all worked above and beyond the call of duty.

It's been amazing.

That's become our House of Dragons backlot,

so we can stay there and develop over the years.

They're building more stages, uh, next season.

It's new, it's contemporary, it has all the facilities,

so it's-- it's a joy to work on a space like this.

I can watch behind-the-scenes stuff

on-- on all the shows and go, "Wow, that's amazing," you know.

It's been great working among sets with real things,

and cutlery, and-- and, you know, the world around you.

It's been a joy.

The most rewarding moments

working on this show is really with the actors.

I really enjoyed delving into the characters,

working on the scenes. It was a true collaboration.

And by the end of it,

we were just working very instinctively together.

What I've liked most is

actually getting to know all these people.

Relationships that I've had with the cast

have been extraordinary.

People who are... now my mates.

And I think what-- again, what Miguel and Ryan have done,

and all of the directors that we've had,

I don't think there's one person that I've come across

where I've thought, "Ooh, he or she is a bit dodgy."

I don't know. That's an incredible thing,

to create an-- an atmosphere like that.

That's extraordinary.

It's been really nice to be all together, like a family.

Just being able to do this job, too, achieves

what I certainly would've, 20 years ago,

called my dream job, uh, is another thing entirely.

So it's-- it's-- it's really amazing.