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House of the Dragon has been a massive success for HBO Max. It
was the number one or two show worldwide every day from its debut in August
through the end of October, and it also caused a resurgence of audience demand
for the original Game of Thrones.
Based on George R. R. Martin’s book Fire
& Blood, the ten-part fantasy follows a succession fight amongst the
Targaryen court 172 years before the birth of Daenerys Targaryen and the events
of Game of Thrones.
Miguel Sapochnik and Ryan Condal co-created and
were the showrunners, basing the studio portions of the show on massive sets at
WB Leavesden augmented with location shoots principally in southern Spain with
additional work in Portugal and Cornwall.
Surprisingly perhaps, the production reigned in
used of Virtual Production though it was the first show to film on the V Stage
at Leavesden. Its use here was more as testing ground in anticipation of
heavier work during season 2.
VFX work was extensive. MPC took charge of around
1000 shots, about two thirds of the total with Pixomondo (recently acquired by
Sony Pictures) handling assets for use in the Volume (mainly of dragon riding
scenes). The facilities shared work on the opening sequence of episode one
where Princess Rhaenyra and dragon Syrax fly over King’s Landing.
“The King’s Landing environment was a huge task,”
says Mike Bell, Visual Effects Supervisor at MPC who worked to overall VFX
Supervisor Angus Bickerton. “In Thrones its scale tended to be
rendered using digital matte paintings but the producers decided they wanted a
full CG asset including all relevant building - Red Keep, dragon pit,
tournament ground, and tens of thousands of buildings.”
House of the Dragon: Building a city
“The thinking was that they could place a camera
anywhere in King’s Landing and have a fully textured environment. That almost
future proofed it, for not just extra wide shots but also views from windows
such as from the king and queen’s chambers.”
King’s Landing had been iterated over many episodes
of Game of Thrones. There existed a general layout of the main
buildings but it wasn’t so fixed in stone as to stifle creative freedom to play
around with it.
In general, the brief was to keep it smaller with
the majority of buildings no more than two storeys high. The production team,
guided by Martin’s original books, had developed maps and a history and
folklore to King’s Landing down to detailing the demographics of which strata
of population lived where.
“Within the exterior city walls would be almost a
residential part for people who work for the castle, dragon keepers would have
houses around the Dragon pit, and there was an area for the Flea Bottom slum,”
Bell says.
From a previz layout of roads Environment
Supervisor Matt Dicken developed a procedural model for house placement. “The
key buildings had their own bespoke model but for the thousands of houses we
built about 30 types with variations in rooms, texture and window placement,” Bell
explains. “Matt developed a way of placing these in areas between the roads so
it gave you a good idea of how the streets would look at different angles.”
On first inspection Kings’ Landings’ urban planning
seemed a little too organised so they adjusted the modelling to squeeze some
houses together as if they’d been more organically and haphazardly built over
centuries.
“The idea was that each house only relates to the
one next to it. By offsetting them and changing the angles to become more of a
living breathing old city.”
For ‘drone’ style city flyovers or close-ups of
dragon Syrax in the opener, the team dressed the streets purely for camera.
This included modelled market stalls, blankets, braziers, hanging washing out
of windows, flags and dust – anything that might layer in the feeling of a
lived-in city.
“Miguel wanted King’s Landing to be kind of darker,
grittier, dustier than Game of Thrones– not quite as developed. Maybe the
streets are not as cobbled. Every single city shot had fx dust and floating
atmospheres added a haze.”
Much of this work may only be discernible to the
environment modellers and artists themselves but knowing that attention to
detail is there counts.
“We created digi-double crowds and people walking.
In the opening shots you see what could be a market square with fruit stalls
and people walking. Not many viewers would notice but it just adds that layer
of authenticity.”
The CGI was modelled in Maya and procedural
movement in a combination of Houdini and Maya. Street level plates involving
actors were mostly shot in Cáceres, Spain with occasional matte paintings over
some modern facades.
House of the Dragon: Dragon birth
MPC’s other main task was to create the series’
fleet of dragons. This proved more complicated than simply designing an
authentic looking creature. Each had to fit the narrative with a personality to
mirror that of their rider.
We learn in House of the Dragon that
Targaryen royalty have a dragon egg placed in their crib at birth. The idea is
that the power of the house Targaryen derives from the bond between rider and
dragon that doesn’t break until either of them dies. The bond means the dragon
takes on some of the persona of the rider, or possibly vice versa.
“Caraxes is probably the most complicated creature
and unique,” says Bell. “Caraxes takes on a lot of Daemon’s character. Its
unpredictable, dangerous, we don’t know what it is thinking. We both like and
are scared by him.”
In Sapochnik’s notes for Caraxes he referenced his
pet lurcher dogs. “When you see them lying down they appear awkward but they
can clearly run very fast. Likewise, when Caraxes is on the ground it should
feel a bit awkward because it is bred for flying and be more serpent-like
through the skies.”
The VFX team compiled Top Trump style cards for
each dragon as a ready reference for their individual characteristics.
Meleys whose dragonrider is Princess Rhaenys “is
older, more battle scarred, matriarchal and regal to the point where her horns
resemble a crown.”
Syrax is younger and playful to match the zest of
Princess / Queen Rhaenyra. Seasmoke, ridden by Laenor Velaryon is a pale,
silver-grey dragon “more stealthy, creepy and hunched.” Vermax the young dragon
of Prince Jacaerys is also small ‘Velociraptor sized’ with the faster sharp
movements of a lizard. “I had a pet iguana as a kid and kept thinking of how it
moved when it felt threatened,” says Bell.
They also researched birds of prey, notably
vultures, noting the way their heads tilt and their eyes always have seem aware
of threat. “You can see this clearly in Ep6 where the young princes are
training Vermax in the dragon pit. Vermax is always focus on them, questioning
who these two are - should I attack them?”
MPC also designed the interior of the dragon pit
for this scene. Bell was on set for the shoot, which filmed on 360-degree blue
screen and noted that Bickerton, the director and others were using a
hololens-style VR headset in order to previz the scale of the dragon in shot.
“This dragon was huge. It’s not just a green ball
on the end of a stick to judge eyelines. The VR was useful in showing everyone
a sense of scale.”
House of the Dragon: Battle of
Stepstones
MPC was also behind the battles in Episode 3 involving
Daemon’s (Matt Smith) attempt to beat the Triarchy pirates and then to ambush
and attack them to kill their leader, Crabfeeder. Both battles are set on the
stony Stepstones beach using plates filmed on Cornwall’s Kynance Cove.
This episode’s first scene set at night shows
Daemon attacking the Crabfeeder’s army on dragonback, but being repelled by
archers shooting flaming arrows. The majority of this sequence is full CG.
“It was an interesting idea to build a full
environment then throw it into darkness and have it lit with bursts of fire
from the dragons,” says Bell.
CG work included two dragons, redesign of the
quarry to which the Triarchy retreat, digi-double of Daemon on top of Caraxes
and plates for his closeup, CG debris on the beach, digi-double archers,
simulated arrows and dragonfire.
The daytime climatic battle scene was shot on the
backlot at Leavesden augmented by CG environments. This is an epic fight where
Daemon is basically a one-man army hacking his way to Crabfeeder. The studio
didn’t have the space for the entire length of shot required so a third of the
beach section was built and then redressed over a period of six days, each day
filming Daemon moving further inexorably toward Crabfeeder.
Digital work here involved helping splice the
sequence together, adding digital extras, environments for shots looking toward
the sea (extending a practical painted backdrop), and adding dragon Seasmoke.
House of the Dragon: King Viserys’
decline
The Mill worked exclusively on sequences showing
the decay of King Viserys (Paddy Considine) from a mystery illness. The intent
was to make Viserys look emaciated. The makeup artist had prepared the ground
and Considine wore a green patch on his cheek during shooting where VFX would
carve a hole plus another for the socket of his eye.
“It was really important that the emotion of that
episode and of Paddy’s performance were kept intact and not detracted from,”
Bell says. “We made sure to keep his eyes, mouth and nose and tried to retain
as much of the plate as possible.”
Viserys’ skin was warped in 2D and further colour
grading and contouring of the jaw line and sucking in of the temples completed
the effect.
That one worked but while the show was being rolled
out and there was a moratorium on BTS articles like this, all the internet
seemed fussed about when it came to VFX was the green tape on a couple of King
Viserys’ fingers that some Smart Alec with a pause button had spotted in Ep3.
Bell says that wasn’t one of theirs – but it made
them doubly more cautious to get everything right. He thinks it was a VFX shot
that never made it to the VFX team involved, slipping through the editorial
net.
VFX supervision was based in London close to the
client while MPC teams in Montreal carried out most of the animation along with
some FX sims, composites and lighting. The majority of matchmove, roto and
comping was led out of MPC’s India office.
Bell has worked on shots for shows where the job is
to create one single asset and on productions like Dragon which
requires a variety of different creative techniques.
“You need to be smart about who is doing what and
which teams are specialising in water for example, those in environment builds
or dragons. It’s such a massive team effort involving hundreds of people across
three continents. The pipeline and the deadlines are such that all disciplines
are happening in parallel. My job to corral it, refine and it slowly funnel
everything together.”
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