The House That Dragons Built

Go through that way, and go through...

-horizontal. -Okay, alright.

Alright. Will do.

This is a longer sequence,

so just keep the quiet.

Keep the focus, please.

And it's gonna be amazing, I promise.

Alright, ready to go.

And roll sound.

Rolling!

Nice and quiet, guys!

We're rolling!

And light the torches!

And, cut!

The night we shot on the Riverlands army encampment

was really special.

We started with a drone shot as you come into the encampment

to get the last of the evening light.

And then it was this anticipation of waiting

for the first setup as darkness fell.

We wanted the scene to be visceral and bloody

and surprising.

It's quite a vicious attack,

and it's done in that guerrilla warfare style

and that starts with the execution of Lord Piper.

I always think about that Joe Pesci, De Niro, Goodfellas story.

No! No! No!

Joe Pesci stabbing the body, going in and out really fast.

And De Niro's like...

And Pesci's like, "What's up?"

And De Niro's like, "I don't know, you know,

"I think you wouldn't be able to get the blade in

that fast through the rib cage."

Slit...

poor Antonio's throat first day I met him,

and he's six-foot-three or something.

And I'm 5'10".

5'11" on a good day.

So, I'm just gonna practice jumping on the box.

Alright.

-Be careful with that. -Yeah, will do.

It's one of the most embarrassing things ever.

They gave me a little platform to stand on so that I could cut his throat.

And I thought, God, there's nothing rock-and-roll

about this at all, is there, really?

We're just supposed to be so cool.

One of those real moments where all my street cred

-is gone... -It always happens.

...instantaneously.

The violence in the show is never meant to be gratuitous.

It's meant to show how to be a fighter in this era,

you had to be committed

to ending lives close up and personal, where you could see the cost of it.

'Cause that camera's there, yeah?

-Yeah. -So, bang!

And then I'll just-- maybe, just...

Cole and his men lose the armor when they're out in the battlefield.

So, we've gone with the camo makeup.

So it's mud they found in the local area,

and they've covered their faces.

Everything's raw this season, everyone's unkempt,

so it's more grime, more sweat, more dust.

They look great. They look like proper guerrillas.

And the whole idea of them

arriving into this Riverlands army camp

and setting it all on fire was a great challenge.

Art Department in particular

had to build a fantastic set of tents on location.

So those camps

are all subject to the weather.

It's been a very dry summer.

And so, the big burns we have to do back at the studio.

Where we've got fire engines, and it's totally controllable.

And then drop those in with visual effects.

Fall back!

For the tent-burning sequence,

we can actually do CG fire.

A lot of shows and Marvel movies will do that.

But we reset the entire camp, matching all the camera angles

so we could get the real tents burning.

Of course, the props people weren't too happy about that.

Fabs, I think hair and makeup wanted to see you very quickly.

-All the way over there? -Yeah.

-Freddie? -Yeah?

Would you like to come back and do a quick check?

Enjoy that, Fred.

Shooting the Cole and Gwayne storyline was so much fun.

And one of my favorite scenes is when they're in the bog.

That was one of the most challenging scenes

that I've shot in my career.

It was raining that day,

plus we had all these rain towers to enhance the rain.

And I think being out there in the rain,

in the elements,

we all felt like we were actually trying to get out of this bog.

When we were scouting the bog,

we wanted to make sure it really felt like our characters

were sinking as they were walking.

What we're being told now, in our ears,

is some of these holes in the bog are really deep.

If you stop, you will get stuck, like quicksand,

which is kind of exciting.

And we had to put in a pontoon

to get the crew and our technocrane onto that set.

We're here. Alright, all good? All happy? Okay.

The locations add a whole new dimension, visually, to the storyline,

and to the world of House of the Dragon.

And logistically, it was a tough scene to shoot.

Everybody's knee-deep in mud. It's gray and miserable.

But that suited the scene perfectly.

And then, try to find a place where you don't sink,

until we move you around.

I'm a bit of a sadist as a storyteller. I like to write these things

and then trust that other people are gonna go to these locations.

You wanna take--

But it's really to de-romanticize the idea of what Cole's campaign

would have actually been like in a real-world scenario.

Oh, fuck!

I don't know what I'm doing. Oh God!

I'm so sorry.

I'm so sorry. It was my fault.

I think trudging through the bog was probably

the most challenging stunt of this entire...

this entire shoot.

But it was so much fun.

It looks so good.

Give me Werner Herzog. Come on!

When we came out from the bog, we knew we made something very special.

And it's gonna show their miserable journey.

It's shouting out from the screen.

Episode Five is about being lost in the maze,

being lost in the labyrinth.

Cole and Gwayne are lost in the Riverlands.

And Alicent and Helaena

are trying to find their way out of the Red Keep

in the tunnels where Rhaenyra found freedom as a young girl.

In previous seasons, we've only seen a little bit

of the bowels of the Red Keep,

so this was a chance to show a little more.

And how these characters feel trapped when they're down there.

Maegor's tunnel is really tricky

because we patched it together from two different set pieces.

It starts in Alicent's apartment with the stairs...

and then the bigger tunnel piece.

And because we wanted it to feel claustrophobic,

dark, and scary,

that was a challenge for the cinematographer

to light it without lights.

49 Apple. Take four.

In Maegor's tunnels, there's no holes for light anywhere,

and the two characters are only carrying a candle

in a little lantern.

So, I did several tests where I introduced ambient cool light

and handheld lights,

but we ended up using only the candle.

And the amount of light that it gives is literally an arm's length,

which was super real.

It was genuinely so dark down there.

There's no acting required.

No!

Cut.

-That was good, wasn't it? -Whoa!

-That was scary. -That was super good, yeah.

Working with Olivia is the best.

Olivia is one of my best friends in the world,

and I love working with her so much.

If you keep up with me

Oh, I love working with Phia.

She's so imaginative.

Cool.

And I think there's a lot of energy always bubbling in her mind,

and that comes across in her performance.

Maybe there's a moment where you feel it with your hand.

-'Cause it is such a... -Yeah.

-...weird thing. -Yeah.

Thank you. Alright, here we go.

To me, that was such a fun scene

because there was a cat that came in and it would meow.

And so, I said...

And the crew thought that I yelled, "Cut."

Camera's cut.

Cut!

-And cut! -Oh, I thought you said--

I'm so sorry. I thought you said "Cut."

There was "cat," and then there was "cut."

Oh, "cat!" And then, "cut."

And then, "cut."

I think it's fine.

I'm going to meow now instead.

That's better, do that.