HOUSE OF THE DRAGON PRODUCTION
“Sometimes, all the planning you do just goes out the window, and you have to embrace what’s in front of you,” Cernjul continues. “We’re glad we did because it works for the scene. It looks like we were waiting for that weather.” CASTLES AND CAVES House of the Dragon firstly gets its larger-than-life feel from its epic story, though physical sets also play a major part in establishing the show’s realism. From a ‘fully functional’ castle set to a constructed ship, this season’s builds are ‘magnificent’, beams Cernjul. “It was like working on Ben-Hur or Cleopatra .” While Season 2’s sets were scaled up from Season 1, there are limitations when making a fantasy series; namely, the dragons – a necessary component of a show titled House of the Dragon – are mammoth creatures that wouldn’t realistically fit on a studio stage. “One massive scene took place in the cave where the dragons live,” recounts Cernjul. “Dragonseeds are being led to this cave so the dragons can choose potential
SOMETIMES THE DIRECTOR WOULD start breathing like a dragon TO HELP THE ACTORS VISUALISE”
new dragonriders. Such a massive cave obviously couldn’t be built, so it had to be done on a green screen.” Not only did the scene warrant a virtual background, but it also combined pyrotechnic stunts with invisible dragons, which are added in post. In other words, filming this sequence required a serious stretch of the imagination. “One of the big challenges was figuring out scale. It was a large stage, but you had to imagine it was ten times the size – and there were also these enormous creatures inside,” he says. “If the dragon turns, how quickly does the dragon’s tail go through this cave? It was something we had to
visualise because, of course, there was no dragon and no cave.” Besides having a thorough prep process, the cast and crew developed some creative solutions while filming. First of all, “the visual effects department had a blue dragon head that the puppeteers were moving around, so we would have some idea of where the dragon was in space,” recalls Cernjul. Then, Peristere employed an audio system called the Voice of God to describe the dragon’s movements ‘in real time’. “Sometimes, he would turn into the dragon; he would start breathing like the dragon to help the actors visualise what was supposed to
IN THE MIST Cernjul (top middle) and his crack production team spent much time out on location in the beautiful, but cold, north Wales countryside
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