House of the Dragon | Contenders TV Nominees 2023
House of the Dragon | Contenders TV Nominees 2023
Transcript
00:00 Hi, Mike Plumbing here from Deadline, here to talk about the HBO and Mac series, House of the Dragon.
00:06 There were big shoes to fill here, coming as the first spin-off from Game of Thrones and based on
00:12 George R.R. Martin's Fire and Blood. Set about 200 years earlier in the House Targaryen,
00:19 the House of the Dragon's first season was a wild success, featuring all the cutthroat political
00:26 intrigue and gamesmanship of the original, when kind King Viserys's leprosy overcomes his peaceful
00:34 reign. And they added a heck of a lot more dragons. The show premiered to ratings HBO hadn't seen
00:42 since Game of Thrones over House of the Dragon's 10 episode first season, and there's an eight
00:48 episode second season to coming. It's up for nine primetime Emmy nominations, and that includes
00:57 nominations for our three panelists today. Joining us are cinematographer Katherine Goldschmidt,
01:03 whose work includes Doctor Who, Dummy, and A Discovery of Witches; production designer Jim
01:09 Clay, whose work ranges from Love Actually to The Crying Game in Belfast; and visual effects
01:15 supervisor Angus Bickerton, whose work ranges from The Da Vinci Code to Kingsman, The Golden
01:22 Circle, and Band of Brothers. Welcome to all of you. Hello. Thank you. Thanks, Mike. Good to be
01:29 with you. So to get us going, let's start with this clip, which is a pivotal moment in season one
01:36 when it becomes very clear that King Viserys isn't going to be with us for that much longer.
01:44 [Clanking]
01:46 It both gladdens my heart and fills me with sorrow to see these faces around the table,
02:03 the faces most dear to me in all the world.
02:10 Yet grown so distant from each other in the years past.
02:39 My own face is no longer a handsome one,
02:43 if indeed it ever was.
02:48 Tonight, I wish you to see me as I am. Not just a king, but your father,
03:05 your brother, your husband, and your grandsire, who may not, it seems, walk for much longer among you.
03:18 Let us no longer hold ill feelings in our hearts.
03:28 The clan cannot stand strong if the House of the Dragon remains divided.
03:35 But set aside your grievances,
03:37 if not for the sake of the crown, and for the sake of this old man, who loves you all so dearly.
03:51 Wow. You know, that's so touching. His acting is just heartbreaking, and you can just see the
04:03 competition from all the people at the table, overcoming their own sadness. It's really quite
04:10 something. So I've got a question, and I'd like each of you to answer it. Now, when you were
04:16 succeeding, one of the biggest groundbreaking series ever made, there's pressure to measure up
04:22 with enough touchstones to satisfy fans, but you also don't want to clone the original.
04:28 What innovation did each of you make in your particular department that you were most proud of?
04:35 Something that kept viewers in the game, but lent a distinctive style reflective of a 200-year gap
04:45 in time from the original. Okay, so when I started,
04:48 it was daunting and exciting, I think probably in pretty equal measure. We were stepping into some
04:56 pretty big shoes from the Game of Thrones. I'd always loved the work of Gemma Jackson and Deborah
05:05 Riley, who were the Gemma was the original production designer, and then Deborah took over
05:09 halfway through. So their work was brilliant. So it was daunting. And I think the approach we took
05:15 with Miguel and Ryan early on was to embrace, but to expand. So we wanted to honour, you know,
05:24 the world of Game of Thrones, but eventually, gradually make our own show, House of Dragon.
05:31 And so we tried to keep the audience familiar with many parts of it whilst gradually introducing
05:38 a new and different world. That was our approach.
05:41 Well, I second what Jim is saying, we had very big shoes to fill. I have to be absolutely honest,
05:50 I did some very, you know, urgent catching up when I interviewed with Ryan and Miguel,
05:56 because I hadn't at that stage seen all of House of the Dragon. And when I did, you know, I realised,
06:03 oh my goodness, there was some great work to follow. I got the opportunity to speak to Joe
06:11 Bauer, who supervised, was the visual effects supervisor for, I think, at least the last
06:18 six or so of the eight series. And he, you know, so he was very kind in passing on
06:24 some of his knowledge. And I picked up, you know, little bits of information about how they'd done
06:31 things and so on. But, I mean, the great, I think the thing that made it feasible was how well
06:42 Ryan and Miguel knew their world. You know, they were so strong and they provided such strong
06:49 guidance. And coming to your point, I mean, Miguel was the one who really championed the use of the
06:57 volume on our show. You know, of course, it was in vogue at that time. But Miguel saw it as a
07:04 potential tool, you know, for expanding the world in this series. We had to go through a very,
07:12 you know, deep learning curve to sort of embrace it. But he really championed it and pushed it with
07:18 the studio. So it's not necessarily the thing I would say I was proud of. I'd say the thing I'm
07:25 proudest of is the diversity of work in the series, you know, from not only having to cope
07:31 with more dragons, which is the obvious thing, but the environments and the character arcs.
07:39 For me, I feel like Paddy Considine has been severely overlooked for his performance.
07:46 I mean, I don't know why he's not amongst the nominees for the performance he gave and the
07:52 character arc he gave over those eight episodes astounds me, really. He was awesome.
07:58 Well, I think in terms of the cinematography, you know, Miguel Sapochnik and his DP, Fabian
08:06 Wagner, they started the show. So when Gita Patel, my director, and I came in, we were looking very
08:12 much to them about what the rules were, what the rules for the photography would be. And they both
08:20 very generously said that there were no rules, which I think was very different to how they did
08:24 Game of Thrones. I think there were certain things you could and could not do when shooting Game of
08:29 Thrones, but to us, they said, you know, the palette is open. But obviously, you know, we
08:36 wanted to keep with the tone, which is really, you know, telling a historical epic more than it is,
08:45 you know, a fantasy show. And so for us, you know, the touchstones for that are, you know, classic
08:53 cinema, really, like Lawrence of Arabia is a big reference point that we used as far as, like,
09:01 you know, wanting to do sort of sweeping camera moves and show epic scale in terms of, you know,
09:08 Jim's amazing sets. So, but as far as, you know, innovations that we did that I'm most proud of,
09:16 I actually think specifically in our episode, there's a lot of really intricate, you know,
09:21 character work and character dynamics. And I think something that Geeta and I, you know,
09:26 spent a lot of time thinking about is really like the subjectivity of how the camera can see through
09:34 the eyes of certain characters. So for example, in our episode, when Rhaenyra comes back to the
09:39 Red Keep for the first time, we see it very much through her eyes, which is as a completely
09:44 transformed place. And so, you know, so we really tried to, you know, shoot her dwarfed by this,
09:53 you know, new, empty, cold place that she doesn't recognize. That's just one sort of specific
10:01 example of how we approached, you know, the specific story that we were telling. And I think
10:07 the way that's different from Game of Thrones, and this is a generalization, but I think because
10:11 it's a story that is about one family, at least in this first season, you can be sort of more
10:18 focused. I think Game of Thrones was so sprawling that, you know, anyway, the photography had to do
10:25 something different, if you see what I mean. - And this is a question also for the three of
10:30 you, because you come at it in different ways. Can you talk about the challenges of, you know,
10:37 of some of the, aside from the character arcs, there are some monumentally grand things that
10:43 make you go, "Wow, I have never seen that before." You know, and I'm thinking of, you know,
10:48 the staging of those soaring dragon appearances from when Queen Rhaenyra retrieves the dragon egg
10:55 from her uncle and future husband, Prince Daemon, or that final shocking scene between the dueling
11:02 heirs Lucerys and Aemond that will basically set the course for battle stations in season two.
11:09 How do you do that? What's the biggest challenge to make that look real? And Angus, you're the
11:17 visual effects guy, maybe you can answer some of that. - Well, again, you know, going back to what
11:24 I was just saying, we did, for some of those environments in those sequences, we used the
11:29 volume. The volume was used to recreate the bridge at Dragonstone Island, because it's obviously
11:36 based on a real location on the sort of Atlantic coast of Spain, but the practicality, where they
11:43 had actually shot practically on Game of Thrones, but being as narrow as it is, and being as remote
11:51 as it is, the practicality of shooting extended scenes there, you know, were just, you know,
11:57 it was just, it wasn't practical at all. You were, you know, prey to obviously what weather
12:03 conditions you might have there, but sort of the logistics of getting onto a bridge that's only
12:08 three to four people wide, and getting a unit there, and shooting a 12-page scene, you know,
12:15 12-minute scene, you know, it was just too daunting. So that is where we first embraced
12:22 using the volume for that scene, when I think it was episode two when they first
12:27 were seen on that bridge, and then we saw it later on in the series as well.
12:32 But also for the final episode, the volume was used for the interior of Storm's End Castle,
12:40 and obviously we used the volume for, as a new way to try to make the lighting more
12:51 interactive and more appropriate for the dragon riding sequences.
12:58 So, yeah, there's lots of things to go into there really. I mean, I think it was great
13:04 working with Jim, because, you know, working on how we were going to build the sets within the
13:10 volume, what was going to be set, what was going to be virtual, what was going to be created in
13:16 Unreal and put on the screens. But then we also, you know, had to build an exterior courtyard
13:23 for Storm's End, that was on the back lot, which we, you know, we had to, again, you have to make
13:29 decisions about how much you're going to build for that. And then just the design of Storm's End,
13:35 just, you know, bringing it all together, making sure that all those component parts fitted,
13:42 you know, a lot of liaising with Jim and the art department to sort of get a consistent look.
13:49 It's all Jim's, all the design of that, it's pure Jim.
13:53 Well, pure Jim, why don't you give us a sense of the biggest challenges of those big set pieces?
14:02 Obviously, it's a very close collaboration for me with Angus and also very much with Catherine
14:09 and all of the DOPs. You know, we spoke daily about the style and what we would build and
14:17 how we would achieve it and how it would be lit and what the mood and atmosphere should
14:21 be on each occasion. The big number for me really was building the interior of the Red Keep. And I
14:28 wanted to bring to this new show, this sense of intrigue and suspicion to the interior of the Red
14:38 Keep so that it wasn't simply the home of the Targaryen family, but it was the seat of power
14:43 and that it would have a sort of Machiavellian atmosphere to it. So, the Hand of the King was
14:49 always able to find a position where he could view the rest of the castle, who was walking with who,
14:55 who was speaking with who, just to build this sense of tension. And obviously, working with
15:01 Catherine on that and lighting opportunities and shooting opportunities is a vital collaboration
15:10 for any production designer. Yeah, and Catherine, you got to get it all in the frame and the lights
15:16 and darks and, you know, so what was the most satisfying part of all this for you? Was there
15:24 a top moment, a top scene? Well, the scene you played was one that, you know, we absolutely loved
15:33 on the page and spent, you know, a lot of time in prep, definitely with Jim and with Angus. You
15:40 know, you can really see all three of our collaborations, you know, obviously under the
15:45 direction of Geeta Patel and Ryan and Miguel the showrunners. But, you know, because in that scene,
15:52 as you showed, you know, it's the scene where everybody is sort of coming together for the last
15:57 time. And, you know, and the King is really trying to, like, you know, make amends because he knows
16:05 he's, you know, not long for this world. And anyway, so that scene, for example, just to talk
16:12 about collaboration and the people present here, like that was a redress of a small council chamber.
16:19 So we, you know, Jim, you know, worked closely with us to completely transform and hopefully,
16:24 you know, viewers will not know, not recognize it's the same physical space because we completely
16:32 sort of rearranged how, you know, the table would be in the room and all that sort of thing.
16:38 And we had as our reference point, the last supper. So, you know, when Geeta and I were
16:46 planning how to stage the scene, that was sort of like what we used as, you know, to have Patty
16:52 Constantine to have the Seras be the sort of focal point, the pivot point on which the whole
16:56 table is built. And then obviously you can see Angus's amazing work with the mask reveal,
17:02 which, you know, is a collaboration between him and special effects and makeup, Amanda and Barry,
17:08 who aren't here today. So we talked a lot about, you know, how that would work and how
17:15 that would affect, you know, Patty's performance. And, you know, we did do some lighting and makeup
17:22 tests, you know, for that look. And yeah, and as far as the lighting of that scene goes,
17:29 I really wanted it to feel like this intimate, you know, family gathering. So, you know, I mean,
17:35 it's very important in the world that everything be motivated by real sources. And so, you know,
17:42 the light comes from three places, which is sunlight, candle flame, or moonlight. So that
17:48 was very much like a, you know, candlelit dinner scene. And so, yeah, I mean, it's, I think it's a
17:58 great scene. So I'm glad you showed it. Thank you. It's brilliant. Now, unless any one of you wants
18:05 to spill the tea on what's going to happen when we have season two, I guess I'll have to wrap this up
18:11 and thank all three of you for taking part. And I am going to throw it to the next HBO and Max
18:22 panel. And so please stay with us. Thank you. Thanks, Angus, you and Catherine. Thank you.