By: Eva Li
At the risk of mixing medieval metaphors, dragons are a double-edged sword. For Ryan Condal, the co-creator and show runner of HBO’s “House of the Dragon,” the creatures are the key to the show’s magic, literally and figuratively. “They are the one fantasy element that we’ve allowed ourselves,” he said. “In our world, in this period, the magic is these dragons.”
But they are also death incarnates. “It’s all metaphor, all allegory for nuclear conflict,” Condal said. “You take the city with an army if you want it to be standing afterward. You can’t do anything surgical with a dragon.” The ongoing second season of the “Game of Thrones” prequel has included more of these beautiful, terrible beasts than any other in the franchise, including spectacular air battles in the fourth episode.
In interviews a few weeks ago, Condal, the visual effects supervisor Dadi Einarsson, and some of the actors charged with piloting the creatures onscreen explained how they brought it all to life. “In a big way, Season 1 was proof of concept for the series to come,” Condal said. “We designed Season 1 to tell this hopefully compelling Shakespearean family drama that would build to this final act where we would see the first dragon fight.”
In the resulting skirmish in the Season 1 finale, the young Prince LucerysVelaryon and his small dragon, Arrax, are killed by Vhagar, the enormous, centuries-old beast ridden by the one-eyed warrior, Prince Aemond Targaryen. “Vhagar fighting Arrax is like a rhino versus a house cat,” Condal said.
Einarsson said, the production had sheets for the different dragons who are recognized with details like size, strength, color, demeanor and their first rider, in the prehistory of the show. “All of those things are important for us to be able to sculpt a multidimensional character, something that’s not just a trope or a creature,” he said. When the designs are finished, they go to visual effects companies like Weta FX and Rodeo FX to be fleshed out into the fully articulated three-dimensional creatures viewers see onscreen.
“One of the main goals for the season was to treat the dragons as characters, not just as beasts or modes of transportation,” Einarsson said. Key dragons have had much more to do in Season 2, and in more vivid detail. These include Vhagar and the two beasts she vanquished in Episode 4 during the Battle of Rook’s Rest: Meleys, killed with her rider, Princess Rhaenys; and King Aegon’s Sunfyre, grievously wounded but whose fate remains unknown. In the sixth episode, “Smallfolk,” Seasmoke, abandoned by Laenor Velaryon in Season 1, chose its own new rider: Addam of Hull, a humble shipbuilder who is secretly related to Laenor.
“We’re choreographing it like it’s a Cirque du Soleil dance,” he said. “Cameras on wires, people moving in the background, stunt guys, and people operating the dragon. Rowley [Irlam, the stunt coordinator] is setting fire to people. But technology has moved on so much that they just edited it together as we went. The effects guys have an iPad they can hold up against me, showing me where Vermithor’s going to be. It’s surprisingly easy.”
“Dragons are very intelligent creatures,” said Clinton Liberty, who plays as Addam. “Seasmoke can sense who the human is behind the facade of who the human’s trying to portray.” “Silverwing was the stately old dragon of the good Queen Alysanne,” Condal said. “I described her as the Britannia, the ship that Queen Elizabeth did her progresses on. She certainly did not do any fighting. She was the Concorde.” “I worked out quite quickly that Silverwing is one of the kinder dragons and, I believe, the most beautiful,” said Tom Bennett, who plays as Ulf.
Source:
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/07/29/arts/television/house-of-the-dragon.html