We spoke with MPCVFX's Mike Bell to break down HouseoftheDragon's majestic visual effects feats, from envisioning a King's Landing 172 years before Daenerys Targaryen to chronicling Viserys' decay and imbuing dragons with personalities like their riders:
House of the Dragon has been so heralded for its intricate character-based plotting and finely-tuned melodrama that its stellar visual effects work can sometimes be overlooked. Often, viewers focus on the minor details that are not up to perfect standards rather than appreciating the effort that went into bringing Westeros to life—and animating 16 dragons along with it.
Being on set and just seeing the scale, you really get a sense of how huge it is. It was bigger that even some film sets, because it had three massive units that would shoot at the same time with these incredible sets that you can just walk through. You can be in the Red Keep, and you feel that realization of, "We'd better not mess this up. This is huge."
The client actually gave us these top trump cards, which are like trading cards. They have all these categories of what the dragons are good at and what they're not, and they gave us a description of their personalities and general tactics. Seasmoke, for example, is a bit more stealthy and militant to a degree, like a soldier. We're hoping that we might get them printed off at some point and have a little memento.
Mike Bell: No, I'd love to tell you exactly what it is. But it's an unknown mystery. Actually, I'd say have a look at Paddy Considine's Instagram, where he says what he thinks it is. He has quite an interesting take on it, and I thought, "Yeah, I'll bind to that." Mike Bell: Because of the leap forward in time of six years, they really wanted that first time he appears in bed to be shocking, so you see the deterioration.
But what we wanted to do here was have a full CG thing King's Landing, so we could pretty much put a camera anywhere and have an establishing shot from this or that angle. We weren't tied into original footage, which also meant that we could place cameras within actual rooms in the Red Keep and go, "This is what the view from the king's apartment should be. This is exactly what he would be seeing," or, "This is what the small council should be.
Mike Bell: I think the most nuanced was probably the King Viserys stuff, which required a lot more fine-tuning. In terms of complexity, we did both of the battles in episode 3, so the Bloodstone beach battle opening at nighttime, and then the daytime one. Just in terms of the number of layers and elements that went into the scenes, because the environment wasn't real, even down to the cliffs.
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