By Loremaster NancyM
In the prologue to her book, Gina McIntyre writes that Daenerys Targaryen’s thirst for conquest was in her blood. And as George R.R. Martin’s history of the Targaryen Line, Fire and Blood, illustrates, it was also in her blood to fight for the Iron Throne.
HBO’s House of the Dragon brought a section of GRRM’s family history to the small screen. In conjunction with the series, a coffee table book was released in 2023 by Insight Editions. The book features concept art, scene photography, and details from various production departments on the magic of bringing the printed word to life. It also features lots of interviews that add insights. If you have a growing library of books related to GRRM’s world, I definitely recommend this as a worthy addition.
Martin had already been working on the series for a year when, in 2018, he reached out to Ryan J. Condal to be the showrunner. “Ryan is a really good writer, and he knows fantasy, and he knows my world, Westeros.” Martin and Condal worked out the initial story arc for the series, and then Condal wrote a formal outline for the pilot before moving on to the script. By 2019, he had a script completed to submit to HBO.
Condal courted Miguel Sapochnik to be his co-showrunner. The two worked together on other projects, and Sapochnik was heavily involved in the Game of Thrones series. “To be honest, there was a lot of trepidation because I really wanted to do something else,” he said, “but I said I would help and eventually see whether this was something I could get involved with.”
Condal spent the summer of 2019 working on a bible for the first season that would be a roadmap for the first season and included information about two subsequent seasons. By October, HBO announced it was picking up the series.
Creating the World
A writers’ room was assembled, which included Sarah Hess, who had been nominated for Emmys for her work and had previously worked with Sapochnik.
One of the key discussion points amongst fans was the time jumps. “I was quite concerned about the time jumps, because that’s a difficult thing to pull off…The story is so complex that flashbacks would have been problematic and hard to follow,” said Condal.
Brexit uncertainty about Northern Ireland led the producers to decide on Warner Bros. Studios Leavesden in Watford, England, which had previously been an aircraft factory and airfield. Warner Brothers built a “Volume” for the site. “Actors can work on the Volume with fully rendered digital “sets” projected onto the LED screen all around them. The camera can then capture the actors, any physical props on set, and the digital background on the screen all at the same time, creating one seamless image,” writes McIntyre.
The COVID shutdowns also affected Condal and Sapochnik’s location scouting trips to Spain and Portugal. But like much of the world, business continued via Zoom and phone as they reached out to key people to head up production departments and to take the leads as directors on various episodes.
A second COVID lockdown in October 2020 affected the team again when they did the bulk of their pre-production. For example, shortages in materials affected production costs and even the building of sets. Filming was set to begin in January 2021 but then was pushed out to April.
When it came to production design, Sapochnik wanted it to “feel the same but different.” New Production Designer Jim Clay had a huge challenge designing sets unique to the new show and taking a fresh look at locations made famous in Game of Thrones. The Red Keep was designed as one big set so actors could travel through the area, with the central staircase as a central point. The Red Keep’s courtyard and godswood were constructed on the backlot.
The Iron Throne, which was two feet higher than the original and surrounded by approximately 2,000 swords, was very different from the original series. Viserys’ model city was also new. It was built in modular sections that fit together so it could expand as the series went along. The individual buildings were made using 3D printers and then painted by hand to look like stone.
The production returned to Portugal for Dragonstone, but Driftmark was not in the original series. For Driftmark, the filming was done at St. Michael’s Mount on an island off the coast of Marazion, Cornwall, in the southwest of England.
Storm’s End, however, was realized on the Volume. It would have been prohibitively expensive to build and only appeared in four scenes. The same is true for Harrenhal, the Dragonpit, and the Grand Sept. Only a small portion of the sets were built, and the rest were created using computer generation.
Dragon’s Come to Life
Daenerys was the mother to three dragons. HOTD has 12, from newly hatched to ancient. The dragons had to feel like ancestors to Drogon and his siblings. But Martin said, “You want the dragons to be instantly recognizable…that these dragons have personalities.”