The other iconic moment that you are responsible for is the last shot of the first season. Can you just talk about your thought process of going through that and waiting for Rhaenyra’s reaction until she turns around to the camera?
It’s funny because, again, that was something that I had storyboarded way, way, way at the very beginning, and always had imagined it being a single shot. It was originally scripted to be the first time we were going to be back in the dragon stone throne room. And, just due to schedule and restrictions and what we had to work with, it wasn’t going to be possible to build the throne room that people had seen from the original series in season one. So, we brought it back to the room of the painted table. So, in designing that, the shot is actually twice as long as what aired because you see Damon get the news, and then you follow Damon, and you follow his thought process of what’s going to happen next. And then you come around, and it’s actually… It was a stitch together. It’s actually two shots stitched together. And it was the whole day’s work.
And really, as a director, I have a real aversion to doing anything that’s incredibly emotional, incredibly technical together because one has to give somewhere. And, as we were rehearsing it out and working out the blocking, it didn’t feel [right] because it was scripted for her to be on the throne, and we were trying to figure out the mechanics of it. And one of the things that I continue to discover in having great, great actors around you is that they bring great offerings of ideas. So as we were puzzling through it, Matt had the idea, “Do we want to see her get the news? How do we want to see?” And, in that discovered that taking her away from the table felt right, to give her this news privately, and then that evolved into wanting to not see her face him for that and then stay behind her. So, just watching and having to imagine what somebody’s experiencing also was beautiful and exciting. And then, to see her whole physicality change, and then turn around, and the last line of the script was “we see war is in her eyes.” And, to bring that alive in performance, and that was the last take we shot, and I had the shot one take before, but technically it wasn’t the best one, but the performance was good. And I asked Emma if she had one more in her. And she’s like, “I’m about to dry out.” And I’m like, “Let’s just see what we get. We don’t like it, I won’t print it, I promise.” And then, magic happened. The best performance and the best technical thing, like the heavens parted, and the perfect shot got created for that finale. I was so happy with that.
How many times did you shoot it? Do you remember?
I worked backward, interestingly, because I knew the harder work was getting really going over the table, which was a techno crane, so it was a steady cam that moved past a pillar, which was then stitched into a crane shot. So, I wanted to get the crane shot exactly right. And then, I had more control of the steady cam portion. So, the steady cam went quickly because we knew exactly what we had to back into, and it was just a single shot of Matt. The shot over the table. Man, we were probably in 12 or 13 takes on that range. I mean, it’s not a lot, but there’s a lot to reset, and to organize, and keep playing back, and readjusting, and then, of course, when you’re cutting it together to make sure that the backend works. So there’s a lot of technical stuff happening and big breaks in between. Again, to let Emma recharge and not lose what was most important. I was ready to abandon the whole thing if it meant getting a better performance out of Emma. And it was a perfect balance. I was so proud of her work.
How far were you into everything that you had to shoot for all three episodes when you shot that?
That was the very last thing I did, actually. It was my last day of work.
But it wasn’t Emma’s last day of work.
It wasn’t her last day of work. It was close to the end of the season, but it was the last thing I did for all my work. I mean, we did a lot of the interior dragon stone work together towards the end of the season, so I had some luxury in that. But I had to turn around to cut very, very, very quickly because COVID kept delaying us, and we had to make our air date. So, it was both a blessing and a curse to have 10 come at the end. It was exciting, but at the same time, I had to really work quickly through post-production. And Emma and my editor were really fantastic to pull that together so quickly.
Was there one aspect of that episode that you were most nervous about? Was it that scene? Was it doing the dragon chase in the storm?
Really, the kid in me was most excited about the dragon chase from the stuff you dream about as a director. And the end shot, from a performance standpoint, was where I was most focused and wanted to breathe life into that. I think the biggest challenge was getting the birth scene right. And that was something that I think everybody focused on and put a lot of energy into because it’s the most descriptive section of the chapters of “Fire & Blood” that this focused on. So, we put a lot of care, conversation, rehearsal, talking, “How much is too much? How much is too little?” We really had a lot of discussions for a very long time about the birth.
If I’m remembering correctly, there’s like a chair that’s almost in the way.
Yeah.
How did you guys get to that framing of it, as opposed to her lying on the bed or doing anything else?
Well, that’s actually a really good question. Her mom died on a bed. And, to us, we treated the bed like the bed is death. If you go on to the bed, this is over. This is a complicated birth; it’s not the birth she’s having at the beginning of episode six. Something’s wrong. So, the bed is death. So, what we talked about was anytime they bring you to bed, it’s a violent reaction. It just has a force field that you can’t get near or want to get near, and you want to stay completely away from. And then, wanting to show some of the symbiosis between dragon and rider, wanted some of the dragon-esque movements, almost like, there was an exorcism at play. And then, finishing that off, the way animals go off to the woods to die, they want to hide and go away. And the idea that she was hidden, I think, again, letting the audience use their imagination, but also symbolically, if she’s going to die, it’s finding that tree in the woods that she can go and die behind.
There is that cut quickly of her dragon reacting to what’s going on. Was that in the script or was that something you guys added?
There were times throughout the script when these things were mentioned, like when Rhaenyra is threatened or gets aggressive, her dragon will respond. And so, I cut in storyboards to audition the idea because I had this idea. The end of episode one, where she turns and faces the camera, also was scripted that we would cut to her dragon, which I can’t remember if we did or not, but I know that there was a version that existed where that happened. And, I wanted to try it here to see if there was some parallel that what she’s experiencing is so visceral that her dragon is also feeling it and vice versa.
I know production didn’t start on season two yet before the Writer’s strike, but were you scheduled to direct any of those episodes? Or, was this a once-in-a-lifetime experience, and you’re moving on to other things?
In between seasons, “Presumed Innocent” came up for Apple, which is what I’m doing right now. And that kept me in LA. And I have three young kids, and I had an incredible experience on season one that I don’t rule out returning to King’s Landing someday. But it was to get the three biggest episodes of the first season; it was hard to top, and it was something great. And I’m doing this series with Jake Gyllenhall and Ruth Negga right now, and to be back into the present day and dealing with, again, a complicated family dynamic, a family in peril, which is a consistent theme of the work that I’m drawn to, was also too hard to pass up. So, you have these experiences. As a filmmaker, I look for new challenges and new experiences in that journey.
“House of the Dragon” is available on HBO and Max
