How Did Director Alan Taylor Get Dragons to Fight?

Since the start of House of the Dragon, we have been waiting for these epic beasts to battle. During last night's episode, titled "The Red Dragon and the Gold" features three dragons tearing each other apart in midair. It also featured a lot of great debating and strategizing from the human characters, as well.

The episode's director, Alan Taylor, had a lot on his hands making all of this work, so, how did he do it?

Taylor sat down with the AV Club and talked to them about everything that went into that episode and much more.

Let's look at a few of his filmmaker friendly, BTS quotes.

When asked what he thought when he first read the script for the episode, Taylor said, "When I first read it, I was just glad that we got to do a dragon fight of this scale. And then I started reading through from the characters’ points of view, which is what you always do first.

"I was very keen on dealing with Rhaenys’ fate, how she handled it, and how she handled herself. In the first few readings of the script, I saw that the key moment above all else was when she decided to turn back to engage Vhagar. There are many plot points in there, and at least three or four characters that we’re tracking closely. But Rhaenys is the main point, so we made sure to structure everything around that."

Of course, there were also a ton of VFX shots that would have to be the backbone of the finale of the episode. So how does Taylor handle approaching those kinds of shots?

Inside the Episode - S2, Ep 4 | House of the Dragon | HBOwww.youtube.com

Taylor elaborated on his process, saying, "I’ve been knocking around in Westeros long enough that it wasn’t overwhelming because we’re used to this. The people who do their jobs on this show, like the stunt coordinators and the visual effects team, are so good. I’m grateful that we shot the location stuff first so we could experience the environment of the scene. It helped when I was talking to Fabian Frankel and Freddie Fox, who play Criston Cole and Gwayne Hightower, about their scenes on the battlefield in detail, too.

"The strangest part was that we did the VFX work later, so we did the dragon-riding stuff at the very end of our shoot. So months later, we shot the close-ups to tie things together. I do think the writers did such a great job with this episode. I think Tom enjoyed being drunk and terrified of his dragon. Eve also really surprised me. She rose to the occasion."

Taylor has been in the Game of Thrones universe since the original show, so he has a ton of experience inside Westeros and dealing with the VFX teams at HBO.

Another thing Taylor has always been good at is making sure that even in these huge VFX-driven scenes, we stop to have character moments that advance the emotional parts of the episode.

Taylor said of that, "You know, sometimes you read comments from viewers, and I try not to, but you can feel their impatience because they want to only see dragons smashing around. At the same time, even those who are complaining, the reason they care so much is because they’re being led inside those fights by these characters. I won’t name other huge fantasy shows out there, but I think there are shows that don’t quite do the work that Game Of Thrones and House Of The Dragon have always done, which is to make these incredibly three-dimensional characters you care about as individuals. So when you do step onto a dragon fight, the outcome is epic but also very emotional. I was happy that in episode four, which is consumed by this fight in the last several minutes, I got to do other things like introduce Oscar Tully, played by Archie Barnes. I also got to properly introduce Alys Rivers (Gayle Rankin) and spend time with her. These are pivotal characters who are going to have their own stories."

All in all, I think last night's episode was one of best of the series, and maybe in all of Game of Thrones. It made me very excited for what's to come this season and in the series.

Let me know what you think in the comments.

(Alan Taylor quotes courtesy of AV Club)