Diego Peralta
The world of A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms is one that audiences presume to know by know. After many books by George R.R. Martin and the success of Game of Thrones, Westeros has become many fans’ happy place. However, bringing the kingdom to life on the screen is harder than it looks. Awards Radar had the opportunity to interview Tom McCullagh and Stephanie Rea, the production designer and set decorators from A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms. HBO shows that are set in Westeros need to take audiences across time and space, to a land love, betrayal, and honor. Here’s a small peek behind the curtain of the massive television hit.
Tom McCullagh was excited to talk about the massive dragon puppet that Dunk (Peter Claffey) and Egg (Dexter Sol Ansell) get to see during a show: “We wanted to kind of make the puppet show or the puppet tent like a feature of, of the grounds of the market area, even of the, of the jousting area. The color was chosen, the staff chose some colors and then we showed them to Ira (Parker, the showrunner of the series) and he protected picked that kind of orangey, goldy color, so that it would pop out against the greens and the browns of the other sets. When you saw it from a distance, you knew there was something special about it.”
Many elements from the presentation of the sequence changed as the team was working on the episode, with the small theater itself having a different layout by the time the scene came to life on the screen: “The idea initially was to have audience front and back of the stage. But not sure what the decision was. I can’t remember, but we decided just to have the audience at the front of the stage. And this is where Dunk and Egg walk in and kind of look over the crowd and see this dragon.”
The puppet itself is a magnificent display of Stephanie and Tom’s effort. The heavy, impacting dragon was used by Tanselle (Tanzyn Crawford) to recall major events from the Targaryen dynasty’s complicated history: “Obviously we had to kind of create it, if you like, over the period. And, you know, we based it on on, you know, those elements of Chinese Dragons, of obviously Thrones Dragons. And we had a company from England who put it together for us, made it for us and kind of very short period of time. It was quite a, you know, I think the wingspan was 25 feet on the length of the thing was 25 to 30 feet with the teal. It took a bit of kind of handling.”
Westeros has a long history with powerful dragons. Audiences just got a taste of the animals’ power in the third season of House of the Dragon. For the puppet dragon shown in A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms, the team had to come up with a practical way for the beast to breathe fire: “The whole fire thing became bit of an issue because we weren’t allowed to use gas coming out of the dragon, you know, for safety reasons, being inside a tent and the materials that were surrounding it. I had never heard of it before, but the SFX guys come up with this thing called like a podium, which is like a pollen partly, which kind of just burns a bright flame and then just disappears.
Stephanie Rea is a Westeros veteran. The Set Decorator previously worked on Game of Thrones, before making her way to the challenge that is A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms. Despite the prequel telling a much more intimate story, Stephanie pointed out that the production still featured a massive scale: ” I think it’s more intimate, but the scale of it certainly matched what we’ve done on Game of Thrones. I spent a lot of time on Game of Thrones in the past and certainly we we were definitely on par with them with the scale of everything. We did go quite intimate with, you know, we were quite specific because we wanted to bring a lot more color into this look rather than keep it quite muted and dark the way Game of Thrones has always shot. We did sort of get quite personal with who these characters wear and what their sigils wear and what their house colors wear. We wanted to reflect that through every aspect of the dress, including all the tents and all the houses and all the interiors and even the horse tech and all our flags and banners. I mean, certainly on season 1 we did a lot of candlelight.”
One of the most impressive features from Westeros is how the shows use genuine candlelight when showing intense scenes. The Knight of the Seven Kingdoms team burns through plenty of material to get the perfect shot: “We really didn’t use anything synthetic or you know, it was, it was very much candlelit. We do have a candle maker that makes the candles bespoke for us. We’ll assign different tones to each house from like peel ivories, dark golden yellows and we blend them in with the environments and volume wise. There’s a triple Wick on them so that they burn brighter again, you know, so they burn brighter but they burn faster and you use a lot more.”
Dunk and Egg will be back for a second season of A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms. Audiences can rest assured knowing that the Production Design and Set Decoration team will always give their best effort in order to turn George R.R. Martin’s dream (of spring?) into a reality. HBO hasn’t announced a release date for the second season of A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms.
All episodes of A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms are now available for streaming on HBO. This interview was edited for length and clarity purposes.
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