House Of The Dragon Season 2: DP Breaks Down Seasmoke, Vermithor & Silverwing Scenes In Episodes 6 And 7

Summary

House of the Dragonseason 2 saw House Targaryen go through a number of upheavals in episodes 6 and 7, which paid off the growing number of Targaryen bastards introduced throughout the last several episodes. With award-winning cinematographer Vanja Černjul behind the camera, the most recent episodes of the hitHBO show highlighted Queen Rhaenyra’s effortsto match her remaining dragons with riders despite the lack of available Targaryen heirs. Seasmoke, Vermithor, and Silverwing each found a new rider in “Smallfolk” and “The Red Sowing.”

Černjul has served as director of photography on a wide range of projects, from the lavish and contemporary romance ofCrazy Rich Asiansto the sweeping period dramaThe Gilded Age, butHouse of the Dragonmay be his most ambitious work yet. From the dizzying crowd scenes depicting the smallfolk’s revolt against the Greens to the more intimate moments between Rhaenyra and Mysaria, episode 6 covered a large array of genres in a single hour.House of the Dragonseason 2, episode 7also boasted the largest-scale fight scene of the season, thanks to Vermithor’s fury, a challenging sequence that the talented crew was more than ready to tackle.

Addam of Hull, Rhaenyra Targaryen, and Hugh Hammer from House of the Dragon

In House of the Dragon, the Targaryens claim their “blood of the dragon” allows them alone to ride the creatures, but that may not be the whole truth.

Screen Rantinterviewed Černjul about his fascinating camerawork onHouse of the Dragonseason 2, how his previous connection with director Andrij Parekh led to him joining the show for episodes 6 and 7, and how he interpreted some powerful moments such as Vermithor meeting Hugh or Rhaenyra and Mysaria’s kiss.

Rhaenyra (Emma D’Arcy) and Mysaria (Sonoya Mizuno) kissing in House of the Dragon season 2, episode 6

Breaking Down House Of The Dragon’s Rhaenyra & Addam Face-Off And More

Screen Rant: You worked on two really exciting episodes his season. What conversations did you have with each respective director, especially for episode 6, about capturing the feel of the small folks' desperation and how that gives Rhaenyra an advantage?

Vanja Černjul: It was the first time I worked with both directors, but Andrij [Parekh] and I have known each other for a very long time. We went to film school together, and we stayed in touch throughout the decades. He’s had an incredible career as a director of photography and started directing recently, and when he got the opportunity to direct House of the Dragon, he asked me if I would come with him to London and go on this journey with him. It was very exciting for many reasons. One of them was the opportunity to work with Andrij, but also being part of this huge world, which I knew a little bit about. I never saw the original series. It just so happened my son was a big fan, but I never saw it - probably the last person on Earth who hadn’t even seen season 1.

Jim Henson with Kermit the Frog puppet on a TV show in Jim Henson Idea Man

When I arrived in London, I had a lot of catching up to do. I had to first pursue season 1, and then I saw the original series. I even read the books to catch up because everybody knew this world so well. The great thing is that we, as a team, managed to bring some new perspectives and new ideas to the episode. Andrij was an old friend, but I just met Loni Peristere this season for the first time, and we soon discovered that we have very similar taste in classical cinema. We really quickly developed our own language, so hat that was really a lot of fun.

Andrij directed a couple of episodes of Succession, another very successful HBO show. I think he brought a little bit of that experience with him in how he wanted to approach the scenes in the small council, where a lot of powerful people are getting together and discussing the future of other people. He wanted to bring a different style to those scenes, especially the small council scene with Aemond as a center, as they’re discussing how the war is going to unfold.

Andrij’s idea was to approach this scene with a more observational style, something to give you a seat at the table almost, as if you are observing this meeting like a fly on the wall. But we also wanted to have some motivation for the movement, and we wanted Aemond to be the only person with the power to move the camera. We came up with this blocking where Aemond was walking around the table, and then we followed him on the so-called dance floor with two cameras. We’re always following Aemond, basically, but then the camera operators were free to spontaneously react to whoever Aemond was addressing. That was a very effective way to approach that scene, and I think it worked very well.

With Loni, because we had to get to know each other really quickly, we used a lot of references from classical cinema. For example, in episode 7, there’s a scene where Rhaenyra is facing Addam, the new dragon rider, and is not sure if he is a foe or a friend. They’re kind of measuring each other up in this incredible location on the beach, and Loni referenced one scene from a classic Western; the iconic duel scene from Once Upon A Time in The West. We wanted to use that famous dual between Harmonica (played by Charles Bronson) and Henry Fonda’s character, Frank. We used it as a reference, just to jumpstart the process of shotlisting and getting ideas. Of course, the scene became something completely different, but that was the initial inspiration.

Screen Rant: Can you talk about working with Emma D’Arcy for such a pivotal moment?

Vanja Černjul: [They] were excited when they heard that we used the classical western for inspiration for the scene. It was one of my favorite scenes in that episode because we shot on the beach in North Wales, on the Isle of Anglesey, and it was a huge, gorgeous, beautiful beach.

But we learned, as we were planning the schedule of when we were going to shoot each shot according to the sun position, that the tides on the beach were incredibly violent. There’s a huge difference between the morning and the afternoon, so that added another layer of complexity for how we were going to shoot it. We had to move after we shot each shot, and we had to move the whole crew and equipment because the tide was moving. We had this very complicated chart of where we needed to be at each time of day in order to stay away from the tide, in combination with the sun position and how we wanted each shot to be lit. It became this very complicated plan [detailing] which shot had to be done when.

Giving Dragons Like Vermithor & Silverwing Their Own Unique Personalities In Season 2

Screen Rant: We’ve had some incredible dragon battles and dragon flying scenes already this season, but episode 7 gives us two new dragon riders and their encounters, from Hugh’s violent claiming of Vermithor to Ulf’s more peaceful joyride on Silverwing. What marks the differences there?

Vanja Černjul: The Dragonmount scene was probably the most challenging scene in that episode, and one of the biggest action scenes of the season. And the challenge was that this was a completely new set. It’s supposed to be this huge cave where these enormous creatures live, and we had a very big stage, but it was maybe a tenth of the actual space it was supposed to be. The dock where the riders mount the dragons was supposed to also be very tall, so this whole space was supposed to be huge. Of course, we couldn’t build such a huge stage set, so only the dock was practically built and everything else was blue screen.

But the challenging thing was imagining the scale of the space and the scale of these dragons, specifically Vermithor. He’s supposed to be the second-largest dragon. and no matter how much prep you have, just imagining the distances and the scale was very difficult. Also, imagining what the dragon was doing at the time. We had pieces of a dragon that the puppeteers were moving, like this large dragon’s head that gave us some idea of where the dragon is in the space.

Loni developed a technique where he used this audio system that directors sometimes use when they have to direct large crowds of people or they have to just project far away; it’s called “Voice of God.” He used this audio system to constantly describe what the dragon was doing, and he was even breathing like a dragon when the dragon was supposed to come close to Rhaenyra. He basically turned into a dragon over this system, and it really helped us understand where we were in the scene and what the dragon was doing. Every day that we shot in the Dragonmount, we knew that Loni was going to turn into a dragon over this audio system. It’s one of those things that you have to come up with when everybody has to see the same thing that doesn’t exist.

How much do you discuss the personality and movement trajectory with both director and VFX supervisor, especially for Silverwing’s flight?

Overall, this season, we wanted to make dragon riding feel more subjective and more real. We wanted the dragon riding to feel as if the camera operator is on the dragon shooting handheld; it was a very immediate, subjective feeling. Of course, it was impossible to put the operator on a dragon because dragon riding is typically shot on a mechanical device called the buck, which is like a mechanical bull that they use for rodeos - only much taller. It was just the actors were sitting on this device very high up in the air, and the device was programmed to simulate the movement of the dragon in coordination with the visual effects and special effects departments based on the previous animation that we did.

First of all, it wouldn’t be safe. Also, there was no room, so it would never work. But also the visual effects department needed to precisely record the camera movement. And the camera movement also had to be nodal - even though we wanted it to feel handheld, it had to be nodal for the visual effects purposes.

All four DPs sat down and discussed different ways to approach this, and I was given the task of doing the a part of the initial tests for this. I tested the camera in an effort to have a handheld feel, but all the different departments were part of the test because they all had to adjust the dragon riding sequences as realistic as possible. The costumes department had to adjust the costumes so that the cape would fly in a certain way, and it affected the hair because we used a lot of wind machines. The solution we had was to put a remote camera mounted in front of the actor on the buck, and we had a camera operator on the ground using a handheld Libra moose with the monitor mounted on it that mimicked whatever the operator was doing.

Through the process of testing, we realized that the camera operator on the ground was a little bit too stable. Of course, they were standing on the ground and they were not on the buck, but we didn’t want to have a fake the handheld movement. We didn’t want the operator to try to simulate it; we wanted to have a real handheld feel. One idea we came up with on the spot was to bring a half-balance ball from the nearby gym and ask the operator to stand on it, so that it would throw them little bit out of balance. They would have to keep working to stay in balance, and that added realism to the camera movement handheld feel. When I proposed this, the operators were happy to try it, and it worked out wonderfully. I reported this to the other DPs and directors, and everybody adjusted this approach to their own needs. It was one little innovation that I think worked well.

Rhaenyra & Mysaria’s Episode 6 Moment Highlights How Unique House Of The Dragon Filming Is

Screen Rant: On the emotional side, I’m fascinated by the fact that Emma D’Arcy and Sonoya Mizuno have said that the hug and kiss in episode 6 emerged naturally in the moment of the Rhaenyra and Mysaria scene when it feels like such an emotional crux of the episode. How does that change things in the moment for your team, if at all, and do you think the romantic intention was there beforehand?

Vanja Černjul: That’s the beautiful thing about the House of the Dragon, you have to use every cinematic storytelling muscle that you have because there are so many different approaches that you have to do. Some scenes are very technical, some scenes are massive with hundreds of extras and horses, and some scenes are heavy with visual effects. We have to plan everything down to exactly what lens to use and how far away from the actors we will be for such scenes.

But that intimate scene, for example, was one where the director wanted to give actors as much freedom as possible to explore. The initial blocking rehearsal in the morning was one thing, and then where we ended up with the scene after lunch was very different. I don’t exactly remember what was the first blocking rehearsal, but I remembered that what we eventually shot was very different. We were just following the actors' instincts and how they wanted to move, and then we basically improvised based on whatever they were giving us. It’s a very different approach than what we talked about before

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Screen Rant: Having now worked on two episodes ofHouse of the Dragon, how would you say their approach to big action sequences and smaller emotional moments differs from your previous work, as you’ve dabbled in both before betweenMarco PoloandCrazy Rich Asians, orThe Magiciansand nowThe Gilded Age?

Vanja Černjul: I’ve done a couple of period shows, but I feel like everything I learned on all these different period shows, I was able to bring to House of the Dragon and exercise it. We spent a lot of time on location, where every now and then, we had to pare down our very large crew down to a small skeleton crew to be able to go to remote locations and hand-carry the camera and just a few pieces of equipment to shoot a scene.

Some of the most epic shots in episode 7 were done this way, with just a couple of crew members. Every scene is different and every episode is very different, and each episode feels like a movie in and of itself.

Vanja Černjul’s Expertise Extends To Documentaries Like Jim Henson: Idea Man

Screen Rant: You just got anEmmy nomination forJim Henson: Idea Man, which is amazing. The project is so unique too. What was it like working with Ron Howard, and how does vision play into piecing all the moving parts together?

Vanja Černjul: It was a really unique experience for me, and I was really looking forward to being part of the project. Cinematographer and a close friend Igor Martinović called me to be part of this because interviews were taking place over the whole summer, and they never knew exactly when each was going to happen. We had to be there for each other so someone would always be available to shoot.

I was very excited to be part because I prepped the live-action Sesame Street film for Disney, which hasn’t been shot yet. In getting ready to shoot Sesame Street, I learned a lot about Jim Henson; I read his biography and I visited the set of Sesame Street in New York and met the performers. I studied how the puppets move and how many people it takes to move different characters - some characters are just one person, while other characters have multiple puppeteers.

Unfortunately, we never got to shoot the film, but hopefully, it will still happen. But I had some understanding of how the muppets work and how complicated the whole world is from behind the scenes. As a viewer, I remember The Muppet Show is probably one of the first things I watched on TV with my family. I was just very, very excited to be with all the people who knew Jim Henson and to hear the stories through hours of interviewing. Not all of it made it to the final cut, but it was interesting to be there and just listen.

House of the Dragonseason 2, episode 8 airs August 4 at 6pm PT/9pm ET on HBO.