House of the Dragon War Room

This production was the result of a successful collaboration between our friends at Transistor Films, the Sky Production Services Studios team, and Sky Post Production. Hear about their work and how they approached this blend of VTs and studio RX below, from the scheduling to the lighting, all the way to Online!

Mike Town – Post Producer

I was thrilled that Transistor Films had come back to us again, after the years of success we have shared working together on the Thronecast series during the run of Game of Thrones, as well as the success of the specials produced for the first series of House of the Dragon. We were all jumping at the chance to be able to team up again on a brand new special for the next series of House of the Dragon!

The brief was very clear; we were told about the number of VTs they would need and what types would be needed, following a tried-and-true format similar to previous Specials, we know we more than capable of delivering it to the quality they’ve come to expect from us. 

The biggest challenge we faced is working with such a high-profile piece of intellectual property and the limitations that puts on the amount of time we have to prepare for the studio record. Whilst we knew about the show months in advance, up until late April/ May we don’t know which clips or characters from the previous series will need focusing on, so there’s an element of adapting along the way. To overcome this, I make sure we build a strong cohesive team of VT Editors, all used to working in fast turnaround environments, who can adapt to changes at the drop of a hat. Communication between Sky Post Production, Transistor Films and Sky Studios was also key so that everyone was aware of each other’s deadlines and requirements so nothing could take any of us by surprise in the run up to the record.

Malcolm Reed – Lighting Director

My team varies depending on the size of the job. For House of the Dragon War Room I had a Console Operator/ Programmer to set up the lighting control desk for the recording. Then I’d bring in a Gaffer, or Head Electrician, to put together my wish list of lights and manage the Electricians. There’s also a Lighting Technician who will look after all the automated lights, and then maybe three or four Electricians all working to the brief and design.

House of the Dragon War Room was a very different beast. The normal setup within the studio environment is a saturated lighting rig which involves lots of lights, evenly distributed in the lighting grid above the sets. For speed and ease you simply pick the lights that are perfect for the position and the production. However, House of the Dragon War Room was a very dramatic set, designed to look like the war room of a castle, so all the conventional studio lights were removed beforehand and then we would hang specific lights for lighting the set and for lighting faces as required.

The biggest challenges on the job involved finding specific lights to represent moonlight coming through the windows with the right sort of colour and producing a candlelit look with light flickering across walls to suggest candles and torches. Then we had to light the faces to look as though they were lit by candlelight, but at a high enough quality for the cameras, so you would get a great depth of field with a perfect aperture from the lens.

All in all, I was very happy with the result and can’t wait to see the program being aired.

Clive Hickey – Scenic Supervisor

The work for the Scenery Department is generally split between three areas. First there’s studio work such as the kid’s news show FYI, Football Social, MNF, SNF etc. Secondly, there’s Outside Broadcast demand which is a large percentage of our work, including our entire sports portfolio as well as both Landscape and Portrait Artist of the Year. The third area is our Workshop, where we either build or maintain our sets.

We do build sets on-site but on this occasion the House of the Dragon War Room set was built off-site by an external company. For the planning we attended numerous production meetings and liaised with the Set Designer and Art Director to cover off all areas such as the logistics and the desired look of the show. On the build day in the studio, we provided a team of five to rig and dress the set working closely with the Designer. Although the set was constructed off-site on the day, we still had modifications to certain areas of the set to meet the production’s requirements.

A major challenge for us for this show to go ahead in Studio F was the short turnaround between Football Social and House of the Dragon War Room. With Football Social finishing on Saturday afternoon and HOTDWR being rigged the following morning we had to a teamwork through the night to paint the Studio floor from TV white to dark grey to meet the production needs.

It’s always nice to work on a show like the House of the Dragon as it’s a change to our regular shows. Working alongside the production company, Transistor Films, is something we enjoy as it brings us new challenge and working relationships. Both our team and the production were very happy with the overall look of the show and how smoothly it all went.

Mark Sison – VT and GFX Editor

I was really excited to be working on the show and I binged the entire series before starting work on it! I love working with Transistor Films too. Every project I've worked on and every person who has sat in the suite with me has been great. I've worked with the AP, Damien, multiple times now and because we know each other so well it's always smooth sailing whenever we're together. As the Editor, you cut together selects from the Producer and build GFX around the edit to make it stand apart from the show itself. One of the challenges was trying to match my edit to the footage I had available. Say we need a clip of the main character looking angry to fill a three second gap. We've found a shot but it's only two seconds. How do we fill that one, missing second? That's a common problem the Editor will have.

Ernesto Rogata – VFX Editor

I was very pleased to be asked to work on this House of the Dragon War Room special again. I had already worked with the team on various productions, and specifically on House of the Dragon before, and this time I worked on the Wisdom VT, specifically in VFX. This is a short educational piece where an expert talks to camera against green screen about the various complex dynamics involved in the series between houses, families, friends and foes. My job was to seamlessly key the talent to place him on a specific textured background, light him adequately and then add text and images to illustrate what he was talking about. Due to the nature of the series, I used a lot of smoke, fire, dust and debris in After Effects to bring up the various elements at either side of the talking head. Once I’d finished the main task, I spent some time helping with tweaks on an interview and a few other short VTs to be used as inserts during the studio recording.

VT Editor – Chris Hay

I was a new face to House of the Dragon War Room but having been a regular editor on the Game of Thrones show, Thronecast, I was familiar with the format. Our job was cutting preliminary VTs for the show such as recaps of last season’s major events and talking points. The issue with cutting anything in Game Of Thrones and House of the Dragon is that HBO won't allow the juxtaposition of any two shots that weren't cut together in the programme. They also don't allow scenes to be edited down. Stylistically, this means that sequences need to be cut for timing and pace and then dips to black added between each shot. 

Editor – Melissa Holton

House of the Dragon War Room was different to many of my recent projects because, instead of building something from scratch, it’s essentially already there and we’re cutting it down to time. My last project took ten weeks, so a fast turnaround edit like this was a totally different challenge, but I enjoy that kind of variety in Sky Post. War Room is a really good show. It’s fast-paced, informative and very funny. It will get you up to speed with everything that happened in Season One and will also get you excited about what’s to come in Season Two.  There’s the various VTs; a recap of Season One, an in-depth exploration of Rhaenyra and Alicent’s relationship and we get to meet the showrunner, Ryan Condall. And, of course, there’s all the trailers for Season Two. 

For duration purposes we had to lose about thirty minutes of what was recorded in the studio. To do that, you take the main show programme output with grouped cameras as your starting point. Then, you have to find all the separate elements for the final show and add those to the timeline. We made sure to preserve all of the audio channels so that the Audio team had all the elements they would need for the Final Mix. On this edit I really enjoyed working with Damien, the Producer, to remove the required time and to join together the sections so that they looked seamless.

Damien had a relaxed attitude and a good instinct about what needed to be included in the final cut. That included making sure that all the guests had an equal amount of airtime, that no-one took over too much, and that it was all interesting and fun. We also went over the different cameras to make sure that they all cut at the right time so that we didn’t miss who was speaking and that we included a visually exciting mix of jib camera and slider shots from the back of the studio to add variety and depth. All of that scrutiny in the edit meant that we had minimal changes after the Execs saw the rough cuts and when they and the Commissioner were happy with it, we had our picture lock, which was then sent to the Audio, Online and Grade.

Mark Giblin – Grade & Online

I'd worked with Damien, the Producer, before and we have a good working relationship. House of the Dragon War Room is a great show! A funny hour of relaxed chat, insight and a sneak peek at the upcoming season of House of the Dragon. The Grade can take quite a while, so I concentrate on that first. We can't touch the Grade on the HBO footage, so I leave that well alone, and instead I focus on the sharpness, brightness, contrast and colours of the programme shots.

The studio set for the War Room show recreates the look of the Throne Room in King's Landing and has been moodily lit in strong oranges and blues. The grade I have applied to the shots accentuates and deepens the density of these colours as well as adjusting contrast to take away the slight video harshness of the studio lighting. This gave not only a more filmic look, but enhancing the 'cosy, fire-lit' feel of the set. I also added some very light vignetting to the pictures to draw the audience's eye to the four pundits sat around a central table discussing the merits of the main show.

After I've made the colour correction pass, the Online part of the process starts. This involves cleaning up the pictures to a very high degree of quality and implementing any on-screen graphics, including the end credits. This is where the final polish is applied to the show. If any Online issues could be better served by popping back into the Baselight plugin then I can easily open it up again and view the combined effects of fix and grade. 

One of the issues faced was in the background of the set there are highly reflective window elements which occasionally catch one of the studio lights or an on-set candle's reflection, creating a highly distracting glint or flare. I tracked and painted these out using a variety of Avid and After Effects techniques. Finally, as the darker areas of the shots were showing some camera noise, I ran the whole programme through a de-noising filter to give the show an extra bit of polish. This effect seriously ramped up the amount of render time needed but the show really benefits from it.

Marek Bielski – Re-Recording Mixer

The House of the Dragon War Room is a panel show discussing the minutiae of each episode, which I tend to think of as a podcast with pictures. Game of Thrones previously, and now House of the Dragon are really big series with massive fan bases so it’s an amazingly popular show and great for fans. From my point of view, the Mix is best kept simple. If everything has been well set up, and with our Studios Team it always is, it involves some mics on the contributors, some background music and the VT inserts. As soon as you put an audience into a studio and then mic them up, then any noise problems are going to be highlighted. You also need to run fans to control the temperature for audience and contributors and they also have an added effect. On House Of The Dragon War Room I used noise suppression plug-ins successfully to mitigate this.

House of the Dragon War Room aired on Saturday night, ahead of the brand new series of House of the Dragon which is coming to our screens this weekend.