‘House of the Dragon' director and cinematographer on the ‘spontaneous creativity' of the fan-fave ‘The Red Sowing'
One of the standout episodes of House of the Dragon's second season was "The Red Sowing," from director Loni Peristere and cinematographer Vanja Černjul. In a new Gold Derby interview, the artisans share their insights from the fan-favorite seventh episode, which centered on Queen Rhaenyra Targaryen (Emma D'Arcy) and her urgent quest to acquire more dragon riders.
House of the Dragon, the prequel series to HBO's megahit Game of Thrones, was created by Ryan Condal and author George R. R. Martin, with D'Arcy leading the ensemble cast alongside Emmy nominee Matt Smith (The Crown) as Prince Daemon Targaryen and Olivia Cooke as Alicent Hightower. Season 2 is eligible at the 2025 Emmys, and filming for Season 3 is underway right now in England.
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Gold Derby: Vanja, you've been quoted as saying that Season 2 was 'a testament to the marriage of meticulous planning and spontaneous creativity.' Talk us through what that means to you both.
Vanja Černjul: What was wonderful about House of the Dragon is that we were given a proper amount of time to really prepare and get ready. Loni's background is in visual effects, so he really knew how to take advantage of all the tools that we had available. We storyboarded a lot of it, and it was just a wonderful process. But then, I had situations where it was raining on location, but we were completely adapted to what was happening. We planned for a sunny summer day in Wales and a couple of times we had mist and clouds, and we learned that it worked even better for the scene that we couldn't plan it better.
Loni Peristere: There's a scene with Alicent, as she goes for her wander in the woods. We spent a lot of time growing flowers in this field, and we had this concept of Alicent going out into this ideal space as she tries to escape the Red Keep, maybe for the one last time, and we showed up on location, and it was pouring rain, and somehow it just made that scene a thousand times better to be pouring rain, and when she went into the water it was so much sadder as the water poured down on her. So that's that spontaneous creativity that we just embraced together. Similarly, you know the opening scene on the beach. We spent a meticulous amount of time in prep figuring out the right time to be there, so we could have this beautiful golden morning. And yet here we were again in the rain and the wind, and it just made it angry and it really lent to the scene to have Emma D'Arcy screaming through the wind. It just made it so much more powerful, and that is that spontaneous creativity that Vanja is referencing.
HBO
What was the most challenging part of the scene where Alicent wades into the Kingswood Lake?
Peristere: The best part of our relationship is that we really appreciate the craft of cinema. We were given an episode that had a sequence like this with no dialogue, but we needed to convey Alicent's emotional state — her desire for freedom. I think Vanja and I probably rejected 15 different lakes, to find this space, because what we wanted to feel is that as she comes out of the Kingswood and into this lake, we wanted to 'break out of jail,' with the physical cinematic trees of the Kingswood, and then break out and be faced with this epic baptismal visual. We literally had to do it with a tenth of the crew that House of the Dragon normally has, because it was such a difficult location.
Černjul: It was a good lesson in how sometimes the most impressive shot you can get just by being at the right place with just the camera. We decided to shoot the last couple of shots of the scene in the studio, so that beautiful shot of Olivia's hair going through the water; that was in-studio, and the two overhead shots also were in the studio.
Peristere: And again, spontaneous creativity, the beautiful shot of the hair underwater that we ran backwards, so it looked like her hair was growing towards the camera.
HBO
The sequence that everyone wants to talk about is of course Hugh Hammer claiming Vermithor. What was the most difficult part of getting that whole sequence right?
Černjul: There were many scenes in this episode where the script offered opportunities for a really cinematic approach, and Loni knew how to take advantage of that, because it's maybe one quarter of the episode that has no dialogue. When there's no dialogue, cinematography and sound really become the main language, the cinematic language that the narrative is communicated through. And that's a dream for a cinematographer. That's why this episode was so special for me, because of that particular sequence. Loni knew from the very beginning that he wanted to do a large section of the action in a oner. The most difficult challenge was orienting ourselves in this large blue screen space. We had a large stage, but the actual imagined space was supposed to be five times larger than the stage that we had, and the only physical things that were built were the plinth that you see in the background, and everything else was blue screen. So, we needed to orient ourselves, like once you determine the light source, for example. Where is that light source now, because you're supposed to be much deeper into the cave. And how large is the dragon in this large space. Orientation in the imagined space was challenging. I remember another challenge was that we really wanted a really raw handheld feel, and we wanted to film the whole sequence handheld. We fortunately had a rehearsal the day before, and Kieran was running so fast that it was really hard to keep up with him with a handheld camera, and the image became too shaky. We had amazing grip support, and our key grip came up with a solution real quick. He built the cable cam that supported the handheld camera. So, the shot ended up being a hybrid between handheld and cable cam, and we came up with that the day before.
Peristere: There was a lot of stunt folks that we lit on fire!
HBO
A highlight sequence is where Ulf is flying over King's Landing, and then Aemond retreats when he sees Rhaenyra at Dragonstone surrounded by dragons. Talk us through shooting the sequence.
Peristere: Vanja actually drew that frame himself. He hand drew it himself!
Černjul: The composition of all these characters in that frame was so important because it was going to be the last frame of the episode. We were trying for a while, and then I finally drew the characters and played with the composition in Photoshop.
Peristere: The idea that Rhaenyra was going to confront Aemond with a wall of dragons, a wall of nuclear weapons, changes the entire power dynamic of this entire series. What made it such a powerful thing was the writing, which gave us the opportunity to develop the visuals to support that. And that's what we really wanted to do when we read it. We knew that this is part of the narrative that is going to carry on for many seasons.
HBO
Loni, when you're witnessing a really committed performance from an actor, how do you collaborate and provide guidance or guardrails without compromising the intensity and the raw emotion that they're giving you?
Peristere: That's a really good question to relate to this particular sequence, because Kieran's communion with the dragon was written as a quiet moment in the script, where Vermithor and Hugh were going to come together slowly, and Rhaenyra was going to watch it. And then Kieran decided to scream at the dragon on his own, and I remember when he did that, I couldn't believe it. I was like, "Wow!" It's giving me shivers just thinking about it, like how that happens with actors that are really good at their craft. That's how you commune with Vermithor, the second biggest dragon in the Westeros universe. That's how you do it. You show that dragon that this little man is bigger than it, and it was mind-blowing. Those moments happen quite a lot. We have an incredible cast that offers these types of moments because they are that good, and no matter how much prep, no matter how much experience Vanja has in photography, or I have in visual effects, nothing can compare with how a great actor can transform the word.
HBO
You have both just come off a really long day on set, so you're in the thick of Season 3. Obviously, you can't spoil anything, but what can we generally expect?
Peristere: It's definitely everything that the fans want. Everything they've read in the book, everything that they know is coming. This season goes to 11.
Černjul: The thing that I noticed when I came back, and I was very happy to be back, was that all other key collaborators came back as well, which says a lot about how much we enjoyed this opportunity to be part of building this universe. It's really a family now. But the fact that everybody was happy to come back says a lot about the experience that we have on set.
The first two seasons of House of the Dragon are now streaming on HBO Max.
This interview has been edited for clarity and length.
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