House of the Dragon puts characters and story first: “Visuals will follow”

House of the Dragon, HBO’s follow-up to Game of Thrones, is coming down the pipe. The show is set some 200 years before the story we know, during a brutal civil war known as the Dance of the Dragons. Armies will clash, family members will turn on each other and dragons will fight each other in the skies above Westeros. It should be a good time.

Recently, director Greg Yaitanes — who worked on shows like House, Lost and Frank Herbert’s Children of Dune — appeared on The Golden Hours podcast to discuss his work on the show; he directed the second, third and tenth episodes of the first season, and has already seen seven episodes. “I’m excited for the world to see it.”

House of the Dragon has “an enormous scope to it”

Shooting on House of the Dragon wrapped not long ago, and although COVID made things difficult, somehow the show managed to get through the whole thing without shutting down. Now, the crew is working on post-production, which is mostly being overseen by Miguel Sapochnik, one of two showrunners on the series.

Sapochnik directed some of the best episodes of Game of Thrones, including “Hardhome,” “Battle of the Bastards” and “The Winds of Winter,” so fans will be happy to know that’s handing “the physical production and the visual side of this thing.” Meanwhile, showrunner Ryan Condal is “the keeper of the story and the lore and everything Game of Thrones…The storytelling side is where they intermesh. So there’s a great dance between them and it was great watching their collaboration evolve over the course of the season.”

Even though Miguel Sapochnik is in charge of the look of the show, Yaitanes assures us that he has his priorities straight. “The priority list from Miguel, it was always ‘character, story, and visuals will follow’…The show has enormous scope to it…there’s just so much happening in every single frame. The character and story is where I always come from, and the visuals chase that, because I feel like they need to be in support of what the scene is doing.”

House of the Dragon takes inspiration for “the early seasons” of Game of Thrones

Yaitanes sounds like he was a proper superfan of Game of Thrones before signing on to House of the Dragon. He’s watched the original series through three times, and understands that the show lives “in the looks and the glances and the moments and the quiet.” That bodes well for fans who want House of the Dragon to focus on character and drama first. Even though House of the Dragon is starting with a much higher budget than Game of Thrones did, the team is trying to keep things grounded. “Some of the…ingenuity they had, especially in the early seasons, really lent themselves to how we were going to make the show.”

It sounds like they’re going to avoid some of the problems that plagued the final season of the original show, namely the accelerated pace. “I wish [Game of Thrones] had gone on for a couple more seasons and spread out that story, because it was so much and so intense, I needed more than a week to digest one of those moves,” Yaitanes said.

Yaitanes also geeks out over the lore. Watching the original show through again, he was excited when characters mentioned events that occurred during the Dance of the Dragons, and realized that he could film some of those moments. “They’re talking about our show all throughout the series. They’re talking about this time of the Targaryen dynasty all throughout the original Game of Thrones.” He was particularly excited when people got to see the show’s take on the Iron Throne, which looked a lot more dangerous 200 years ago.

The characters on House of the Dragon will be complex: “Everybody’s a contradiction”

Another thing House of the Dragon will borrow from the original show is its ensemble nature; there are a ton of characters in this series, which was something Yaitanes about Game of Thrones. “When somebody was having a great season of material and performance, I was right there and my guts were being ripped out.”

Yaitanes is so committed to the idea of an ensemble that he resisted naming his favorite Game of Thrones characters, but did single out Tyrion and Littlefinger when pressed. But he can find value in any character, even a scumbag like Joffrey. Yaitanes said he enjoyed the few moments Joffrey showed vulnerability, like his death scene or when he retreated from the Battle of Blackwater. “I love when characters are messy and conflicted…Everybody’s a contradiction. People are good and bad and kind and mean….that’s what makes a character great.”

The only question left to answer is when House of the Dragon will be coming out. Given how complicated the special effects will be — there are a lot of dragons in this story — Yaitanes thinks that “[p]ost-production and visual effects will be going on, I imagine, for quite a while.”

At least we’ll know “soon,” according to George R.R. Martin:

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