When it comes to series like Dragon Housethere’s a whole range of elements you can expect to see onscreen: winged beasts, political intrigue, shocking deaths… Still, there are no “distinct dance moves” in anyone’s top ten, and yet the director of the series Claire Kilner had to devote quite a lot of time to this particular aspect Game of Thrones prequel series.
In an interview with Collider, Kilner revealed our own Teresa Lakson how the wedding party scene was filmed in episode 5 titled “We Light the Way”. During an interview, the director revealed that she was “horrified” when she read the script because she immediately realized how difficult it would be to assemble this scene. There was so much going on that it took the crew nine days to film it.
Fundamentals of the Targaryen Dance
Kilner said that only the scene at the table with King Viserys (Paddy Considine) was pretty hard to nail down as they had to shoot from each character’s point of view and there were ten to twelve people at the table. They had to decide on the seating arrangement, and then take into account all the dancing that takes place on the stage. Kilner emphasizes that we, the audience, don’t think much about it, but they had to really get into this artistic aspect:
“[T]Another thing that no one really thought about is if they’re dancing and I’m like, “What is a dance out of this world?” We had never seen anything like it before, so I worked with choreographer Francesca Janes again. We went to Pineapple Studios and worked with some of her dancers and we thought maybe we should think about weird birds or something, prehistoric birds like what do they look like? How do they move? And so we evolved the dance from that, and I think when we first did it, it went too far. It was too modern dance, so we had to bring it back a bit. But it was a lot of fun and exciting to develop it, and then we had to teach it to Millie. [Alcock]and – well, we had to teach it to everyone – and then we got dancers, and I had to kind of push to get dancers, because I wanted good dancers.”
Kilner also adds that after they finished dancing, it was time to work on the actors’ shoes and costumes because they had to endure dance moves that took several takes and several hours to complete. The director stated that despite all the work, she “really enjoyed the shots where everyone puts their hands up” and that she also enjoyed filming it. But that was not all:
“So, then I decided that everything on the dance floor should be filmed with a stabilization camera. So, you know, that was difficult too, because we kind of do 360 turns with a steady cam, and of course the King’s Table is in sight. So all of our top performers had to be there, so they were very patient with us.”
You can remember the wedding in “We Light The Way” with the promo video below. All episodes Dragon House available for streaming on Max.
Source: Collider
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