Westeros

Over at the movie prop collecting podcast The Stuff Dreams Are Made Of, House of the Dragon co-creator Ryan Condal recently offered a window into the show’s production as the third season filming is hurtling to completion, detailing a tradition he’s started on the show.

Speaking with his co-host, David Mandel (Veep, Seinfeld), Condal confirmed that as the series moves into its later seasons, a growing number of principal characters are having their “series wrap”. Filmed sometime after the 13th or 14th based on remarks on a recent auction, Condal noted that in the last ten days or so of filming there were several such “wraps”. In the unforgiving world of Westeros, of course, we all know what that means. Condal, whose passion for props apparently amuses his show’s directors and writers, revealed that he has adopted a tradition inspired by Peter Jackson’s celebrated practice on The Lord of the Rings: sending off each departing actor with a significant prop tied to their character.

The latest episode of The Stuff Dreams Are Made Of podcast, co-hosted by House of the Dragon show runner Ryan Condal and his friend and fellow prop collector David Mandel—whose credits include Seinfeld, Veep, and White House Plumbers—features prosthetics artist Waldo Mason, who joins them to discuss his career, creative process, and some behind-the-scenes teases from House of the Dragon Season 3 where he works as the lead makeup special effects artist.

Waldo Mason is a legendary figure in prosthetics, with a career spanning over thirty years. His work has brought creatures, wounds, and faces to life in films like Saving Private Ryan, Band of Brothers, the Harry Potter series, Game of Thrones, and Rogue One. He’s also a worked on a number of Ridley Scott productions going back to Gladiator (he has some frank remarks to make about a certain star’s behavior on set at the time), as well as Kingdom of Heaven and Prometheus.

In the episode, there’s a fun moment where Ryan hints there’s something in Season 3 he’d like to “liberate” for his own collection—prompting Waldo to laugh and ask, “Well, is it large?” Apparently not, but Ryan and he would confer about there maybe needing to be two of what object he was interested in. Waldo also shares that he was particularly eager to sculpt two specific heads this season. One didn’t appear in the initial brief, to his disappointment—but it sounds like it made it into the revised plan after all. See below for our guess, and beware spoilers drawn from Fire and Blood!

The third and final day of the Heritage Auctions Game of Thrones prop and costume auction drew to a close, and did so with a bang (we’ve recapped Day 1 and Day 2 in previous posts). Mid-way through the auction of the last ~300 items, an auctioneer announced that it had now become the 2nd highest grossing Entertainment prop and costume auction in history, and was now chasing the legendary Debbie Reynold’s auction of 2011. While it did not meet that number, it came close with a total of $22,115,719 in sales including the buyers’ premiums.

And a big chunk of the $8.5 million raised on that final day came in the form of the touring Iron Throne which went for a whopping $1.49 million dollars. An absolutely stunning sum, by any measure, especially when you consider that HBO made more than one replica throne for exhibitions and tours… and that for a brief time you could order your own replica through the HBO Store for a cool $30,000. I strongly suspect we’ll be seeing another Iron Throne put to auction in the future, given this result.

Could this throne, displayed at Stockholm’s Royal Armoury back in 2014, be the same that sold at auction? A close inspection comparing it to Heritage’s photos certainly show no obvious diferences, but as we said, there were multiple of these and they may well all have been pretty exact replicas!

Day two of the Heritage Auctions Game of Thrones auction started off with a bang when the first new entry into the six-figure sale list was Jon’s Snow’s season 6 Night’s Watch ensemble with an included “action” Longclaw. Realized price? $337,500, becoming the most expensive piece sold to date.

A few other notable pieces hit the six-figure mark throughout the day. Oberyn Martell’s trial by combat ensemble was next to break the mark, followed by what to me was probably the most surprising result among the big sellers: the Lannister “family litter” used in season 5. It’s beautifully crafted, but I had no idea it’d draw that much attention. After that, the last item we saw to reach $100,000 before we went to bed was the “Shame” bell, which I recall David Mandel of the The Stuff Dreams Are Made Of podcast expected to do well.

And that wasn’t even half way through the six-figure sellers. When we checked the final results, lets just say our eyes went wide.

There are two distinct eras in the history of modern television: pre–Game of Thrones and post–Game of Thrones. Not only did Thrones reinvigorate fantasy as a mainstream television genre,
but the scope of its production resulted in an onscreen world that looked, sounded, and felt like a real place. Now, for the first time, the building blocks of that reality are available for public view and will shortly become
available for purchase by private collectors through Heritage Auctions’ HBO© Game of Thrones: The Auction.

At the September 16th press preview at Heritage Auctions’ New York location, Production coordinator Michelle Burns, Prop Master Chris Moore, and Wardrobe Mistress Donna Hughes were present to discuss their body of work before it’s scattered across private collections. All three were Thrones lifers, having been with the show from the unaired pilot to the series finale, a feat which fewer than 50 people can boast. Their work continued with the creation of the HBO Archive and the eventual curation of the auction collection.

“In 2018, HBO approached us to set up the HBO Archive and the first project was Game of Thrones,” said Moore. “We entered an 80,000 square foot warehouse with sealed crates floor to ceiling high, full of bodies, horses, carts, you name it. Armor. We’ve spent the past five years navigating our way through to the end, which you can see on the walls here.”

Those walls, festooned with house banners, shields, prop weapons, and more from all seasons of the show, set the visual history of Game of Thrones production on display in a way the public has never been able to access until now. In one section of hanging banners, Moore pointed out the difference between a House Lannister banner from Season 1, screen printed on a shiny red fabric with a thicker, plastic-looking fringe and a House Stark banner from Season 6, which had a thick tapestry texture, era-appropriate aging, and was visibly created with more authentic techniques.

Lannister and Stark banners from different seasons, created using different techniques.

Adam Savage, famed special effects fabricator best known for co-hosting Mythbusters, has a great Youtube series called Tested that’s been a great success. So much so that he’s been invited behind the scenes of a number of productions and effects houses over time… and the latest such behind-the-scenes tour involves none other than House of the Dragon.

Promising to be the first of several videos from the production, the introductory episode features master armourer Tim Lewis as he shows Adam swords and other blades that the production has made… including a look at what I am quite certain was their hero Ice while still in the earliest stages of creation.

As always, the highlight for us was the detailed, close-up look at Peter Johnsson’s remarkable Blackfyre and Dark Sister. Some amazing details in those, but a great surprise was learning that Corlys Velaryon’s dagger includes a crude astrolabe in the pommel, suitable to his place as a famed navigator and sailor.

Ryan Condal’s and David Mandel’s The Stuff Dreams Are Made Of podcast about movie and television prop collecting has returned after a mid-season hiatus, and it starts with a bang as Condal recruits none other than George R. R. Martin to discuss his own history as a collector, as well as just a wee bit of discussion of House of the Dragons at the end. Fans should find this one pretty interesting, in particular George’s feelings regarding the ideal adapters of his work going forward.

Discussion of Game of Thrones and House of the Dragon related matter begins around the 1 hour, 18 minute mark.

Last month, we shared that Ryan J. Condal’s and David H. Mandel’s podcast focused on film and television props, The Stuff Dreams Are Made Of, would have an episode featuring a head of department from House of the Dragon. That episode has now aired, and reveals (among other things) that the show’s master armourer and head of the armoury department (which provides all the weapons for the show) is Tim Lewis, a leading armourer in the film industry with credits such as The Outlaw King, The Old Guard, and Ridley Scott’s upcoming The Last Duel.

Lewis’s website includes an extensive gallery of some of his work across a number of films. In the course of the podcast, Condal and Lewis of course discussed a bit of what’s going on on House of the Dragon. More details below:

Swords made for The Outlaw King and Macbeth, designed by Tim Lewis.

The second season of Ryan J. Condal’s and David H. Mandel’s podcast about movie props, The Stuff Dreams Are Made Of, has launched. This first episode is ostensibly about the 40th anniversary of Raiders of the Lost Ark and the bullwhip famously wielded by Indiana Jones, but in the course of it some hints about House of the Dragons were provided by Condal.

The first piece of information concerned plans for future episodes, with Condal stating that he’ll be getting one of the members of the HotD production to be a guest to discuss what he or she does. He did promise it would be spoiler-free, because otherwise he’d be fired, but we can expect some interesting discussion in the weeks to come.

The second piece of information was that Condal confirmed there would be “bespoke” swords for “heroes”—that is, custom-made swords for leads and significant characters—but that the armorer that has been hired for the show has a vast supply of swords from past productions he has worked on that will be among those used for background performers and the like. In fact, according to Condal, the supply of past weaponry or armor that an armorer or swordsmith can bring to a production is part of the calculation when deciding who to hire.

So, whoever is responsible for the swords on House of the Dragon is someone with a great deal of experience making swords for film and television productions. We would guess that they are also UK based, as it would just be very convenient. Interestingly, Condal mentioned Terry English (Excalibur, Aliens) several times in the course of the podcast, but a look at his credits suggest he may be retired from the gruelling production schedule.