[Exclusive] How 'Game of Thrones' Built Its Biggest Dragon

[Spoilers Ahead]

"The Dance of Dragons" was both title and theme of this past Sunday's Game of Thrones, as leaders all over Westeros and Essos were faced with navigating the delicate actions their precarious positions require. Perhaps the most literal manifestation of the episode's apt title came in Daenerys, Tyrion, and Ser Jorah's storyline, as a literal dragon—the until-now AWOL Drogon—danced into the middle of a crumbling battlefield in the middle of Meereen's coliseum. The scene sees the first instance in Game of Thrones where we actually see someone ride one of the magnificent beasts. Of course, we called up Jabbar Raisani, one of the show's VFX supervisors, to find out how they did it:

"It's called a Dragon Buck," Raisani tells The Creators Project, describing the big new toy that made the sequence possible. "It's a dragon-shaped green gimbal that [actress Emilia Clarke] gets on top of, and the whole gimbal moves itself to mimic what the dragon would do, so it's not just static." Surrounded by stunt coordinators and floating over a segment of Osuna's Plaza del Toros littered with safety mats, Emilia Clarke had to climb 12 feet in the air and dangle on the bucking body of the largest on-screen dragon in the series. "It was a big deal to get her up on that dragon because she had to be up in the air to make sure all the perspective was correct," Raisani explains.

Shooting for VFX was only half the battle—conveying the events' magnitude the actors was as vital to the scene as any new tool or set piece.Once the cast was gathered on the Spain set, they unveiled the pre-visualization of Drogon's landing and takeoff. "I think there were some expletives, some 'Holy shit's… Peter Dinklage was pretty clever,"
the VFX supervisor recalls. Sunday was the first time that he, director David Nutter and director of photography Rob McLachlan saw the entire sequence—footage, VFX, and sound—put together. "All of us were just blown away," he says.

While Raisani couldn't get into details regarding next week's finale, he promises (or maybe cautions), "Expect some more YouTube reaction videos of people watching the final episode." Check out images from "The Dance of Dragons" below.

Catch the Game of Thrones season finale, Season 5: Episode 10 - "Mother's Mercy," at 9PM EST on June 14, 2015, only on HBO.

[Editor's note: a previous version of is article referred to the 'Dragon Buck' as the 'Dragon Bus.']

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