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House of the Dragon
Production Title: House of the Dragon
Location: V Stage, Leavesden, UK
Studio: HBO, Warner Brothers
Production Budget: 100 Million+
Delivery Partners: Lux Machina
Our Service Delivery: MARS On Set
Date Delivered: 2021
Project Background
House of the Dragon is the highly anticipated prequel to the acclaimed fantasy drama series Game of Thrones, created by George R. R. Martin and Ryan Condal – produced for HBO.
What We Did
The team at MARS collaborated with Lux Machina to provide Virtual Production expertise for the total 15 strong virtual production crew on set at Warner Bros. Studios Leavesden V Stage, UK. The roles we provided included Unreal Engine supervisors, Unreal Engine artists, video engineers and camera tracking engineers, present on set for 8 months. House of the Dragon pushed the boundaries of virtual production, utilising real-time rendered Unreal Engine scenes running on the massive LED Volume using a matrix of more than 2,600 LED panels – one of the largest in the world at that time.
Our team were critical in supporting this ambitious production, with numerous scenes and shots requiring virtual production shooting. Key for the production was realistically recreating locations that were physically impossible to access or bring a film production crew to. Other examples of scenes included creating pickup-shots based on locations that proved challenging to shoot in in the real world. One such location was Monsanto, Portugal – a world heritage site, which proved to be difficult to shoot at due to bad weather conditions. Using HDRI captured imagery from Monsanto the team could therefore re-create the lighting of Monsanto and bring the scene to life in a virtual production environment inside the Volume.
The Results
To be part of such a prestigious and long-awaited project was an incredible opportunity and ensured a leveling up in the experience base of the team at MARS. It is this experience and Hollywood level expertise that we bring to the ongoing projects we deliver on various stages around Europe and at our permanent facility at MARS Volume.
