House of the Dragon

The second season of House of the Dragon required several locations that have no real counterpart: the clifftop castle at Dragonstone, approached by a narrow zig-zag bridge; the Eyrie, perched on an alpine peak; and the ruined battlefield outside Rook's Rest, scoured by three fighting dragons. The production shot Dragonstone at a quarry with no sea nearby, used the mountain behind it as a base, and added the missing bridge, gate and crescent-shaped island digitally. The Grand Sept had already been constructed as a real-time LED-stage asset in season one; this time the production adapted it for the traditional pipeline, because the existing asset was already built to a high enough standard to carry over. At Driftmark, the drydock extended the backlot set with ships under repair, and the alpine landscape around the Eyrie was assembled from 3D geometry based on the art department's concepts. The crew used LiDAR and aerial photography to scan the real shooting location for the Battle of Rook's Rest, then replaced it with a fully CG battlefield so the aerial combat could be tracked and lit without limits. On the season, Chumak is credited as Senior matte painter, Pixomondo.