Game of Thrones shoots VFX-heavy Daenerys scenes in Belfast studio! 

season seven production is supposed to wrap in about a month, and all location shooting appears to be over and done with. With their long stay in Spain and brief stint in Croatia concluded before the winter solstice, the only thing that remained was a few weeks of filming in Iceland. But, as of last week, that was over too.

As shooting in open locations has been put to bed, one might expect our regular glimpses into the production to now cease. Yet one would be wrong. We still managed to get a look at what they are shooting for the remainder of this season —not in an open location, but in the show’s Belfast headquarters: Titanic Studios. Expect dragons!

A local fan of the show, Kevin Patterson, passed near the

studios in Belfast a few days ago and then again today, after which he shared what he saw there:

Horses,smoke & dothraki weapons.No actors seen and in public place pic.twitter.com/Bk5f5hwJmQ

Today’s Titanic studio spot is an enormous green block with climbing holds.Dragon? pic.twitter.com/Cq4Ie9jIhs

On January 30th, Mr. Patterson witnessed horses, smoke and Dothraki weapons on the parking lot of the studio. His photo also shows a green screen for chroma keying purposes, as well as some sort of soil to cover the pavement (because asphalt doesn’t look particularly medieval.) Today’s picture is more interesting, as it shows the to-be-green-screened-out torso of a dragon for Emilia Clarke to ride. It may not be as impressive as witnessing the fully realized CG dragon once the season premieres, but it should give us an idea of Drogon’s size in season seven. I thought Dany’s favorite dragon had already grown to a massive size in season six, but this is in another league.

Can we place this in any context? Sure we can. But it involves spoilers, so beware!

Drogon. Dothraki weapons and horses. Semi-arid soil. Green screens. If I was forced to make an educated guess, I’d bet what we’re seeing here is the VFX-focused follow-up to the one month-long shoot at Malpartida. The Spanish location was used for what may be next season’s biggest action setpiece, a battle that pits Daenerys against Jaime. As one would expect for a dragonrider, Emilia Clarke didn’t do much shooting on the ground, so her portions of the battle had to be filmed elsewhere… And I believe that’s what we’re seeing here, perhaps alongside other VFX-heavy stunts involving mounted Dothraki.

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That head looks almost as big as a car. How big is the actual dragon? I’m very much looking forward to this big battle.

Yes, finally some Emilia news ! I was beginning to suffer from severe queen news deprivation !

And that’s definitely Drogon’s back, resembles the green mechanical “bull” they used in season 6 but that one didn’t seem have any handles or ‘scales’. Looks like they’re using some kind of surface scattering technique. Mommy’s excited !

It is not a head. It’s a torso. You can see the “roots” of where the wings would spring out. Dany sits just above, on Drogon’s back. This is just a small part of Drogon, but bigger than just the head.

I hadn’t seen yesterday’s tweet about the Dothraki and horses, so I assumed today’s filming with the big green-screen dragon was for the battle Beyond the Wall. But putting them together makes sense and, I agree with Luka, this is probably for the ambush scene. By the Gods, though, Drogon is ginormous now. If this is his torso, I assume his neck has gotten bigger too. How is Dany supposed to straddle him? It’s like straddling the top of an SUV – it can’t be comfortable or safe. I wonder if Tyrion will put his saddle-making skills to use again and come up with something for Dany to use while riding Drogon. BTW, I love that it’s now February and we’re still getting bits of filming spoilers!

Hmm interesting, especially since Emilia was spotted at a gym yesterday by a guy who lives in California. No picture though, so we can’t know for sure if it was her or not (or where).

But there are other people who can be around the dragons, so who knows what they’re filming if Emilia isn’t there..

Don’t know is this should be covered or not, so just to be sure – Kit, Iain and Rory were spotted in Belfast during the weekend, but that’s several days ago so they could’ve left too.

Ok, but how big are the other two dragons now? Drogon is hogging up all the spotlight as usual. Such a selfish big brother 😛

Wow that’s pretty damn big, I wonder if Emilia has to be lifted onto it as I could see her falling off something that high.

Isn’t that the case though with all big brothers? Always hogging the spotlight.

I’m not going to complain about it as, you know, ‘bigger the better,’ but unless we don’t see the dragons until episode 3 (*) a huge growth spurt may feel quicker than even the others between seasons. Knowing what (we think) we know it seems reasonable to expect some shots of them in episode 1, which would be a show time span of just crossing the sea. Maybe we won’t see them though, or they could be flying in the distance. Meh, it won’t bother me though. I’d just think of it for a second and let it go.

I mention episode 3 since that’s when we believe Jon arrives at Dragonstone and those pictures that pretty much confirm he and Davos see a dragon while ascending the stairs.

I know they have their reasons, but everytime I see the dragons getting bigger and more well made I feel so sad about that they obviously don’t want to spend the money or time to have the direwolves more present. The finding of the wolves was what drew me into the series and I’m forever going to mourn how they’ve been sidelined, especially since I don’t care all that much for the dragons, other than that they’re going to be useful in hopefully defeating the white walkers.

That picture of Jon and Davos (understandably) ducking when a dragon swoops over them just makes me wish for Dany to meet and be intimidated by Ghost, and Tyrion to be impressed by his size, lol. It will probably never happen, but I can dream about Jon getting to use his mythical creature as a threat or intimidating tool sometime…

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