The House of the Dragon finale was based entirely in and around Dragonstone. The episode familiarised audiences with the fictional island’s nooks and crannies and shooting it was no small feat. The latest episode of the The House That Dragons Built calls it “a mountainous undertaking”. Fitting since the shoot took place on a mountain in Monsanto, Portugal.
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The director of the finale, Greg Yaitanes, recalled, “We literally took over the side of a mountain and built infrastructure, storage, ways to feed people, everything; to bathrooms to equipment, to be able to take over Monsanto to be able to film the work.”
The supervising art director, Dominic Masters, said, “The access[ibility] was very bad; we had to helicopter in the whole unit.” They also had to take help from the Air Force. “We built an amazing mini base in the middle of the castle. The cranes, the platforms, everything was flown”.
The director of photography of the finale, Pepe Avila del Pino, put everything into perspective, “Just being there gives everyone an understanding of the scope of the show we’re making. Once you’re on top of a mountain at sunrise, and you see nothing but like an amazing foggy horizon, an endless view of the sky with this crazy rock formation, and you are like, okay yeah, this is unique, and this is epic, and there’s something larger than life and the stories worth telling.”
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