‘How to Train Your Dragon’ director breaks down Toothless flying scene

Spontaneous applause in the middle of the film are a relatively rare honor in the cinema today.

But, a moment there is so good in the remake of action live from How to train your dragon that it made the public burst into each screening of the film which Weekly entertainment was at. The scene in question is essential both for the original 2010 animation and the new film, and presents Hiccup (Mason Thames) and its beloved Night Fury dragon, in Toardmou, learning to fly together. Presented on the emblematic partition of John Powell, the two take their first full and successful flight, hovering through the sea and the sky and cement their lasting friendship once and for all. (Hey, we don’t cry, you cry!)

In advance, the scriptwriter-director Dean Deblois decomposes exactly how he gave life at the epic moment in all his live glory.

Assemble the team

“Well, it started with a universal phone call to talk about how they thought they kicked the tires on an idea of ​​revisiting How to train your dragonReinventing him, and this first conversation really concerned the dragons, “recalls Deblois.

“How are we going to sell this with human actors on the screen in built sets and a shooting on site?” He adds. “How could we really mix them and not lose the personalities and features that define them?”

The “real first step” was then to do a lot of design work with the Société de Visuelles Frametore; The visual effect supervisor, Christian Manz; And the animation supervisor, Glen McIntosh, which comes from the industrial light and magic of George Lucas and Jurassic fame. “He brought this kind of paleontology and study of the movement of great animals to the wonderful creation of a fanciful character for which Frametore is really known,” explains Deblois about McIntosh.

Hatching the dragons

From there, they had to give life to the dragons, particularly emphasizing Krokmou, of course. “From the start, we watched the animated film and talk about the animal references that we had for each specific dragon, which defined who they were in terms of temperament, but also in terms of design,” says Deblois.

For example, Astrid’s dragon, a deadly Nadder, is based on tropical birds, so it is curious, moves quickly and has bright colors. While the Gronckle, the Dragon of Fishlegs, “could be a little more lazy and Morse or Hippopotamus, and just as capricious, but much more adorable in its Bulldog type trends”, explains Deblois.

Even in animated films, Krokmou is different from other dragons, avoiding the more reptilian look than other animals have. Several different species have inspired the favorite of fans, but Deblois quotes a black panther as the main inspiration for its global aesthetics. However, this created a challenge when he gives him live live.

“While we are starting to experiment and we took these giant eyes and reduce them to something that could be more credible in the real world, with each little increment that we have lost more and more swords,” said Deblois, admitting that the process was “a lot of tests and errors at the beginning”.

“So it was all these adjustments. It’s like, okay, well I guess we need the big mouth and that we need ear plates and we need big eyes,” he said. “So, a large part of the work was just devoted to the right base, such as skeleton, muscle and texture of the skin with its iridescent scales, and try to give it a lot of credible characteristics in addition to something we knew must have an exaggerated expression and an exaggerated facial design.”

It’s time to fly

Creative team? Check. Star Mason Thames as hiccups? Check. Toothless? Check. The only thing to do? “Then we had to understand how we are going to fly these things and fly with humans on the back,” explains Deblois. “It was a long period of development where we worked with truly incredible people who build cardanals and configurations for humans to be in other films.”

More specifically, the filmmaker says that the objective was that he feels as if Hiccup is a jockey on a horse, moving in synchronization with the movements of the animal. “It finally led to the construction of this giant machine, which measures about eight or 10 feet high, and it moves on pistons, and it therefore moves in six different axes depending on what we need the dragon to do,” he explains. But that was not all. “In addition to that, there was a body of animatronic dragon, a neck and head on which we put a saddle,” says Deblois, adding: “When Mason was sitting in the saddle and holds, he has these small handles which are affixed to the neck of Kowpmou.”

The director continues: “Mason would actually move everything we did, because we could control him from a distance and on the spot, if the dragon rose, or the banks or rolled, all these movements would affect Mason. He therefore moved with the dragon. He was not only in a saddle and was a little offbeat, as we saw in other productions.

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Thank you for the music

Speaking of the Thames, while the 17-year-old star visualizes her dog, Pitbull-Boxer Mix Brish, for more emotional scenes with Krokmou, he needed a little more for the flight sequence. It was his mother’s idea to play the film’s score, in the composer back John Powell, on the set of the Thames to listen to while they film it.

“So, during this scene, I listen to music, and it’s absolutely crazy,” he said. “It helped enormously because in the big diagram of it, I am on a gimbal with a bunch of blue screens with blowing hair blowing on my face, trying to appear cool on a dragon.”

Even again, when he admits that “it was such a special moment in the shooting” of this scene as a whole, he still did not know exactly what to expect when he looked at the final product for the first time. “You never know what it will look like. I had no idea, but after seeing the film and saw this scene, it made me breathe. For me, I worked with something that was not there, and to see a dragon, and it was so real – it was crazy.”

We are no longer in Westeros

As for shooting the sequence of large flights (or even one of the many dragon flights in the film), Deblois says that an interior blue screen has been used. However, he adds: “We were very precise with the shots, after having previewed each plan, so we knew exactly what the camera was going to do and what the rider would do.”

Shorts involving water have been made in a submarine reservoir in the famous Pinewood studios in London. All this, however, contrasts with most of the film, which was shot in Belfast, Ireland. More specifically in Titanic Studios, on the same site than another famous series involving dragons – Game of Thrones. “When we arrived, King’s Landing was always stood in the back and we say to ourselves:” Take it out of here “”, says Deblois laughing.

Although the flight sequences call for blue screen and VFX Magic, Deblois, which was co -director or director of the three animated originals, is delighted to tell us how much the Arena of the Dragon Formation, the House of the Dragon House, of the Big Hall of Berk, the house of Berk, Berk, Berk.

All in a working day

Seeing everything – in particular the Magic Magical flight and Hoquets – meeting was “such an exciting process” and the craziest dreams of Deblois, he says. “It didn’t disappoint. I was screaming inside,” he said, doing the right time.

But, to be fair, he says he was “dizzy” all the time. “Every morning, we showed up and being and everyone was drinking his coffee, and I simply walked together as well as with wide eyes, touching everything,” he said. “So much love has been put in all the details, and I love it.”

And Deblois was not the only one. From the first day on the set, he said: “There was just a feeling of childish wonder” for everyone among the actors and the team, the veteran or the beginner. He puts him on an unlikely mantra which he gave the first day. “I just said that I do not know how this film will do in theaters. I do not know how the public will react there, but I can promise you in the end, it will be something you are proud of, and you can take your family and feel that it was worth all the time spent in evenings and weekends,” he said. “It is a whole sacrifice when you enter these filming filming. People work very hard, very long days, and it can weigh you physically and in other aspects of your life, but when it is a good film, it is all worth it.”