Gods. Kings. Fire. Blood.
DracARys App Promo
Client
HBO
We designed, shot and animated this promo for the HBO Max official augmented reality app "House of the Dragon: DracARys"--promoting the app ahead of the series premiere as part of the promotional campaign for House of the Dragon.
BGSTR takes AR
HOTD DracARys App Promo
Focused on the era of the House Targaryen, dragons were guaranteed to be an integral part of House of the Dragon and its launch campaign. The HBO creative marketing team brought us into the idea of designing a promotional video for their House of the Dragon: DracARys app, HBO Max’s official augmented reality app. We loved the concept of the app which allows fans to “hatch” and raise their own virtual dragons at home and made the project our own.
BGSTR steered the ship for the creation of this promo spot. Josh Norton, ECD/Founder, directed the shoot with assistance from Virgil Conklin, Vice President and Head of Production. In addition to shooting the footage, we managed the storyboarding, location scouting, casting, and wardrobe, giving us the ability to maintain the vision throughout production.
We worked closely with the app’s creators, utilizing the dragon models and pre-rendered dragon animations they provided. We retextured those models here in Cinema 4d* and then comped and placed them in situ, tracking them into our scenes. This agency collaboration effectively enabled consistent dragon imagery across both the app and promo spot.
We’ve been working with the Game of Thrones brand for over a decade so we have a shorthand with the client was hugely advantageous for this shoot. We’re visual thinkers, so we jumped into pre-production and once we knew the mechanics of the shoot we connected the dots with what we wanted the dragons to do.
HOTD DracARys App Promo
Being a one stop shop for the production of this promo had a lot of benefits for us and our client. The live shoot had a lot of moving parts, but everything ran efficiently and smoothly which gave us a lot of options for post-production. Likewise, our artists’ history working with the dragons empowered them to utilize The Mills’ dragon renderings from the app and comp them into the shots to beautifully tie the promo together.
When setting up each dragon shot in Cinema 4D we used the actual 4k footage for the dome light backgrounds and floor textures. This way all the diffuse, specular and shadows for each dragon would look as natural as possible and move seamlessly with the footage when comped.
HOTD DracARys App Promo
“It’s really terrific as a creative and a company when we’re able to be on both sides of production and make decisions that elevate both the shooting and what we capture in live action as well as the graphics in post,” Josh Norton, said. We delivered the spot to HBO to air alongside the app rollout and have been thrilled with the reception and seeing all these new baby dragons ARound town.
