The image of Daenerys Targaryen soaring above Westeros on her mighty dragon, Drogon, is arguably the most powerful and defining visual of the HBO epic Game of Thrones. While the final scenes are a seamless marvel of visual effects (VFX) that cost the series millions—with the final season costing a reported $15 million per episode—the reality of creating the effect demanded immense physical commitment from actress Emilia Clarke.
As Clarke herself revealed in a behind-the-scenes video, the experience was anything but comfortable: “It felt like riding a wild horse, but with prosthetic arms and mechanical wind blowing in your face.”
The $700K ‘Buck’: A Technical Beast
The key to grounding the fantasy in a visceral reality was not solely CGI, but a sophisticated mechanical rig known to the crew as “the buck.” Starting as a simple wooden platform, the rig evolved into a massive, motion-controlled hydraulic machine—often compared to an advanced mechanical bull—as the dragon Drogon grew to the size of a 747 jet. While the full cost of the rig is challenging to isolate from the overall production budget, its custom, high-tech engineering placed its value in the hundreds of thousands, with some reports citing the investment for the final iteration close to $700,000.
This “buck” was designed to violently mimic a dragon’s unpredictable flight. Data from the set highlights the grueling physical demand on Clarke:
- Physical Challenge: The rig’s pre-programmed, independent moving parts were synchronized to Drogon’s digital flight path. Clarke had to anticipate and react to the buck’s erratic movements while trying to maintain the powerful, majestic demeanor of the Mother of Dragons.
- The Unscripted Fall: The sheer violence of the motion led to real-life slips, including a moment when Clarke once fell off the dragon’s back.
- Time vs. Product: According to reports, achieving just 10 seconds of usable screen time on the advanced dragon rig could take up to three days of continuous shooting, a testament to the complexity of the actor integration.
The Language and the Legacy
Adding to the complexity was the requirement for Clarke to deliver complex, emotionally charged speeches in the fictional languages of Dothraki or High Valyrian while being aggressively shaken and blasted with industrial wind fans. This challenging blend of performance and physical execution—delivering foreign language dialogue with conviction under immense duress—is one of the unsung heroes of the show’s acting.
The results of this grueling work became some of the most iconic moments in television history, none more pivotal than the scene in the episode “The Dance of Dragons” (Season 5, Episode 9), where Daenerys first flies Drogon out of the fighting pit in Meereen to escape the Sons of the Harpy. This moment instantly cemented the character’s status and set a new standard for action in fantasy television. The physical-based approach of the “buck” rig has since been adopted as an industry standard, being used and refined for the dragon-riding sequences in the Game of Thrones spin-off series, House of the Dragon.