How to Train Your Dragon: Recreating the Flight Scene That Made Us Believe

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Go behind the scenes of How to Train Your Dragon as director Dean DeBlois reveals how the team brought the legendary Test Drive sequence to life in the live-action adaptation. With Mason Thames stepping into Hiccup’s shoes and Toothless soaring once again, this deep dive explores the emotional and technical challenges of recreating one of the franchise’s most beloved scenes. From wire work and stunt coordination to cutting-edge visual effects, see how the heart of the story was reborn for a new generation. How to Train Your Dragon is now playing in theaters worldwide.

Transcript

00:00When we realized that we were going to be making this film for IMAX,

00:04it meant that we could really think about using the aspect ratio narratively.

00:18It's an iconic scene.

00:20Forbidden Friendship and Test Drive are the most iconic scenes from the animated series.

00:23And so we wanted to recreate it faithfully,

00:26but lean into everything that live action would give us in terms of immersion

00:30and the sense that a live cameraman was following or trying to follow the subjects.

00:37And so it was a tricky prospect from the start

00:40because we wanted Hiccup to feel like a jockey on a horse.

00:44And that meant that for the live action element of Mason Thames,

00:47he had to be moving with the dragon.

00:49So we built a 10-foot tall gimbal that would move on six axes.

00:54And on top of that, there was a robotic dragon,

00:58a bust essentially, chest, neck, and head,

01:00that was fully articulated and controllable off-screen

01:05by guys with joysticks or with animation that had been previously done.

01:11And we would put Mason up there,

01:13we would run the dragon through all of the movements,

01:15whether he was diving or ascending or rolling or pitching,

01:18and we would photograph Mason moving with the dragon.

01:22So you'd get all of that jostling in his body to make it feel really convincing.

01:26And putting it all together in the hands of our visual effects and animation team at Framestore

01:32meant that they could bring all the personality and the life to Toothless as well

01:36because he's very much a scene partner in this.

01:39He's as panicked as Hiccup is when they come detached.

01:43And it's really all about them finding a way forward just to fly intuitively

01:48and be symbiotic partners in flight.

01:50One thing that was really important with this scene was the breadth.

01:54We had done a helicopter scout around Iceland and the Faroe Islands

01:59and Scotland at the very beginning of the process.

02:01And we shot cameras, all of the coastlines, the sea stacks, the canyons.

02:07And this scene really sort of pulls it all together.

02:09We were able to cherry-pick our favorite bits

02:11and add them to our island of Berk, which is a real island, by the way.

02:16It's called Tindholmer, and it's in the Faroe Islands.

02:18But we've embellished it, we've increased its size,

02:21and we added all of the features that we needed to make this scene really work.

02:24One of the inspirations for it were some of those GoPro videos you see

02:29of people in wingsuits hurtling down near vertical cliff sides

02:35in Switzerland or something, and you get that first-person point of view

02:38of nearly colliding with rock formations.

02:41We wanted that energy, and we wanted to feel like we were with Hiccup

02:45in the saddle, riding on the back of Toothless.

02:48And so that was really kind of the inspiration,

02:52is just, can we grab the audience and have them lean forward,

02:55you know, on the seat of their pants, fully engaged,

02:57and also feeling what it must be like to fly a dragon.

03:00When we realized that we were going to be making this film for IMAX,

03:04it meant that we could really think about using the aspect ratio narratively.

03:08And there are just moments within the story

03:11where you either want to pop wide,

03:12and you're suddenly in this vast environment.

03:16So that was a no-brainer to have IMAX for the flight sequences

03:21because we really want it to feel experiential and visceral and palpable

03:26so that you feel like you're the dragon rider

03:28and you get the closest sense of what it is to fly

03:31while sitting in your movie theater seat.

03:46And there are just moments within the story

03:48You

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