'How to Train Your Dragon' recreates the iconic Toothless boop

I just wanted to jump straight in to what is arguably the most famous scene in the How to Train Your Dragon series

which is the boop scene. It's the little boop. And recreating that scene must have been quite a challenge in live action

Can you take me through how you approached that particular scene? Because I think it's in a lot of people's hearts that love the series

Well, we wanted to recreate as faithfully as we could that scene through live action on a stage with our Cove set

but almost shot for shot. That exact moment, and also later, the test drive scene

when they're flying over the clouds. We wanted those to be really faithful as a tribute to the fans

And the way that we achieved it, really, was relying very heavily upon our team of puppeteers

namely Tom Wilton, who was operating our Toothless. So we had a foam head for Toothless, and we had a body and a tail

and they had worked out, his puppeteering partner, Sarah had worked out kind of the footsteps and the sand and the path between all of the drawn lines and how that was going to work And it just became this dance It was wonderful because Mason has a background in ballet

It probably looks just like I'm stepping over some stuff. But going into it, we had like about a week and a half of training and practicing that with getting every step on each note for the song

Because we had the song playing. And every single thing, it was a dance

and I think ballet really helped with that in getting that done. So just figuring out how they were going to move together

and how Toothless was behaving within the scene, beautifully puppeteered by Tom Wilton

and leading up to that moment where there's a hesitation and a touch

But when we started playing the music, John Powell's music on top of it

the whole stage kind of just got really quiet and it transformed and it felt like a moment of real wonder

in the midst of all of this chaos of filmmaking, where people felt like they were making something special

And you also have Jared Butler, who is in full This Is Sparta mode but as a Viking king Yes It right here right now What was it like seeing that character brought to life through Butler who seems to have had the best time ever

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I got to see him in costume for the first time when we were shooting another scene just

next door, and I walked over to the soundstage, and he walked in massive, like they'd managed

to expand his frame with the giant horns and the cape and everything under it, and he was

just in character. I had been talking to Jerry earlier that day, and by the time he walked in, he couldn't help but be stoic

And he felt the burden, like the physical burden, but also the burden of his mission and who he was as a failing parent and a failing Viking chief not able to find the dragon's nest

And it was wonderful, because a couple lines in, he just said, take this thing off of me, it's so heavy

But I felt really convinced that this wasn't Jerry Butler at a Renaissance fair

He was definitely our Viking chief. Nico Astrid gets to kick absolute butt

I love her fighting style in this movie. I think at one point you get to chop a tooth with an axe What did you love about your fighting style in this movie I mean that scene particularly was my own It was just me on set for the filming of that stuff

And it was my own personal rage room. It was so fun

It was really... I think initially it was something that I found incredibly daunting

because it just felt quite... There was something about yelling really loudly

and flailing your arms around. I found it actually really vulnerable. But once we started doing it, that stuff was the most rewarding by miles

And I also think that when I watch the film, I always kind of feel very proud of myself

and proud of all of the work that we put in to make sure that she looks really strong and she feels really strong

and so that, you know, kids can watch it. And she's kind of, at least to me

she kind of feels like the action hero of it in that sense