Adapting ASOIAF For the Screen...

[Zulofritter]

An example of taking the book POVs waaay too far is Excalibur’s suggestion of ending each POV with a FADE OUT. Except that FADE OUTS mean something very, very specific on-screen – not a POV change.

Yeah, a fade out might be too much, as well as all the other bells and whistles.

What you're talking about is a directorial choice of how to frame shots, that a screenwriter doesn't get a say in. Script POV doesn’t mean ‘alone in the scene’ – it’s where what the audience learns is limited to what a POV character knows or discovers in the course of the story. Short POV shifts to secondary characters are extremely common in all movies and TV shows – there’s the CUT TO the villain (where we find out his diabolical plan); the CUT TO the psychopath waiting behind a door the main character may be about to step through, etc. The novels are prevented from doing any of that, because they’re strictly limited POV where we see everything through the character’s eyes - but there's no reason why a TV series shouldn't.

This just indicates how common an omniscent POV is in movies and TV. This series could do that, but I think a lot would be lost.

There's a slight difference, though. If you have several scenes where you see what the villan is up to, that's a seperate POV, and a very acceptable one. If you see only one scene of a psycho behind a door to increase the suspense, you're delving into an omniscent POV.

[Zulofritter]

I didn't have room for Dany's wedding in the first episode; the 11th episode was the only one that was longer. Without changing the order of anything, Dany is in Pentos in episode 1, the wedding is episode 2, she's pregnant at the end of 3, 4 & 5 are skipped, Viserys is smacked in 6, 7 is skipped, Viserys is crowned at the end of 8, 9 is skipped, the assassination attempt is in 10, Mirri is found, and Drogo is injured in 11, and Drogo dies and the dragons are born in 12. So until the last two episodes, she doesn't really dominate the series the way you think she might. Considering the page counts, it should be easy to split up the events so that she appears in each episode, though you don't want the assassination to happen before it's planned.

[PhoenixFlame]

Yay, glad to see this puppy back! I will go from person to person.

Excalibur1027

You certainly have a very nice vision! I really like some of the choices you've made. Some peices that really intrigued me wth mental images were like

Next, we see some snippets of Robert fighting. After a while, the recklessness in which he’s regarding his opponents and the pure hatred and zeal in his eyes makes it clear to the viewer that he’s trying, desperately, to make his way towards someone we can’t see yet. Before this person comes into view (we get a vague sight of Rhaegar’s armor/chest) the scene switches back again.

.

This could be an amazing scene, really conveying emotion. It takes skill to convey something merely with emotions and not by outright saying it, but when done well it can be amazing. Umm...no thrashing, but an example I recall is from that movie Balto. Yes, it was silly at points but the scene that sticks in my mind is when Balto gets thrown off the cliff and awakes to see a white wolf standing there. Without saying anything, you have the feeling that the wolf is his mother. There is nothing said. All that happens is that Balto gets up and howls with her. But somehow, you just know. This could be VERY useful in ASOIAF. I mean, we don't have 100+ hours to say everything. Some of it just has to be understood.

Your ideas are reaaly good. However, I have a few quibbles. The biggest one would be "too much too fast." I remember when I started reading ASOIAF, I was flipping around to keep it all straight in my head. It takes a bit for the information to take on substance. The main the I'd be a bit nervous about would be hitting too much too fast and having people confused. Of course people aren't going to grab everything at the onset but still, there should be enough that they aren't clutching their heads. Please, do not take me as overly critical, I'm just making suggestions. A few things that could be trimmed:

- Cersei and Robert marrying. It'll be obvious later on in Winterfell that they're hitched. The focus is the war. Dialogue and expression will make it clear Robert married her after the war and dislikes her.

- Jaime smiling on the throne. That can be shown later. At the moment, it should be enough to know that he killed Aerys. Jaime sitting on the throne at the moment means nothing. Oooh, he popped down for a moment. Eddard can go into it later. It might even make it more powerful when it's treated as it's own thing rather than a glimpse in many scenes.

- Robert vs. Rhaegar. We know they were on the battlefield and since Robert makes an appearance, we know he won. If a flashback of the actual fight is shown later, once we know more, it can have MUCH more power.

- Lyanna screaming Eddard. At the moment, it's going to be "wha? Why is some woman screaming?" If he snaps out of his memory then it could be thought that's what pulled him out. I say leave the Lyanna bit until later.

- Lyanna and Ned. The moment it's put in reads a bit awkwardly to me. It might just be pushing the flashback quota a bit too. I say save it and give the audience more time to grow attatched to the characters. That way when the scene comes, it will be much more poignant.

Zulofritter

First off, the statement that the show should not break from the POV tradition is silly. In film, an unreliable narrator is done much differently than in a book. It has to be. With a film you see it. With a book you have to count on the POV. Sometimes you just have to break a few eggs. Not everything can translate. What is real and what is legend...sometimes you just have to make up your mind. Until Martin says otherwise, I take it that Robert and Rhaegar beat the snot out of each other before Robert smashed him to peices. There are POV's in television but it's handeled differently. Take for example Desperate Housewives. It's done naturally and often leaps to other characters, even though, say Lynette, is the character that is currently doing something important. The characters are unreliable but not the POV per se. Such as Susan getting the wrong message from something that occurs. You know the truth but Susan does not.

I'm not attacking you-- I'm very sorry if I sound that way. I like your ideas for where each episode starts and ends.

michael jon snow

I don't see the point of keeping the camera tied to a certain character. You'll start losing the development of sorrounding supporting characters. I do, however, muchly like your idea about unrelable memories. The Hound pulling away from Sansa but Sansa later remembering it as a kiss could work realllly well. You can't hear her thoughts-- that would be a fine way to express it. And it would give my S/S fangirl heart a chance to flutter and wave screencaps at my anti-S/S friend.

Tysha

We seem to have many similar ideas. Dany needs to be in the first episode, even if it's only briefly, to counteract her being a threat. "But she's so cuuuute." Her wedding can be in the second episode. The short Others thing I also agree with. It's not going to take much to show that the Others could make Christopher Walken scared silly. I mean, if I saw a tall, ice-eyed figure with a ragged cloak and a bigt sword who lops people to peices, I'm going to guess this dude does not have much faith in the Yuletide season. I also see the advantage of nudging back the wolf discovery. I still think the epi needs to end with Bran getting chucked though.

Antacid

You got a fine screenwriting head on your shoulders. The idea of pushing the wolfcubs back some is VERY good. I heavily agree with the POV thing as well. However, I do agree with some others that Dany's wedding could be left for episode 2. But definitly show her in the first episode.

[Michael Jon Snow]

No, what you're talking about with the camera moving through the door is a clear POV shift. It doesn't matter whether we hear muffled dialogue - we're being given information the main POV character doesn't know about. That never happens in the books.

I understand were you're coming from, but it's a false preconception. Getting the feel of the books actually means changing the structure to fit the pros and cons of a visual medium. A visual POV change is accomplished instantaneously by cutting to an establishing shot of a different character. Extra direction, that's only there because it helps reflect the written version, may 'stick out' and detract from the story.

Then we are arguing from different premises. I would not consider every camera change to be a POV change. I would consider a POV change to be when they change from one setting to another and change the focus on who the camera is "following around" Within each POV segment there would be many camera changes and perhaps even several scenes that might take place over several days. As an example, when Jon is with the Halfhand, there are several scenes that take place within that one chapter. After leaving the archer to hold the pass, they send Ebben off another direction on horse back, then Stonesnake takes off on foot. Then Jon and the Halfhand start the big fire, then they go through the waterfall and the cave and come out the other side of the mountain and have the confrontation with the wildlings and Jon kills the Halfhand. All of this is in a single chapter. This could be done in as one segment focused on Jon. And then switch POV to Bran and cover the scenes that happen there. Then change POV again.

I am using POV as a broader sense, not simply referring to the angle of the camera. I am talking about grouping scenes together about a single chr and only presenting information that the chr experiences. An example from the book might be during the Red Wedding. As the band is playing the camera is moving around the room and capturing the experience from many angles. From a couple of those angles the camera sees that one of the Freys has chain-mail poking out from the collar of his shirt. Another shot reveals that one of the musicians is hiding a crossbow behind his seat. These two little clues can help build the suspense without violating the POV. By the end of the day Cat knows that the Freys were wearing mail and that among the musicians were crossbowmen posing as musicians.

This would be very much driven by the way the script is written. The only directing rule would be that during “Jon’s†POV, the director can use any camera angle except over the shoulder of any character other than Jon. I am speaking specifically the shots where one character in the foreground and all you see is the back of his/her shoulder and head and you see literally from their POV. It would be boring if the entire show was shot over the shoulder of each of the POV characters.

[Zulofritter]

Zulofritter

First off, the statement that the show should not break from the POV tradition is silly. In film, an unreliable narrator is done much differently than in a book. It has to be. With a film you see it. With a book you have to count on the POV. Sometimes you just have to break a few eggs. Not everything can translate. What is real and what is legend...sometimes you just have to make up your mind. Until Martin says otherwise, I take it that Robert and Rhaegar beat the snot out of each other before Robert smashed him to peices. There are POV's in television but it's handeled differently. Take for example Desperate Housewives. It's done naturally and often leaps to other characters, even though, say Lynette, is the character that is currently doing something important. The characters are unreliable but not the POV per se. Such as Susan getting the wrong message from something that occurs. You know the truth but Susan does not.

I'm not attacking you-- I'm very sorry if I sound that way. I like your ideas for where each episode starts and ends.

No offense taken at all. I consider everyone in this thread to be a writer, and writers shouldn't be afraid to get their vision across.

I couldn't find this in the books, but I remember another character at the battle between Robert & Rhaegar, who made a point of saying that there were more men there than the singers would mention. So I think it's very likely that someone else killed Rhaegar, and Robert took the credit (similar to the way the king takes the credit in Dragonslayer). If nothing else, I think it's unlikely that Rhaegar left a bunch of rubies in the water. Even if the armies were ordered away, the camp followers would be all over that.

[Tysha]

MJS - what you're talking about is not POV. You're talking about having the character who was the POV in the book as the focal point of any particular scene. That's fine. That makes sense. But it's not POV!

An example from the book might be during the Red Wedding. As the band is playing the camera is moving around the room and capturing the experience from many angles. From a couple of those angles the camera sees that one of the Freys has chain-mail poking out from the collar of his shirt. Another shot reveals that one of the musicians is hiding a crossbow behind his seat. These two little clues can help build the suspense without violating the POV. By the end of the day Cat knows that the Freys were wearing mail and that among the musicians were crossbowmen posing as musicians.

But unless Cat actually registers the presence of the chainmail or the crossbows - which we know she doesn't at that point - then it is going outside of her POV. It is going outside of her experience, outside of her thoughts. These events happen in the same room as her but she doesn't notice them. So if you really want to be stringent about POV, if she doesn't see it, we can't see it.

In the book, the POV character is the reader's filter. We see what they see, hear what they hear, know what they think. On screen that doesn't happen. The erstwhile POV character can be in the centre of the frame but the audience will still get to experience the scene around them through their own eyes.

True POV on screen only happens when it's a very specific stylistic choice, and it is usually accompanied by shaky hand-held camera and a limited field of vision. Think of the end of Silence of the Lambs, when it goes into Clarice's view through the night-vision glasses. That is POV.

I really think we need to stop thinking in terms of who the POV character is in any given scene and start thinking of them instead as focal characters.

[Zulofritter]

I really think we need to stop thinking in terms of who the POV character is in any given scene and start thinking of them instead as focal characters.

I'm siding with MJS here, as I think you're confusing a writer's POV with a camera's POV. I can switch to focal point to move the discussion on though.

[Tysha]

I'm siding with MJS here, as I think you're confusing a writer's POV with a camera's POV.

No, I think that's what people who are talking about wanting to keep the POV structure of the books are doing!

On the page we are taken through events by the character, on screen we follow the character through the events.

In literature a POV refers to the character through whose eyes events unfold - they are the filter of events for the readers. On film, a POV shot quite literally shows a character's point of view. Just having them there in the scene, even right at the centre of it, doesn't make them the point of view. The standard shot/reverse shot way of filming a conversation jumps back and forth between POVs. The only way you could maintain one POV throughout a scene on film would be to never actually show the character whose POV we were in, unless they happened to look in a mirror!

[Zulofritter]

Should we call a vote on what a screenwriter means when they say POV?

[Antacid]

Okay, first: everyone in this thread owns. I agree absolutely with Zulo about everyone here being a writer. None of this is personal; and it’s enormous fun coming up with this stuff.

The main issues we’re getting stuck on:

POV

I think we’re all just arguing semantics now. MJS, I’m not sure about your over-the-shoulder shot thing, because that isn’t the kind of thing a screenwriter gets any say in anyway. I think the best rule is to just show the events in the most natural, unobtrusive way possible. Keeping rigidily to the book would be a mistake – offhand I can think of a scene early on we’d be insane to leaving off-camera – The Hound chasing Mycah. Overall I believe the most important thing is to stay flexible.

THE ROBELLION

People are saying the Robellion is essential exposition and has to come first. I disagree. The problem with Excalibur’s montage, is that it only works if you already know who the characters are. As described, a person just starting to watch the series won’t even know who anyone is! Let alone what kind of man Ned is, who Lyanna is and why she’s dying, where the Trident is, why anyone is fighting, who and what the Kingsuard are, who anyone referred to in the dialogue is, and how they relate to each other.

Excalibur, I’m really not bashing you, but this is a classic book adaptation pitfall – assuming the audience is as familiar with the characters and events as you are, and that you can just show the most dramatic bits without setting anything up. The audience actually needs a LOT of information before they even know who’s side their supposed to be on, and it’s better to parse it out. Exposition doesn’t have to be boring, and it’s not something that works better if you just rush through it.

So, let’s say we were to come up with a more newbie-friendly version of the Robellion, something as awesome as the Lord of the Rings opening sequence. I believe that would still be a mistake. Because the Robellion isn’t actually the main subject of ASOIAF at all – the real enemy, I think everyone can assume, is the Others. Putting the Prologue after an intro sequence will reduce the emphasis that I think GRRM intended by putting the Other’s scene first in the book. In LOTR, the prologue is exclusively about the history of the Ring – which makes perfect sense, because that’s the main focus of the films. But GRRM didn’t call this series “the After-Effects Of Robert’s Rebellion†– so why should we open with a History lesson?

DANY

The reason putting Dany in a single scene in (1) but only showing her marriage in (2) bugs me is because I think characters should have some kind of progression of events if they are to appear in an episode at all. Again, if you just put in one scene, you’ve provided setup without payoff. And any scene in Easteros is going to put the Winterfell plotline on hold until it’s finished, so I thought to wait for a lull instead of suddenly jumping continents from the Winterfell crypt before we've even got to know the Starks properly.

BTW – I don’t think there’s any risk of the audience hating Dany because they think she’s “a threatâ€. GRRM has put in the perfect dynamic to prevent that in the form of Viserys – he’s the character the audience will percieve as the threat at the start. Robert can talk all he wants about the danger Dany poses – it’ll be obvious Viserys is the one who’s forcing the marriage to get his army.

[Ghlade]

BTW – I don’t think there’s any risk of the audience hating Dany because they think she’s “a threatâ€. GRRM has put in the perfect dynamic to prevent that in the form of Viserys – he’s the character the audience will percieve as the threat at the start. Robert can talk all he wants about the danger Dany poses – it’ll be obvious Viserys is the one who’s forcing the marriage to get his army.

Good point.

[Zulofritter]

Okay, first: everyone in this thread owns. I agree absolutely with Zulo about everyone here being a writer. None of this is personal; and it’s enormous fun coming up with this stuff.

The main issues we’re getting stuck on:

POV

I think we’re all just arguing semantics now. MJS, I’m not sure about your over-the-shoulder shot thing, because that isn’t the kind of thing a screenwriter gets any say in anyway. I think the best rule is to just show the events in the most natural, unobtrusive way possible. Keeping rigidily to the book would be a mistake – offhand I can think of a scene early on we’d be insane to leaving off-camera – The Hound chasing Mycah. Overall I believe the most important thing is to stay flexible.

It's semantics, but I also think it's important. If Stannis's attack on Kings Landing isn't limited to the POVs of Sansa, Tyrion & Davos, it's just going to be another boring battle scene. In fact, while trying to get a friend of mine to read the series, this fidelity to the fates of three opposed characters with limited knowledge of the battle was one of the first things I mentioned.

Oh, and call me insane. Eddard's reaction to the body should be enough.

THE ROBELLION

People are saying the Robellion is essential exposition and has to come first. I disagree. The problem with Excalibur’s montage, is that it only works if you already know who the characters are. As described, a person just starting to watch the series won’t even know who anyone is! Let alone what kind of man Ned is, who Lyanna is and why she’s dying, where the Trident is, why anyone is fighting, who and what the Kingsuard are, who anyone referred to in the dialogue is, and how they relate to each other.

Excalibur, I’m really not bashing you, but this is a classic book adaptation pitfall – assuming the audience is as familiar with the characters and events as you are, and that you can just show the most dramatic bits without setting anything up. The audience actually needs a LOT of information before they even know who’s side their supposed to be on, and it’s better to parse it out. Exposition doesn’t have to be boring, and it’s not something that works better if you just rush through it.

Well said. Again, no offense meant to Excalibur, but his prologue would make a great commercial, or promotional bit. (I've got some ideas of my own for that.)

So, let’s say we were to come up with a more newbie-friendly version of the Robellion, something as awesome as the Lord of the Rings opening sequence. I believe that would still be a mistake. Because the Robellion isn’t actually the main subject of ASOIAF at all – the real enemy, I think everyone can assume, is the Others. Putting the Prologue after an intro sequence will reduce the emphasis that I think GRRM intended by putting the Other’s scene first in the book. In LOTR, the prologue is exclusively about the history of the Ring – which makes perfect sense, because that’s the main focus of the films. But GRRM didn’t call this series “the After-Effects Of Robert’s Rebellion†– so why should we open with a History lesson?

I didn't like the opening sequence in LOTR, if I haven't made it clear yet.

I also think there's a difference between the subject of the series and the greatest threat in the series. If I had to pick a main conflict (aside from the general struggle for power & survival), it would be House Stark vs. the rest of the nobility.

DANY

The reason putting Dany in a single scene in (1) but only showing her marriage in (2) bugs me is because I think characters should have some kind of progression of events if they are to appear in an episode at all. Again, if you just put in one scene, you’ve provided setup without payoff. And any scene in Easteros is going to put the Winterfell plotline on hold until it’s finished, so I thought to wait for a lull instead of suddenly jumping continents from the Winterfell crypt before we've even got to know the Starks properly.

BTW – I don’t think there’s any risk of the audience hating Dany because they think she’s “a threatâ€. GRRM has put in the perfect dynamic to prevent that in the form of Viserys – he’s the character the audience will percieve as the threat at the start. Robert can talk all he wants about the danger Dany poses – it’ll be obvious Viserys is the one who’s forcing the marriage to get his army.

The scene in Pentos, if included in it's entirety, seems to have a decent progression of events.

[Tysha]

Should we call a vote on what a screenwriter means when they say POV?

We don't need to! It's a screenwriting term. But if you don't believe me, Google to the rescue...

http://www.simplyscripts.com/WR_glossary.html

"Point of View. The camera replaces the eyes (sometimes the ears) of a character, monster, machine, surveillance camera, etc. As a result, we get to see the world through the sensory devices of some creature. This can be used to bring out the personal aspects of a scene, or it can be used to build horror and suspense. An example of horror and suspense in POV can be scene in the opening shot of Halloween."

http://www.screenwriting.info/glossary.php

"Point of View; a camera angle placed so as to seem the camera is the eyes of a character."

http://www.teako170.com/glossary4.html

"Camera angle in which the camera views a subjective shot from the actor's point of view."

And if I dig out the handy glossary provided by my old film studies lecturer, I can see that he defined it as, "Any shot which is taken from the vantage point of a character in the film."

I know this is probably arguing semantics but I think it is important, not only because referring to them as POV characters is wrong for the medium we are dealing with, but also because it's too close to the book. If we're trying to figure out how this story could be told on screen we need to distance ourselves from the literary techniques used in the book.

People are saying the Robellion is essential exposition and has to come first. I disagree. The problem with Excalibur’s montage, is that it only works if you already know who the characters are. As described, a person just starting to watch the series won’t even know who anyone is! Let alone what kind of man Ned is, who Lyanna is and why she’s dying, where the Trident is, why anyone is fighting, who and what the Kingsuard are, who anyone referred to in the dialogue is, and how they relate to each other.

I think that’s a slightly erroneous argument because at the opening of any TV show or any movie the uninitiated audience member doesn’t have the foggiest who anyone is.

I think it would be fairly obvious in Excalibur’s montage who we were supposed to be rooting for. If you’ve got the Kingsuard there, all in their uniforms, glowering, blocking the way of the nice looking man and his nice looking companions, I think the immediate sympathy will fall to the nice looking man. And when the Kingsguard say “Woe to the usurper†and it is followed shots of the current king looking mad and burning people alive, the audience will easily work out that actually the ‘usurper’ is doing the sensible thing.

I think the montage actually succeeds extremely well at not being confusing and at giving the audience enough information to work it all out for themselves. Ned says, “I looked for you on the Trident†and immediately after we see shots of “quick snippets of the sky view from the trident and the surrounding lands, followed up by some fighting and then the scene switches back to the tower.†I think you’d have to be pretty dense not to work out that that quick flash was what they were just referring to.

I think the dialogue as Excalibur wrote it is excellent. It lets us know there’s been a war, it lets us know the king is dead, slain by one of his own, it lets us know a couple of members of the royal family have escaped, and it lets us know who the kingsguard are and what they do. And if the prologue cuts straight to present-day Ned with his eyes closed in remembrance, grey shot through his beard, the harsh light of day highlighting whatever wrinkles he has, we will know that a fair amount of time has passed since the events we just saw but that they still haunt the nice looking man whose name we will shortly discover is Eddard.

So, let’s say we were to come up with a more newbie-friendly version of the Robellion, something as awesome as the Lord of the Rings opening sequence. I believe that would still be a mistake. Because the Robellion isn’t actually the main subject of ASOIAF at all – the real enemy, I think everyone can assume, is the Others. Putting the Prologue after an intro sequence will reduce the emphasis that I think GRRM intended by putting the Other’s scene first in the book. In LOTR, the prologue is exclusively about the history of the Ring – which makes perfect sense, because that’s the main focus of the films. But GRRM didn’t call this series “the After-Effects Of Robert’s Rebellion†– so why should we open with a History lesson?

Emphasis mine.

‘Assume’ is the key word there. Four books in we can all safely assume that ultimately it’s not going to matter who sits the Iron Throne because it won’t be there once the Others get through. But they are not the main threat yet. They enter the story in a slow, creeping way. They come up behind you and have you by the throat before you even realise they are there.

The vast majority of the story so far has concerned the civil war. And the vast majority of characters are embroiled in that war, and they are the ones who were involved in the Robellion and are still feeling its after effects. Dany’s storyline also relies on the Robellion. The Others is the only story which doesn’t and it’s also the story which has the least amount of time devoted to it. There is time enough to discover the threat of the Others through characters like Jon and Sam as they come to discover it for themselves.

Scrapping the Robellion prologue also leaves the problem of how to exposit before we meet Robert that he won his throne through war. And it does need to be before (as indeed it is in the book, thank you George) because if we meet him first and then find out about the rebellion ten minutes later it would give the audience whiplash. Not to mention make them wonder why the hell the king is hanging round with a guy nicknamed ‘Kingslayer’. No, we need to get in with the set-up first.

So how could we do it? A flashback somewhere between the prologue and Robert’s arrival? It would slow the narrative down at the point where it really needs to be driving forwards, and beg the question of why this couldn’t have been done ten minutes ago.

Dialogue? Between who? Everyone who could be talking about it already knows about it because they were there! The worst kind of exposition is that which begins, “Now as you know…†Urgh.

We could have an opening narration or a title card I suppose. But while either would be perfectly functional they’re not very interesting. Dramatising the highlights of the rebellion would look so cool on screen! It’s attention grabbing, it’s intriguing, it makes sure no-one wants to switch channels. Narration and title cards are a bit stodgy.

Someone a while ago suggested showing Old Nan or Luwin telling Sansa, Arya and Bran about the rebellion. That would literally be a history lesson! And it would be boring.

The reason putting Dany in a single scene in (1) but only showing her marriage in (2) bugs me is because I think characters should have some kind of progression of events if they are to appear in an episode at all. Again, if you just put in one scene, you’ve provided setup without payoff.

It’s a teaser! And it’s an extremely common technique. Think of – okay I’m using this as an example because I just saw an advert for it! – Ugly Betty. The first episode ended with that woman covered in the bandages. I don’t know if there’s been any payoff for that yet in the States but over here in Blighty we still don’t have a clue what’s going on.

Or what about Lost – do we get any payoff from all the mysteries they set up? Bollocks do we!

BTW – I don’t think there’s any risk of the audience hating Dany because they think she’s “a threatâ€. GRRM has put in the perfect dynamic to prevent that in the form of Viserys – he’s the character the audience will perceive as the threat at the start. Robert can talk all he wants about the danger Dany poses – it’ll be obvious Viserys is the one who’s forcing the marriage to get his army.

But we’d have to work harder to make her sympathetic because we’d be working backwards. We’d have to undo preconceived notions. We’d probably have to exaggerate Viserys’s mean evilness and Dany’s patheticness, thereby sacrificing a bit of subtlety.

Dany’s appearances in the series can mirror her progression as a character – start off small and a little timid, getting stronger over time, until she comes to dominate around the time of Mirri Maz Duur/Drogo’s death/the birth of the dragons.

[Zulofritter]

Tysha, please read. (Written by one of the writers of Pirates of the Caribbean.)

http://www.wordplayer.com/columns/wp41.Point.of.View.html

[Antacid]

I think it would be fairly obvious in Excalibur’s montage who we were supposed to be rooting for. If you’ve got the Kingsuard there, glowering, blocking the way of the nice looking man and his nice looking companions, I think the immediate sympathy will fall to the nice looking man.

You mean the nice-looking man’s six companions, and the three glowering guys wearing white and not retreating despite being outnumbered 2:1.

The problem isn’t that the montage doesn’t convey information, it’s whether it’s the right way and time to convey this information. Why do we need the ToJ and Trident so early? Until we know who Robert and Rhaegar are and why they hated each other the Trident is just a ford in a river. Why give the KG all that attention when they’re dead before the start of the story?

Another thing is, that spamming a gazillion short cuts to battle scenes in various locations and sets is likely to be absurdly expensive. All these are sets that will have to be built, and Excalibur uses the ToJ, Storm’s End, the Iron Throne, Dragonstone, the Sept of Baelor and the Trident, two of which aren’t even visited in AGOT. Oh, and younger actors playing younger versions of Jaime and Eddard – we’re talking 15 year time gap here! How many battle scenes did Rome have?

The Others:

To dip into my annoying sack of screenwriting axioms, Billy Wilder once said something like “A third-act problem is a first-act problemâ€. If the Others are going to be the Big Bad (and Dany’s dreams and Jon’s POV in ASOS effectively tells us they are), they must be emphasised at the start. That’s especially true if they’re going to vanish for multiple episodes while all the rest of the stories are progressed, ‘cause unless viewers understand how important they are from the off, they’ll forget all about them.

Scrapping the Robellion prologue also leaves the problem of how to exposit before we meet Robert that he won his throne through war.

Catelyn I is where Eddard first hears of Robert’s visit. It would be extremely easy to mention how they became friends in dialogue. The details of the Rebellion can come in the crypt scene.

Ugly Betty’s ending and Lost’s mysteries sound like cliffhangers. Not the same thing IMHO.

But we’d have to work harder to make [Dany] sympathetic because we’d be working backwards. We’d have to undo preconceived notions. We’d probably have to exaggerate Viserys’s mean evilness and Dany’s patheticness, thereby sacrificing a bit of subtlety.

What I suggested was not showing Dany until around the time Robert asks Ned to kill her in Episode 2. Done like that there’d be a threat both ways – a conflict, with the aggressors being Robert and Viserys, not Dany. In the books Robert doesn’t come across as ultra-likable, and neither does Ned endorse everything he says. Ironically, the thing that's most likely to prejudice us against Dany is her father's role in the Robellion, and that's what you're suggesting with shots of Mad Aerys burning folk alive.

[Zulofritter]

Another thing is, that spamming a gazillion short cuts to battle scenes in various locations and sets is likely to be absurdly expensive. All these are sets that will have to be built, and Excalibur uses the ToJ, Storm’s End, the Iron Throne, Dragonstone, the Sept of Baelor and the Trident, two of which aren’t even visited in AGOT. Oh, and younger actors playing younger versions of Jaime and Eddard – we’re talking 15 year time gap here! How many battle scenes did Rome have?

You're right, but I think we could use it if we see the entire scene in the first season. Considering the budget, it won't be seen if it doesn't need to be seen. The ToJ and the Iron Throne is probably all we need to see, and I'd put them where those flashbacks already are. (I really didn't think I'd be this much of a purist, seriously!)

The Others:

To dip into my annoying sack of screenwriting axioms, Billy Wilder once said something like “A third-act problem is a first-act problemâ€. If the Others are going to be the Big Bad (and Dany’s dreams and Jon’s POV in ASOS effectively tells us they are), they must be emphasised at the start. That’s especially true if they’re going to vanish for multiple episodes while all the rest of the stories are progressed, ‘cause unless viewers understand how important they are from the off, they’ll forget all about them.

The bigger threat is probably Bran, after he possesses a dragon and melts the Wall.

But I partially disagree. From the story we can see so far, most of the antagonists are human. However, we need the glimpse of the Others so that the audience knows there will be a supernatural element to the story. The creators of LOST put the monster in the first episode for the same reason; they thought if the story was grounded in realism and the monster showed up after 10 episodes, people would stop watching.

[Michael Jon Snow]

Zulo

Thankyou. I was using POV in the same context that Rossio was using. If people have a hang-up, I can call it focal character

My suggestion about the over the shoulder thing was just one tool that would help the audience keep the feeling of the focal character being the focus of the scene. And as writer-producers, they have the power to set a parameter like this on the directors. Most shows that have multiple directrs have parameters on how the show if filmed to create consistancy within the series.

[Tysha]

Tysha, please read. (Written by one of the writers of Pirates of the Caribbean.)

http://www.wordplayer.com/columns/wp41.Point.of.View.html

He starts off by saying that he doesn’t understand POV and then he’s just plain wrong about Back to the Future because I don’t remember Marty being anywhere near the top of the clock tower when Doc was trying to reconnect the cables! Marty is the central character but the story is not told from his POV. A novelisation might be from his POV but the film is not.

And when he talks about the different types of POV he’s clearly talking about it terms of prose. He even admits this! He is erroneously applying prose terms to the screen. He does later use the phrase ‘access character’ which is a good one, though it’s basically another way of saying the focal character.

I really hope this guy never tries to write a novel if this is his understanding of the rules of POV, because POV discrepancies are my pet hate in books. For example, if you’re reading a book and a character is upset and crying and she’s thinking about how miserable she is, and then she wipes her tear-reddened eyes … wait. What? How the hell does she know that? Is she sitting in front of a mirror?! It could say “she wiped her eyes, which she was sure would be red and blotchy by now,†but they can’t just be described that way if the POV character can’t see it. It’s small, it’s picky, but it’s a POV discrepancy and it bugs the hell out of me!

In film and TV, POV is a screenwriting term that refers to a specific type of shot. That’s it. If you want to talk about the show ‘Peep Show’ (dunno if it’s ever made it across the Atlantic…) you can say that Mark and Jeremy are the POV characters because the entire show is seen through their eyes and we hear their thoughts when we are in their POV. It’s utterly genius but it’s also a rather surreal comedy. It’s not the kind of model we should be looking at for an adaptation of ASOIAF! Any conversations which are filmed in standard shot/reverse shot will dip briefly into POV, but that’s it.

In the book they are POV characters, on screen they are focal, or central, or access, or just main characters. Semantics? Sure. But it’s important. The problems arose in this thread because people wanted to basically re-create the multiple-POV structure of the books with strict definitions between each POV and pretty much no room to manoeuvre. But you can’t re-create it (well, you can but it would look a bit cack), you have to adapt it.

Another thing is, that spamming a gazillion short cuts to battle scenes in various locations and sets is likely to be absurdly expensive.

Probably, but as this is a fantasy adaptation we can pretend we have billions of dollars to play with!

Or, to be a little less flippant, the ToJ will have to be filmed for Ned’s dream, so why not kill two birds with one stone and do the whole lot at the same time? Ditto a great deal of scenes that would be shown in the prologue. There are a lot of places throughout the series, not just the first season, where flashbacks will be necessary, so they’ll have to be filmed anyway. Different edits can be used in different instances but the footage will have to be there.

And you should visit the casting thread – we’ve talked about the possibility of using different actors but have instead ‘cast’ actors who could easily look younger with a bit of gentle lighting!

As for why the exposition needs to be there early on … as I said, the audience need to know before they meet Robert how he came to be king. In the book that information is given to us on page 25 and it leads in to Cat and Ned talking about Robert’s visit. You say this information could be conveyed via dialogue. How?

Ned: Oh, Cat, Jon was like a father to me after he fostered Robert and me at the Eyrie. And when he raised his banner in revolt against Aerys rather than give us up when Aerys called for our heads…

Cat: Um, Ned? Hi! Remember me? Your wife? We’ve been married for fourteen years, I know all this already!

Expository dialogue between two characters who should already know what is being explained is crap and should be avoided at all costs.

To dip into my annoying sack of screenwriting axioms, Billy Wilder once said something like “A third-act problem is a first-act problemâ€. If the Others are going to be the Big Bad (and Dany’s dreams and Jon’s POV in ASOS effectively tells us they are), they must be emphasised at the start. That’s especially true if they’re going to vanish for multiple episodes while all the rest of the stories are progressed, ‘cause unless viewers understand how important they are from the off, they’ll forget all about them.

But the Others will be in the first episode! I’m not disputing that they shouldn’t be, I just don’t think they should be the absolute first thing we see because there is other information which is more important to get out as set-up first.

The Others are going to be the Big Bad, but probably not until, like, season 5. Most of AGoT is about the civil war. The Others are a slow, creeping threat that most of the nation still has no clue about. Showing a little glimpse of them tells the audience Something is Rotten in the State of Westeros but without being misleading and presenting them as the main threat right from the start.

The details of the Rebellion can come in the crypt scene.

The finer details, sure, but the fact that there was a rebellion in the first place needs to be made clear before Robert arrives at Winterfell.

And I still think Dany needs to be in there!

I think the story as a whole would feel more complete if Dany appeared in the first episode rather than having episode two be ‘A Dany Episode.’ If episode one is entirely in Winterfell and then episode two is dominated by Dany and Viserys in Pentos it will feel like a completely different show, not to mention be annoying (well, I’d be annoyed by it…) for the audience members who just want to know what’s happening to the Starks, not this strange new blonde girl.

[Michael Jon Snow]

Tysha, yes you have to adapt it, but keeping the focal char structure would be a nice way to keep the flavor of the books. Yes adapt it. Of course. But I still would keep the focal character flavor that the book had. I think the story can be well done and stay with that structure.

That Robert is King is all that the audience need know until the crypt scene. Why do they need to know that there was a rebellion? As a reader we didn't know and it still made sense to us.

[Tysha]

Tysha, yes you have to adapt it, but keeping the focal char structure would be a nice way to keep the flavor of the books. Yes adapt it. Of course. But I still would keep the focal character flavor that the book had. I think the story can be well done and stay with that structure.

But that's just it - the POV characters of the book are just the main characters. They will naturally be the focal characters of the story because that's the way the story goes! I'm not disputing that. What I objected to was people trying to copy and paste the POV structure from the page to the screen, thinking about title cards or fades or music cues or anything else to differentiate between the different POV segments. I just think that's completely unnecessary and would be way too slavish to the book and detrimental to a screen adaptation.

That Robert is King is all that the audience need know until the crypt scene. Why do they need to know that there was a rebellion? As a reader we didn't know and it still made sense to us.

Yes we did!

"In his youth, Ned had fostered at the Eyrie, and the childless Lord Arryn had become a second father to him and his fellow ward, Robert Baratheon. When the Mad King Aerys II Targaryen had demanded their heads, the Lord of the Eyrie had raised his moon-and-falcon banners in revolt rather than give up those he had pledged to protect." - p. 25, AGoT UK paperback.

So we knew there was a rebellion involving Ned, Robert and the recently deceased Jon Arryn. Then, two paragraphs later, when Cat says, "It was the king's seal and the letter is in Robert's own hand," we know that Robert is now king, obviously as the result of the rebellion. The fact that there was a rebellion is made clear before Robert's name is mentioned in the context of his being king.