WHEEL OF TIME tv show: Go on,tug my braid!

[fionwe1987]

On 10/15/2018 at 9:14 PM, karaddin said:

The number of times I read those books and picked up all sorts of nods and still missed that Rhuidean was meant to be this is...disappointing lol. I blame my youth when I first read them since I don't tend to reassess that sort of thing when I read again later.

It happens, lol. Here's the first description we get of the place, from Mat's PoV:

Quote

Rhuidean was not nearly so big as Tear or Caemlyn, but the empty streets were broad as any he had ever seen, with wide strips of bare dirt down their centers as if trees had grown there once, and great fountains with statues. Huge buildings flanked the streets, odd flat-sided palaces of marble and crystal and cut glass, ascending hundreds of feet in steps or sheer walls. There was not a small building to be seen, nothing that might have been a simple tavern or an inn or a stable. Only immense palaces, with gleaming columns fifty feet thick climbing a hundred paces in red or white or blue, and grand towers, fluted and spiraled, some piercing the glowing clouds above.

For all its grandeur, the city had never been finished. Many of those tremendous structures ended in the sawteeth of abandoned construction. Colored glass made images in some huge windows: serenely majestic men and women thirty feet tall or more, sunrises and starry night skies; others gaped emptily. Unfinished and long deserted. No water splashed in any fountain. Silence covered the city as completely as the dome of fog.

...

Nothing was broken in the city, only . . . incomplete. The palaces loomed to either side like cliffs.

 

[Spring Bass]

That makes me think. Is Paaran Disen Second-Age New York City? It mentions there's a big park at the center. 

[karaddin]

8 hours ago, fionwe1987 said:

It happens, lol. Here's the first description we get of the place, from Mat's PoV:

 

Wow that's super obvious now you point it out haha. I think its the category "palace" that threw me off, if it just said buildings I'd read the description more consciously but palace just makes me think on different lines. Thanks for that, I was wanting to read it again after your first comment but didnt have my books handy.

[Werthead]

18 hours ago, All Souls Bass said:

That makes me think. Is Paaran Disen Second-Age New York City? It mentions there's a big park at the center. 

It always made sense to me that would be the case. The World Parliament may have grown out of the United Nations and New York became Paaran Disen. V'saine, as a centre of learning, may have been Boston/Harvard or Cambridge and so on.

[fionwe1987]

On 10/17/2018 at 7:54 PM, karaddin said:

Wow that's super obvious now you point it out haha. I think its the category "palace" that threw me off, if it just said buildings I'd read the description more consciously but palace just makes me think on different lines. Thanks for that, I was wanting to read it again after your first comment but didnt have my books handy.

I think Mat just calls any big building a palace, because he cannot fathom another use for buildings of such size. Even in Tar Valon, the human constructed sections of the city have building sizes that are more reflective of the times, but he had to have seen the other large buildings in central Tar Valon which weren't palaces. But maybe he never bothered to learn what they were.

I was reading up descriptions of Tar Valon for this, and they're going to have a tough time replicating its architecture. The Tower is the easiest, in fact. The multiple other towers with bridges arching between them will be tough, but hardest of all is going to be the organic architecture that many of the buildings have. Either they give up all that, or they make a detailed miniature like the one made for Minas Tirith. 

Quote

The White Tower rose from the center of the city, a thick bone-white shaft climbing almost a hundred spans into the sky and visible for miles. It was the first thing anyone approaching the city saw, long before they could make out the city itself. The heart of Aes Sedai power, that alone was sufficient to mark Tar Valon apart, but other, smaller towers rose throughout the city. Not simply spires, but spirals and fluted towers, some close enough together to be linked by bridges a hundred feet in the air, or two hundred, or higher. Even the topless towers of Cairhien did not come close to matching them.

Every square had its fountain or monument in the center, or a huge statue, some atop plinths as much as fifty paces tall, but the buildings themselves were grander than most monuments in other cities. Around the palatial homes of wealthy merchants and bankers, with their domes and spires and colonnaded walks, crowded shops and inns, taverns and stables, apartment buildings and the homes of ordinary folk, yet even they were ornamented with carvings and friezes fit for palaces. A fair number could have passed for palaces. Nearly all were Ogier built, and Ogier built for beauty. More wondrous still were the structures dotted through the city, half a dozen in sight on every street, where the Ogier masons had been given a free hand. A three-story banking house suggested a flight of golden marble birds taking wing, while the Kandori merchants’ guild hall seemed to represent horses running in surf, or perhaps surf turning into horses, and a very large inn called The Blue Cat strongly resembled exactly that, a blue cat curled up to sleep. The Great Fish Market, the largest in the city, seemed to be a school of huge fish, green and red and blue and striped. Other cities boasted of Ogier-built buildings, but nothing like what Tar Valon possessed. 

Maybe they won't care about showing it, but I'd love to see them try, and make Tar Valon stand out as distinct and different from the standard medieval cities most fantasy shows have.

[Spring Bass]

11 minutes ago, fionwe1987 said:

I was reading up descriptions of Tar Valon for this, and they're going to have a tough time replicating its architecture. The Tower is the easiest, in fact. The multiple other towers with bridges arching between them will be tough, but hardest of all is going to be the organic architecture that many of the buildings have.

Tar Valon will get shown well, because it's a commonly used and very important location in the story. That'll be CGI, model work, or both.

[fionwe1987]

6 hours ago, All Souls Bass said:

Tar Valon will get shown well, because it's a commonly used and very important location in the story. That'll be CGI, model work, or both.

I hope so. And frankly, Tar Valon could be introduced early in the first season. Introducing the Tower and its politics and Siuan wouldn't be the worst idea. And They can show it in Rand's dream and stick to the books, anyway. That way, they can spend the money on it early, and then reuse it a lot, justifying its cost.

[Corvinus85]

The show will start shooting in September, apparently in Prague. So mid to late 2020 for a release?

https://www.tor.com/2019/01/23/the-wheel-of-time-tv-series-adaptation-production-fall-2019/

[Astromech]

6 hours ago, Corvinus said:

The show will start shooting in September, apparently in Prague. So mid to late 2020 for a release?

https://www.tor.com/2019/01/23/the-wheel-of-time-tv-series-adaptation-production-fall-2019/

Hmm, Prague. Interesting. I have to admit, Prague was never one of the locations I envisioned for shooting.

[Ran]

The announced writing staff leaves a lot to be desired. Incredibly anemic credits, led by a showrunner with a resume of mediocrity. Amazon has been very weird with these efforts, if you look at their pick for the LotR TV show showrunners. Hopefully these bets will work out for them.

6 hours ago, Astromech said:

Hmm, Prague. Interesting. I have to admit, Prague was never one of the locations I envisioned for shooting.

Joining Knightfall, Britannia, and Borgia, among other shows to be in and around Prague.

[Inkdaub]

10 hours ago, Astromech said:

Hmm, Prague. Interesting. I have to admit, Prague was never one of the locations I envisioned for shooting.

Prague looks very like how I imagine Caemlyn.  Prague or maybe Edinburgh.

I'm starting to get a little excited about this show.

[Astromech]

6 hours ago, Ran said:

The announced writing staff leaves a lot to be desired. Incredibly anemic credits, led by a showrunner with a resume of mediocrity. Amazon has been very weird with these efforts, if you look at their pick for the LotR TV show showrunners. Hopefully these bets will work out for them.

Joining Knightfall, Britannia, and Borgia, among other shows to be in and around Prague.

Now the countryside around Prague would work quite well for the Two Rivers.

3 hours ago, Inkdaub said:

Prague looks very like how I imagine Caemlyn.  Prague or maybe Edinburgh.

I'm starting to get a little excited about this show.

I've always pictured Caemlyn as more of an English city with the palace similar to Windsor Castle.  I always associated Andor with England and Cairhien with France.

[Martini Sigil]

it seems like a lifetime ago that I read these books... watching the show will undoubtedly shake a few memories loose... but mostly I expect that it will be like an entirely new experience for me...  the upside potential for this TV show is really really high... and with expectations this high most likely leading to a let down --to one degree or another-- I also expect to enjoy it a whole lot.

[Zorral]

7 hours ago, Astromech said:

Now the countryside around Prague would work quite well for the Two Rivers

I'd thought, like so many medieval-esque film and tv, The Last Kingdom too was shot in the Czech Republic, but no -- Hungary -- and, to a lesser extent, North Wales.

[Astromech]

1 minute ago, Zorral said:

I'd thought, like so many medieval-esque film and tv, The Last Kingdom too was shot in the Czech Republic, but no -- Hungary -- and, to a lesser extent, North Wales.

I never would've guessed Hungary. I thought it may have been filmed in northern England. I've only watched the first season of The Last Kingdom. Is it still filmed there?

[Gertrude]

Aha. I'm going to Prague in the spring. Now I'll be keeping my eyes out for picturesque streets. The typical Baroque architecture is not what I was picturing either, but I'm beginning to see it. The Astronomical Clock might be a nice cameo to show it's a slightly more modernized setting than typical fantasy - if they don't decide it's too recognizable.

[Werthead]

On 1/26/2019 at 11:35 PM, Astromech said:

I never would've guessed Hungary. I thought it may have been filmed in northern England. I've only watched the first season of The Last Kingdom. Is it still filmed there?

It's almost impossible to actually film any of these historical shows in the UK itself. Apart from some bits of the Scottish Highlands, you can't point a camera in any direction in the UK without seeing modern houses, telegraph poles, electricity pylons etc. The island is very densely populated. Hence these shows all go to Europe or Ireland to film instead.

 

Quote

 

The announced writing staff leaves a lot to be desired. Incredibly anemic credits, led by a showrunner with a resume of mediocrity. Amazon has been very weird with these efforts, if you look at their pick for the LotR TV show showrunners. Hopefully these bets will work out for them.

 

I dunno, GoT relied very heavily on Benioff's credits and pretty much everyone else (bar GRRM and Espenson) had either minimal or no credits of note. This is part of the problem of the modern TV explosion, there's so many shows in production that there's actually a dearth of talent around and people are getting showrunner and producer jobs that they wouldn't have been anywhere near 15 years ago.

LotR is, by far, the most inexplicable thing though. At least Judkins and Amanda Kate Shuman (in particular) have a fair few credits to their name. The LotR guys have got nothing, which is baffling, to the point where I'm wondering if they're going to be shuffled off the project and maybe Cogman tapped to pick up the slack.

[Ran]

50 minutes ago, Werthead said:

I dunno, GoT relied very heavily on Benioff's credits and pretty much everyone else (bar GRRM and Espenson) had either minimal or no credits of note.

The 25th Hour is a pretty big credit to have, though, and GRRM and Espenson being part of that first season, along with Dolger as a guiding hand -- it all made sense to me at the time. Even if it did turn out more seat-of-the-pants than anyone figured it would be.

I think I missed Shuman being mentioned as part of the WoT team. That's a bit better, at least from the perspective of having some actual regular series experience, as Judkins has. Nothing remarkable, of course, neither has a 25th Hour to their credit, but it's something.

[fionwe1987]

https://deadline.com/2019/02/the-wheel-of-time-uta-briesewitz-direct-first-two-episodes-amazon-fantasy-drama-series-robert-jordan-1202558701/

 

Looks like this is really coming together now. Never heard of her but she seems to have directed for some pretty big shows.

[Werthead]

3 hours ago, fionwe1987 said:

https://deadline.com/2019/02/the-wheel-of-time-uta-briesewitz-direct-first-two-episodes-amazon-fantasy-drama-series-robert-jordan-1202558701/

Looks like this is really coming together now. Never heard of her but she seems to have directed for some pretty big shows.

She was a cinematographer on The Wire. In fact, I think it was her who arranged that episode 1 shot of Cheese and D'Angelo under the neon sign which is one of the most striking moments of the first episode (and the one David Simon personally intervened with to make sure it was done to HD properly). Very impressive.

Also directing what is apparently the best episode of Westworld is a pretty big notch on her belt as well.