THE WHEEL OF TIME TV Show: The braid tugs, as the writing wills [BOOK SPOILERS]

[fionwe1987]

1 hour ago, David Selig said:

Faile is frankly a saint for tolerating the whiny fool Perrin so much. She did most of the leadership work while Perrin spent his time whining how he doesn't want to be a lord yet Perrin got all the credit.

Precisely.

[felice]

1 hour ago, fionwe1987 said:

I doubt they'll be showing it in a viewpoint dependent manner. I suspect the weaves will be shown to us always

That would be a lot of money wasted on unnecessary CGI!

[fionwe1987]

1 hour ago, felice said:

That would be a lot of money wasted on unnecessary CGI!

There's no way around it. Conveying point of view in a show is near impossible. Take the first book, when Moiraine is fighting the trollocs. Do you take her point of view, show the weaves, and establish that there's something different about this magic system? 

Or do you take the PoV of the others and have her wave her staff and cause an earthquake and a wall of fire, like Gandalf?

Weaves aren't going to be the most expensive CGI anyway. It is, by definition, unearthly and strange. There's no real world physics or look to follow. Animating that isn't nearly as hard as, say, Trollocs and Ogier. 

[The Anti-Targ]

14 hours ago, Astromech said:

Musical cue or audio cue would probably work best. I wouldn't mind seeing some brief flashbacks to other past battles to highlight his shared memories.

sound cue

 

[felice]

1 hour ago, fionwe1987 said:

There's no way around it. Conveying point of view in a show is near impossible. Take the first book, when Moiraine is fighting the trollocs. Do you take her point of view, show the weaves, and establish that there's something different about this magic system?

Personally I'd leave out the weaves until the Fielders start learning to channel. Point of view is easy enough; eg close up on Moiraine teaching Egwene with weaves visible, then cut to long shot with Rand watching and not seeing the weaves. In general, I'd only show the weaves when the characters are actively paying attention to how something is done, rather than just doing it.

1 hour ago, fionwe1987 said:

Weaves aren't going to be the most expensive CGI anyway. It is, by definition, unearthly and strange. There's no real world physics or look to follow. Animating that isn't nearly as hard as, say, Trollocs and Ogier. 

True, but the weaves still aren't trivial, and in many cases depicting them visually could get in the way of showing the effect they're having.

[Myrddin]

Going a bit outside books, but what if the Rolling of the Dice had a kind of physical reaction. Goose bumps or something. Not hair standing up like Spiderman, but once they establish the "feeling" or sound, he can rub his arms and mutter Blood and Bloody Ashes.

Same kind of for weaves. Since most people can's see them, the audience can have that view until Moiraine teaches Egwene. Then we see from her point of view the weaves. Cut to a camera from Perrin or someone watching (seeing nothing). Save the CGI budget for the big battles.

Dunno. Not vested to either idea. Will be fine with whatever they give us. Just looking forward to the show.

[karaddin]

I think the issue with that particular reaction is that it's too similar to Rand's reaction to saidar before we know what's going on which is definitely something you want the audience picking up on. The idea generally might work though, and you'd want the audience to start picking up on it in a similar way - just a physical reaction that can't be confused with Rand's.

I quite appreciate this Tor piece on the casting, especially the identification of who is the aggrieved party at the same time as acknowledging why it happens

https://www.tor.com/2019/08/20/from-the-two-rivers-casting-and-race-in-the-wheel-of-time/

[Rhom]

Mat always complains of the dice rattling in his head.  Physical cues like holding his head like a headache, or aural cues like switching to his POV and everything sounding muted like when a character in a war movie has been too close to an explosion.  Something like that.

[The Anti-Targ]

Quote

The default is white. The default is white. The default is white. Any deviation from the default must be explained and justifiable, therefore any deviation from white must be explained and justifiable. If you don’t have a justification then you should just be white. And if you can’t be white, because you aren’t white, you need to justify yourself further.

From that article. Indeed that is how we've been conditioned. The thing that pisses me off is that conditioning still exists within me. My immediate reaction to the cast photos was "well this is going to ruffle some feathers because some people are going to hate this change." I didn't have a problem with "the change". My problem, and mistake was thinking that it was a change in the first place. The casting, in fact, is consistent with the text.

Never judge a book by its cover, indeed.

[karaddin]

2 hours ago, The Anti-Targ said:

Never judge a book by its cover, indeed.

 this series is the poster child for that in more ways than one it seems.

[Inkdaub]

I like the looks of the cast.  Some are very close to how I pictured them in my head and some aren't but they all look fairly good to me.  Madden looks very like how I see Egwene as I read.  I have never pictured Perrin as black but I do picture him having very similar facial expressions as many of the pics I find of Rutherford.  I always picture Nynaeve as Mariana Atencio.  Robins is beautiful(I will admit I picture Nynaeve as being most beautiful for whatever reasons) and will be great I think.  I have no mental picture of Mat or Rand, or very vague anyway.  The actors cast look fine. 

The flows should be visible but not all the time.  There's too much channeling in this story to show the weaves all the time.  I trust the visual minded tv professionals to figure it out.  We'll see.

Mat's dice in his head will be a bit trickier I think.  There should be some way to tell they are rolling because they will stop rolling at pivotal moments.  Likely this will get flipped and Mat will experience some dice-like cue at pivotal moments in the show.   Again I will leave it to the tv pros to make it happen.

I hope this show is really great. 

[phoenix_rising]

I guess I’m putting my faith in Amazon. They don’t do things wrong very often. The Shanara and Seeker garbage was hopefully a good enough example of what not to do. 

[polishgenius]

On 8/20/2019 at 2:18 AM, fionwe1987 said:

There's no way around it. Conveying point of view in a show is near impossible.

It's not easy and would take a high level of film-craft and consistency that'll be difficult to maintain to do convincingly (especially since like most shows directors will be different across episodes so the cinematic language would have to be tightly controlled by the showrunners in certain aspects to avoid confusion) but it's certainly possible. Camera positioning, editing tricks, audio cues, all sorts of ways you can clue a viewer in that one or another person is your perspective for this particular moment (even if you're not viewing it from their literal POV).

[Myrddin]

To be frank, most shows/movies use camera POVs. It follows the main character and stages all the action/drama from their perspective. The camera usually shows what a character sees/knows/is aware of. You first meet Protagonist. The camera then follows the protagonist and introduces new characters as you go along. Sometimes new characters have B stories and the camera later follows them. Sometimes it jumps to the Antagonist to see what s/he is planning.

The camera in Star Wars follows R2 and 3PO first. Then transitions to others (Leia and Vader) before arriving to Luke (main protagonist) who then drives most of the story. The POV. Drew Barrymore in the beginning of Scream drives the POV so we know what she knows of the guy outside waiting to kill her. Neo drives the camera's POV through most of the Matrix (Trinity prologue aside) until the second act. 

This isn't an argument to say WOT should use a POV narrative structure. I'm just saying it's pretty much standard to have characters drive the camera's POV, unless the director is purposefully showing the audience something the characters are unaware of.

[felice]

On 8/22/2019 at 3:08 PM, Rhom said:

or aural cues like switching to his POV and everything sounding muted like when a character in a war movie has been too close to an explosion.  Something like that.

That's the sort of thing I had in mind, or a slight fisheye or other altered state of consciousness visual effect. Not too pronounced, and ease it in gradually so you might not even notice it's there, but cut back to normal abruptly when the dice stop.

[fionwe1987]

14 hours ago, Myrddin said:

To be frank, most shows/movies use camera POVs. It follows the main character and stages all the action/drama from their perspective. The camera usually shows what a character sees/knows/is aware of. You first meet Protagonist. The camera then follows the protagonist and introduces new characters as you go along. Sometimes new characters have B stories and the camera later follows them. Sometimes it jumps to the Antagonist to see what s/he is planning.

The camera in Star Wars follows R2 and 3PO first. Then transitions to others (Leia and Vader) before arriving to Luke (main protagonist) who then drives most of the story. The POV. Drew Barrymore in the beginning of Scream drives the POV so we know what she knows of the guy outside waiting to kill her. Neo drives the camera's POV through most of the Matrix (Trinity prologue aside) until the second act. 

This isn't an argument to say WOT should use a POV narrative structure. I'm just saying it's pretty much standard to have characters drive the camera's POV, unless the director is purposefully showing the audience something the characters are unaware of.

That isn't quite the way we're talking about PoVs being used, though. One of the first scenes we're going to see channeling is when Moiraine heals Tam.

 

Rand and Lan know she's channeling. But they cannot see the weaves. Moiraine herself can see the weaves. To convey this, you may have the camera over her shoulder, say, showing the weaves. Then pan the camera to Rand looking on, wide eyed, then look over his shoulder, and all you see is Moiraine with a concentrated look, with her hand on Tam, but no weaves visible.

But will the audience get that?

What about a scene where a guy is using saidin, and a woman saidar. You can switch PoVs, showing the respective weaves in each, but it's just going to be confusing. Especially if they're fighting.

To me, it seems they may either have to fully remove the weave invisibility aspect from the show, or handle it by showing other characters react to the effects but not the weaves themselves.

[Corvinus85]

Given that the beginnings of the show may focus more on Moiraine, I can see them starting with her and Lan arriving in Emond's Field, and seeing much of the Trolloc attack through her eyes, in which case, we may see some early hardcore weaving (and at the same time, not see the attack on Tam's farm, and thus keep Tam's mutterings about baby-in-the-snow concealed). Then later, as Moiraine continues to channel, like the healing of Tam, that's presented from Rand's PoV, and no weaves are shown.

I'm more curious how they're going to show the transition between the pure weaves and the physical effect, for example how do the weaves move that lead to a fireball created and shot at something. Given how a fandom can easily obsess and nitpick about the smallest details, Judkins would be smart to hire an artist or two dedicated to creating a library of weave patterns for everything they put in the show. If GoT had a language expert for the creation of 2 languages, WoT can have artists to create a "language" of weaves.

[Joey Crows]

On 8/19/2019 at 7:03 PM, felice said:

Personally I'd leave out the weaves until the Fielders start learning to channel. Point of view is easy enough; eg close up on Moiraine teaching Egwene with weaves visible, then cut to long shot with Rand watching and not seeing the weaves. In general, I'd only show the weaves when the characters are actively paying attention to how something is done, rather than just doing it.

I like this idea. Establishing shot or shots early on to show the weaves while they're being explained then like you said, only when seeing them is important after that. Could work.

[Myrddin]

8 hours ago, fionwe1987 said:

That isn't quite the way we're talking about PoVs being used, though. One of the first scenes we're going to see channeling is when Moiraine heals Tam.

Rand and Lan know she's channeling. But they cannot see the weaves. Moiraine herself can see the weaves. To convey this, you may have the camera over her shoulder, say, showing the weaves. Then pan the camera to Rand looking on, wide eyed, then look over his shoulder, and all you see is Moiraine with a concentrated look, with her hand on Tam, but no weaves visible.

But will the audience get that?

No, we're talking same thing, just from a different POV.

In the Tam healing scene, I'd guess they wouldn't show any weaves. IF we're seeing it from Rand's POV. Later when Moiraine is teaching Egwene, we would see the weaves, from Egwene's POV. Then the camera could switch to Rand/Perrin/Whoever, who sees nothing. Now if the story starts with Moiraine and we follow her, then naturally we'd see the weaves when she heals Tam.

And the camera doesn't need to be over Moiraine's shoulder for her POV. She just needs to be the main driver of the scene, the one the camera follows.

But you're right. The huge battles where both male and female powers are being used would be trickier. They could both show or not show depending on who the camera is following.  Or just show every weave. Hopefully they've cracked it so it makes sense from a visual storytelling point of view and a budgetary. 

[felice]

8 hours ago, Corvinus said:

I'm more curious how they're going to show the transition between the pure weaves and the physical effect, for example how do the weaves move that lead to a fireball created and shot at something. Given how a fandom can easily obsess and nitpick about the smallest details, Judkins would be smart to hire an artist or two dedicated to creating a library of weave patterns for everything they put in the show.

Indeed; that's another reason to not show weaves more than necessary. It's not just the cost of the CGI, it's the effort required to design something that looks good and makes sense.