The realist thread

[Werthead]

I've heard your version of the Deadwood cancellation before, but it's also been disputed. Alan Sepinwall, a tv critic, wrote that HBO basically made Milch take the fall for the cancellation of Deadwood. Here's a quote from an article of his on HBO canceling some of its comedies back in December.

I'm inclined to believe Sepinwall just because he's been in the TV industry for at least a decade and knows the kind of deals that happen. Plus, I have a hard time believing Milch would be so stupid to abandon Deadwood for at least a whole year to do John From Cincy when he'd lose all the actors in Deadwood in the meantime.

I'm sure this is the version Milch would like circulated (and Sepinwall's info comes from talking to Milch, I understand). But there's not many people who adopt the same view, and most TV commentators seem to agree that it was Milch wanting to do something else, if only temporarily, that led to the situation. Maybe Sepinwall's right, HBO spun the situation to their advantage and everyone else swallowed it, but it seems implausible. Most notably, Deadwood wasn't a ratings failure and was their second-biggest hit at the time. It makes no sense at all for HBO to have terminated it the way they did to get its creator to make a show with a far harder-to-sell premise.

Rome and Carnivale both had massive cost overruns (and in the latter case, the showrunner refused to reign them in and then demanded that HBO commission the next four seasons all at once) and their ratings were flaky, so HBO cancelling them made sense, even if only in the short term. Deadwood, not so much.

[Padraig]

I dunno, I just find it odd that people feel the need to proactively explain how much they'd be willing to give away because of some kind of imaginary constraints!

I think people are just preparing themselves for the worst. While I think they can remain pretty faithful to the books, I do think books 1 to 3 are easier to adapt than the subsequent books. Acknowledging that is just been realistic.

OTOH, some proposed changes do seem wrong to me. While some are driven by people disliking certain parts of the story.

[Dragon greyscale]

I dunno, I just find it odd that people feel the need to proactively explain how much they'd be willing to give away because of some kind of imaginary constraints! Sure, it's not as though we're actually in negotiations here (unless D&D happen to read this and decide to take opinions into account), but you never start by explaining what all you'd be willing to part with…

The first season wasn't that far off the book. I don't see a reason why subsequent seasons should fare any worse, but that could just be lack of perspective.

Hmm, but that's a negative interpretation of this topic. I was basically starting out from the idea that everybody has a different view on the series. it's basically a discussion on what people like and dislike. That's what the boards are for right?

Because of the variety of views, it follows that most people will have their gripes with what D&D include and what they'll leave out. Them leaving stuff out is not an imaginary constraint, it's inevitable. I am not even talking about money issues and big scenes; just the very fact that their take will definitively differ from say, my take or your take. No purple targ eyes...? That was never essential to me but to others it was. Tyrion being ugly? In my head the dwarfism was the only thing that stood out, but others disagree. We can have this discussion on any book-to-tv adaptation. It's not a an imaginary negotiation, it happens every time!

Besides, changes could actually be better than the text. Your negotiation analogy implies that tou think of asoiaf as flawless. Nothing in art and literature is flawless. If you can acknowledge that, then this topic becomes a positive one vecause we're looking for improvements.

[Arrogant Bastard]

I dunno, I just find it odd that people feel the need to proactively explain how much they'd be willing to give away because of some kind of imaginary constraints! Sure, it's not as though we're actually in negotiations here (unless D&D happen to read this and decide to take opinions into account), but you never start by explaining what all you'd be willing to part with…

The first season wasn't that far off the book. I don't see a reason why subsequent seasons should fare any worse, but that could just be lack of perspective.

It's just an interesting discussion; I think we all realize this will have absolutely no impact on what does happen with the show, but discussing the adaptation like this is sort of the point of this subforum.

And there's a reason why the first season "wasn't that far off the book"; it was the easiest to adapt. It certainly wasn't easy to adapt, with the huge amount of character introductions in the first half of the show and all the necessary backstory, but out of all the books it has the quickest pace, least amount of characters, and chapters that provided natural endings for episodes (I guessed the ending to just about every episode in the first season). It only gets more difficult from here on out, especially when they hit AFFC/ADWD, which was the main point of discussion in this thread. This is the "realist" thread, and realistically, I don't see whatever season(s) that correspond with AFFC/ADWD being not that far off the book; there are going to be a lot of cuts of both plotlines and characters.

[Plem]

One thing I've been wondering about is how they are going to do the warg scenes. I can't imagine them doing scenes and scenes of wolves just running around with Bran maybe narrating the whole thing. Does anyone else believe that they will completely cut all the warg storylines from the show?

[DaveSumm]

I also wondered how they'll do that........but cut it out entirely? Dear GOD that's drastic. Bran's entire arc revolves almost exclusively around it.

[Plem]

Bran's arc seems to be the one who is changed the most anyway. All those dreams he had in AGoT didn't really make it into the show (except for one or two about the crow as far as I remember). I just can't think of a single realistic way they can can do the warg scenes without them being corny.

[boojam]

Rome and Carnivale both had massive cost overruns (and in the latter case, the showrunner refused to reign them in and then demanded that HBO commission the next four seasons all at once) and their ratings were flaky, so HBO cancelling them made sense, even if only in the short term. Deadwood, not so much.

One thing I never understood was HBO allowing ROME to be shot in Rome.

Cinecittà is a great studio, lord knows Cleopatra and Ben Hur were shot there.

But by the 2000's Rome was an expensive place to film , if Heller had of spent that 100 million in Eastern Europe he maybe could have gotten at least 3 seasons, probably not the 4 or 5 he wanted.

David Benioff and D. B. Weiss have been very wise in their choice of production locations, I know many of the production designers are from England but I am not sure how much of , say, the costumes are made there.

Northern Ireland must be very reasonable nowadays , Croatia is ready made and I am sure production cost low, Iceland, especially nowadays has to be a good buy.

I have not seen anything, I guess, definitive about the budget for season 2, maybe later.

Wonder what they put aside for VFX? That's going to be more extensive this season.

Have a hunch DVD sales are going to be hot.

(I know that was one thing that gave HBO some grief , ROME and Deadwood did well as DVD products.)

[DaveSumm]

Bran's arc seems to be the one who is changed the most anyway. All those dreams he had in AGoT didn't really make it into the show (except for one or two about the crow as far as I remember). I just can't think of a single realistic way they can can do the warg scenes without them being corny.

Off the top of my head, just intersperse a normal shot of Summer pacing around the godswood with some POV shots coupled with a few quick shots of a sleeping Bran's eye's moving around (ala REM sleep)........if you had Bran explaining to Osha possibly about his dreams to start with, so you knew ahead of time that it was possible that Bran was seeing though Summer's eyes.

The alternative is that Bran spends 4 or 5 seasons being told that he might be able to see through the eyes of trees, but never actually doing anything cool. The main dream in the first season was probably omitted because it would be incredibly difficult to shoot a falling boy having a conversation with a crow while in sight of all of Westeros.

[Plem]

Off the top of my head, just intersperse a normal shot of Summer pacing around the godswood with some POV shots coupled with a few quick shots of a sleeping Bran's eye's moving around (ala REM sleep)........if you had Bran explaining to Osha possibly about his dreams to start with, so you knew ahead of time that it was possible that Bran was seeing though Summer's eyes.

That was one of my first idea too, but I imagine they would want to limit the CGI as much as possible. It will probably be hard enough for them to keep Summer and Ghost around Bran and Jon all the time that they will have to make some cuts somewhere. And if they wanna establish Bran as a warg they'll have to show his wolf dreams multiple times, not just once, to make it clear to the viewer. I'm really looking forward to seeing how (and if) they handle this.

[DaveSumm]

What CGI would be needed?

[Plem]

What CGI would be needed?

Didn't someone say in an interview that the direwolves would be CGI (at least partially) from now on?

[Grumpkin Hunter]

I think Arya's story could be trimmed considerably without any real loss to the story. All the wandering an meeting characters only important for her story was a little unimportant. She needs to meet the assassin and the band of thieves but that's about it.

[Werthead]

Didn't someone say in an interview that the direwolves would be CGI (at least partially) from now on?

This was initially thought, but the last info I saw in interviews was that the direwolves would be mostly used with false perspective or CGIing the real wolves (but bigger) into shots. Fully-CGIed direwolves do not appear to be on the cards just yet.

[Gingerly Grumkin]

For the most part i dont care on how realist HBO is. However...

1. Lack of Sigils. They should be on everybody's chest. (not that big of a deal)

2. Chains. The Hand of the king has button, and Maesters have nothing (also not a big deal)

3. The Eyes!!! Arya, Jon and Ned should have grey eyes! Tyrion should have an evil eye! Dany's eyes! Purple eyes are sexy!!(very big deal)

[Top Notch Balanter]

About the lack of sigils i think its just to keep the tv audience on track so rather then having different sigils for every minor house theyll have sigils for the main houses ie stark lannister possibly bolton

[gmk]

Here's my realist take on the books:

I don't think George can finish the series in 7 books. I think it's going to take *9*.

Here's my reasoning:

At this point, the series feels like it's set up to be a trilogy of trilogies -- i.e., 9 books. The first trilogy (AGOT/ACOK/ASOS) is about the War of the Five Kings. The second trilogy (AFFC/ADWD/TWOW) is about its aftermath, as our surviving main characters disperse and go through their personal journeys of growth and self-realization. The third trilogy is about the Long Winter and the war against the Others.

AFFC and ADWD feel very much like "middle books" to me -- think The Two Towers, or Empire Strikes Back. We're out of the first act, but we're not yet into the third. Our heroes are dispersed and undergoing various training, trials, and maturation. Jon is learning to be a leader; Dany is learning to be a ruler and struggling with how to manage her dragons; Arya is learning to be an assassin; Jamie is coming to grips with the fact that his life has been full of lies and bad decisions; Sansa is discarding her naivete and learning how to be a political player; Bran is learning to be an all-seeing tree thing; Sam is learning wisdom and responsibility; Tyrion is struggling to define himself outside of his Lannister heritage. And even by the end of ADWD, none of these middle-book arcs has a real conclusion; we'll have to wait for TWOW to find these resolutions.

Consider also that we *know* that the ultimate struggle is against the Others; yet through five books, we've seen little of them. That's because they don't truly come onscreen until the third act -- much like the Emperor in Return of the Jedi. I simply don't believe that George can finish up the dangling "act two" arcs and tell the full story of the climactic war with the Others in two books.

I read somewhere that originally, when he thought of ASOIAF as a trilogy, George intended to end the first book at the Red Wedding. (Anyone have a reference for this?) This makes complete sense in the context of a trilogy, where the first act is the War of the Five Kings -- the Red Wedding being approximately the conclusion to the war. But we now know it took George nearly three books to get to the Red Wedding. Given that, it seems logical that the second and third parts of the trilogy will take three books each, as well.

I will caveat this a bit. I think George wanted to sort of skip the middle act with his "five year gap", and thus conclude the series in six books. Originally, he though he'd handle the "middle act" as a combination of events at the end of ASOS plus flashbacks in the subsequent books. As a result, the end of ASOS is jammed with action that could be considered early "second act" action -- Littlefinger and Sansa, including Lysa's death; Tyrion's trial and Tywin's death; Jon's election as Lord Commander; the beginning of Jamie and Cersei's falling out; UnCat. This is partly why AFFC and ADWD seem slow in terms of action; George pushed a lot of the "holy shit" moments of act two into the end of ASOS, and thus AFFC and ADWD are stripped of big moments, particularly early on. Note though that even two books later, we still haven't seen a clear resolution to most of these events. In other words, even if act two started in the last third of ASOS, we're still waiting for TWOW for its conclusion.

So, maybe George ended up compressing things a bit, and he'll be able to both conclude act two and kick off act three in TWOW -- much as he concluded act one and kicked off act two in ASOS. Maybe. Even so, that tells me he's still going to hit 8 books.

[opark77]

For the most part i dont care on how realist HBO is. However...

1. Lack of Sigils. They should be on everybody's chest. (not that big of a deal)

2. Chains. The Hand of the king has button, and Maesters have nothing (also not a big deal)

3. The Eyes!!! Arya, Jon and Ned should have grey eyes! Tyrion should have an evil eye! Dany's eyes! Purple eyes are sexy!!(very big deal)

1. There are quite a few sigils in the show - the tourney of the hand has banners for many minor houses, when Robb summons his bannermen their banners are hung at Winterfell. The show puts the great houses sigils on more things than they do in the book. The minor houses sigils are still there if you look for them though. I agree it would be nice to have more sigils on clothing and armor. Have you seen the new trailer? Stannis and Renly have their sigils on their armor in that one.

2. There is a shot of Tyrion I think you will like in the new trailer.

3. Have you read the reports about the use of contact lenses during filming for the original pilot?

[opark77]

About the lack of sigils i think its just to keep the tv audience on track so rather then having different sigils for every minor house theyll have sigils for the main houses ie stark lannister possibly bolton

Here is the Bolton sigil as seen in season 1 of the show:

http://gameofthrones.wikia.com/wiki/File:Bolton.jpg

[Gingerly Grumkin]

3. Have you read the reports about the use of contact lenses during filming for the original pilot?

3. i just typed in contact lens and A game of thrones on google and it came up with this http://insidetv.ew.c...rge-r-r-martin/. And a quote by GRRM "I know they tried, but they were not able to do the purple eyes for the Targaryens. You can do colored contact lenses, but that’s difficult for the actors and doesn’t always look right anyway". I dont understand? what does that mean? how the hell did HBO try?

2. Yea? Tyrion got Shae's chain on? Awsome.

1. I know that sigals exist, but... When i watch HBO with my friends they ask mad questions "whos this, whos that" it would be easier to just say the animal that relates to the people. e.g. knight of flowers, the hound (HBO did a good job with that), etc,etc. My friends know that the Wolf is Stark, because they have wolves, but it would be simpler to have Jorah and the old bear both have a bear on there chest.

When Cat arrests Tyrion she is like "Is that the sigil bat of Harrenhal on your chest?" Then the knight gets up, and nothing is on his chest...