Needle & Pen

Someone asked did they go on-line and David said yes. Dan literally said “we were geographically challenged” and the maps were helpful.

David is also saying that he went to fan casting pages and that is how they found Jason Mamoa.

Dan is saying that writers and source material end up in divorce and that there divorce was amicable - since they ran out of material.

They are describing their pitch and how nervous they were. They pitched to Carolyn Strauss who has a reputation of being a tough pitch. They were very nervous “because of how bad we wanted.”

David is describing the pre-meeting with GRRM who was questioning their bona fides and “we didn’t really have any.” We had never done TV and we didn’t have any. We don’t know why he trusted us with his life’s work.”

They talking about the pilot and their friends who they let watch their first attempt at a pilot. One of the people was Craig Mazin (wrote Chernobyl) Scott Frank and Ted Griffin. He acknowledged that the first pilot was basic writing mistakes.

They acknowledge that they have no idea why after such a dismal pilot why they went forward. “Everything we could make a mistake in, we did.” Script, casting, costume. They think HBO went forward bc they had a lot of foreign pre-sales on the series.

Dan is saying that #GameofThrones was basically an expensive film school for he and Dave. For example, they had no idea how to work with costume designers, and it was a huge learning experience.

Two months before the pilot was to air, the episodes were averaging 39 minutes and HBO made then write and film 100 minutes of scenes to meet their contractual obligations. For example, they added a scene with Robert and Cersei - and realized that there was no scene with them.

The moderator is asking them about their comments acknowledging they didn’t understand the characters, and the extra minutes helped them understand the characters better.

Dan is saying that he let the actors redefined the roles, esp Maisie and they began writing for the actors, it is like the actor moved into the “house” and redecorated. He said he learned about the characters from the actors.

The moderator asked why they chose to write all the episodes by themselves: “Because we didn’t know better.” David said HBO wanted them to hire other writers and they decided to have Bryan Cogman, their assistant, write four episodes.

Dan wanted to remove as many fantasy elements as possible bc “we didn’t just want to appeal to that type of fan.” They wanted to expand the fan base to people beyond the fantasy fan base to “mothers, NFL players”...

She is asking about the violence. David: “TBH we went too far with some of those.” He comments on the jousting scene with the Mountain and how when they killed Sir Hugh, that it was in the scene too long. He compares it to Ozark’s Jason Bateman’s toenail being ripped out.

What did you learn from that? You made 30 feature films on 8 years, which is more than anyone out there than Woody Allen. She is asking about the Battle of the Bastards.

They used every season as a learning experience. The CGI of the dragons was particularly challenging. They said by season 4 that Miguel was doing night shoots they had decided no one would miss them if they backed away. *battle of winterfell took 10 straight weeks

Why did the battles get better? “We kept our core crew together.” They had same stunt teams, same people who did the blood scenes in S02 did the ones in S07. They get better and better as we did.

“The two of us and Miguel spent a lot of time together.” They talked with him about the shots always being from someone’s POV, so it didn’t feel like a video game. S1 we wanted to have a battle but we ran out of money. (The extra 100 minutes.) Thus the drinking game scene.

When we pitched HBO, we promised them that we would downplay the fantasy elements. (Paraphrase) She is challenging the fact of how the Night King and the White Walkers and how it played out.

They are expressing regret about putting the baby on the block of ice and him screaming. The mother was not happy bc Dan just kept talking about a close-up of the baby’s penis. *They are very granular in details of shots, admitting losing sight of the big picture.

Were you listening to the feedback to your fans as things went along? Dan: “We really did not.” Dan doesn’t see the value of considering other people’s reactions. Dave acknowledged that he googled the show and it upset him. Dan, no. @dndgoogling

Did you really sit down and try to boil the elements of the books down? Did you really try to understand it’s major elements. No. We didn’t. The scope was too big. It was about the scenes we were trying to depict and the show was about power.

What was your process? We just started writing. But as things went on we had to outline. Divvied up scripts. They didn’t work together in the same room. One took first half, the other the last half, then they would swap. They gave episodes to Bryan Cogman and David Hill.

Dab is saying how much they loved the books, but they had to make it their own. They have stressed several times about giving up 10 years of their life. They reference David Chase and the Sopranos and how he said this was all such a blur.

Dan: “it was like a ten year drunk party.”

Q&A: how did you have a life - keep families going, etc. We loved our Game of Thrines family. But it was very hard. Our kids and wives became best friends and it felt like a big family.

“It’s hard to complain about how hard we were working when you see a set painter,” Dan.

He is talking about how this being what he dreamed of since 8, and they never even dreamed this big.

Question about S8, Dan said that bc of the brutality, there was only a few people left. They felt like they knew who the characters were, and how they were going to end.