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.
Conversation
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”...
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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.
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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.
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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
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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.
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“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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
Replying to
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.
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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.
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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.
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“It’s hard to complain about how hard we were working when you see a set painter,” Dan.
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He is talking about how this being what he dreamed of since 8, and they never even dreamed this big.
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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.
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Someone wanted to see more of Ramsey get eaten by the dogs. The dogs were VFX. It looked to cartoonish.
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How did you decide to do reveals?
#SubvertExpectations
Talk about choosing to kill Joffrey in E2 bc nothing ever happens.
Sansa and Arya killing LF. They mapped it out so you didn’t know what was going to happen.
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Casting also dictated how and when they killed people.
Question about scouting locations. They are crediting the Location director in Belfast. Sorry, I didn’t catch name.
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They asked about not including women and POC in the writers room.
They didn’t have a writers room and there was one woman who wrote a few scenes. They decided up front it was going to be the two of them. David Hill is of Asian descent.
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He said that they wouldn’t hire writers unless they were willing to be part of the production team.
(Vanessa wrote the Shape of Water.)
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She ended up leaving the show to write that. Q re: how do you pitch a show this big and they said it was basically a con job to HBO and how big it would get bc they bet on the HBO execs not reading 5000 pages of ASOIAF.
The pitch was impossible to pitch the whole story.
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They decided to pitch the pilot, and not the series, in a way that was understandable to folks they were pitching. Then they did a vague overview of the series, with not a lot of details.
“There was no good way to summarize the story. So we didn’t.”
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There was a question re: kit Harrington that wa unintelligible and neither of them answered. They kept referring to the other one. End of Thread.
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Update: First, thanks for all the love and appreciation, and the validation, Fam! Truthfully typing kept me from screaming. Also, thanks for ignoring my spelling grammar, etc., I was typing fast.
And as far as the thread -
GIF
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My mentions have exploded, and is reporting. I will respond to everyone as I can.
Also, I’m adding answers to folks questions and feedback others may not see bc RTs.
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Many of your comments in replies and rtweets express dismay and anger on their comment about removal or downplaying of the fantasy elements. This article gives context to thoughts about fantasy in 2008 when they were pitching HBO.
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Dan was more vocal on the issue of fantasy fans. Here’s an article where he comments he hadnt liked that genre since he was 12.
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This is my impression of how they demeaned fantasy fans.
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Replying to @AadilBharwani and @alyndanoel
LOL, I knew it was coming, and I knew their interview would be a shitshow. They demeaned our devoted ASOIAF community, which can, unlike D&D, comprehend the scope, plot, themes and characters. So I too need folks to commiserate with. That’s why I came here. Thanks, fam.
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This Tweet is unavailable.
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Here’s
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Replying to @ForArya
I mean...why take the fantasy out of fantasy books?
GIF
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They also made comments about their approach to genre and how the series was “only a few steps away from Monty Python.” Please someone explain that?!
But this Vanity Fair article reiterates these comments.
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Lots of comments on how their treatment of the fantasy elements throughout the series contributed to the Finale’s failure particularly Bran/3ER. Here’s one from @wintersdracarys
twitter.com/wintersdracary
This Tweet is unavailable.
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This humorous tweet sums up their thought process on trying to appeal to a broader audience.
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My read was that they think of fantasy fans as intelligent, but geeks and nerds. Not “manly.”
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Replying to @PrometheusWill and @OAltovsky
Yes mothers and wives were first. Then a whole string of folks but it was the NFL players was memorable bc the moderator segued that into comments on the level of violence to appeal to them. They said “well that’s @hbo.”
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An overwhelming number of responses were both about the flagrant white privilege during the interview and their being approved for HBO to do the series.
Like this one from .
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Benioff & Weiss had no idea what they were doing. But they were still given a budget of $6 million per episode. Their pilot was terrible, they made constant mistakes *and they talk about it openly*. Tell me which woman writers in Hollywood have ever had this kind of privilege. twitter.com/ForArya/status…
Show this thread
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Fantasy and privilege.
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This QandA is a masterclass in conning your way into making a fantasy tv and not bothering to know anything about it and removing the fantasy parts. Mediocre men failing upwards twitter.com/ForArya/status…
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This echoes the frustration of many of the writers in the room.
twitter.com/kdwilliams/sta
This Tweet is unavailable.
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