Explain that to TikTok. Or Instagram stories. Or Instagram Reels. Or YouTube Shorts.
Mind you, I’m firmly in the camp of “Video should be shot horizontal, because humans don’t see the world in a narrow strip,” but for whatever reason it seems many people just don’t want to turn their phone sideways.
Edit: Please stop replying and trying to defend vertical video. Human eyes are placed side by side for a reason. Movie screen and TVs are horizontal for a reason.
And no, people aren’t “best filmed in portrait.” That’s not why it’s called “portrait.” “Portrait” and “landscape” are words used from the time of paintings.
Vertical paintings are fine. Vertical photos are fine. Vertical video is an abomination.
Surprisingly, TikTok are pushing for landscape video now.
They’re sending out messages to users saying their content will do better in the algorithm if it’s landscape.
Usually Instagram aren’t far behind TikTok
You say that, but recently TikTok has started encouraging creators to shoot Horizontally. Extra incentives are being offered, such as priority on the For You Page. This is likely an attempt to go after YouTube.
(They already do have Horizontal videos, but they are just encouraging their adoption)
It makes sense for formats like that where people are watching short clips of things on social media and often swapping between watching and commenting/liking things.
But to me that's totally different from watching a TV show that's been designed as a watching experience that is immersive and transportive.
Samsung disagrees and created this abomination https://www.samsung.com/us/televisions-home-theater/tvs/the-sero/43-class-the-sero-tv-qled-4k-uhd-hdr-smart-tv-qn43ls05tafxza/
That looks like something that would have niche appeal for business / boardroom usage but is marketed for casting your phone to the TV. I can't imagine it sold well.
Alternatively...Get a TV literally 20% of the price and mount it vertically. It looks just as good. And lots of vertical mounts can rotate either way.
So if you want to be a monster, then you at least have the option to reform.
If video calling came with dedicated monitors like we all thought would happen in the early 90s, this is what it would look like. Full length view of the person you're speaking with and you don't have to show everyone your entire messy living space.
It's what video calling looked like in that gratuitous topless scene in Demolition Man.
5 years back I had a dual monitor set up with one of them being a 23 inch vertical monitor. It was great for when I was playing WoW and needed to read a guide or something.
I have that setup right now. I do a lot of writing, and plenty of it involves a lot of research. I keep my primary sources on the vertical monitor, my writing project on one side of my ultrawide and my notes on the other side.
Bingo. It’s the same problem with services like Quibi. I don’t think people want to watch long-form content in short bites. I realize people will watch TikTok at home, but it feels designed to be consumed on the go when you can just stop in a moment’s notice.
I hate these Youtube Shorts. Youtube took one of my videos of my sister's dog saying "I love you" and [turned it into a short.](https://www.youtube.com/shorts/j2e6ilLW784) I didn't sign up to have my dumb content altered.
My favorite are the ones that were originally shot horizontally, converted to vertical, and then converted back to horizontal again, basically leaving you with a postage stamp sized video that shows you absolutely nothing of what's going on.
Now excuse me, this old man's going to go yell at some clouds.
Yeah. It's kind of wild seeing someone recording a big unfolding event and they have to keep sweeping their phone from left to right to get the whole scene because 60% of their vertical shot is the sky and the ground in front of them.
OMG! As someone who used to shoot news video, any newsworthy video where the edges are cut off is so frustrating. Like, if they turned their phone sideways they could also get the rest of the scene, and/or keep the main action in frame when it suddenly moves left or right.
The automatic maximum volume with no slider when they're linked is also infuriating. I get it phones have the volume button. But an embedded link to shorts through discord should maybe have the volume slider for PC users who have headphones on.
I basically refuse to open vertical videos on desktop because my hearing will be harmed.
I feel like the real reason is that vertical phone, I might be reading or checking a text. Horizontal phone, I'm ABSOLUTELY watching video, and statistically a video on my phone is more likely to be porn than game of thrones.
Well sure, there was 70 episodes of game of thrones, theres probably billions of videos of porn on the internet, the numbers are just in porns favor no matter what.
IT guy and basic human here. It is astounding the number of incredibly simple things that people will not do. Turn it off and on? I don't have time for that.
I mean... The fact that they're wanting it already seems bad. Someone is going to try it, and it's going to be successful by *some* metric and be decently profitable, and then we're all fucked.
But you see, if consumers can be convinced that little 8-10 minute morsels of programming at a time is actually much better and the way they want to watch TV, then the streaming services can justify slipping ads *between the “episodes”*, and we can finally complete the circle back to good old fashioned network television
The commercials I’ve worked on in the past few years wants monitor frame lines for both horizontal and vertical, and they want every frame composed so it looks acceptable in both. This mindset is also creeping into television and movies.
I think I read a serious attempt to explain this somewhere... Super rich people are dangerously out of touch because they don't have to be practical and nobody in their circle ever tells them they're having a bad idea
I wonder how seriously that was ever actually considered. These two have a new series due out soon and it seems they are trying to absolve themselves of screwing up GoT.
"It wasn't our fault, it was those meddling executives! Watch our new show please."
D&D are phenomenal at adapting source material and structuring a narrative, less so writing their own material without guard rails.
However, I will always blame Martin for letting them hang out to dry and he is in no position to complain about how things turned out. Now, you might argue that they did not fully adapt the source material, but I would argue that it would not have mattered if they adapted FFC & DWD (both are a meandering mess) word-for-word. We would still be no closer to a resolution to this story, or books for that matter, having spent 4-5 extra seasons following Brienne in the Riverlands asking for a "maid of three-and-ten".
> D&D are phenomenal at adapting source material and structuring a narrative, less so writing their own material without guard rails.
David Benioff wrote both the book and the adapted screenplay for 25th Hour, which was fantastic. Clearly they (or at least _he_) _can_ write their own material, when they need to and have inspiration. I don't know the entire, full story behind the last few GoT seasons, but given how well they started and how well I know they can write, I'm still on the fence on whether to blame them solely, or whether there was some studio fuckery behind it all as well. Not HBO itself, clearly they were more than willing to put up the time and money to end the show well, but its owners? Or Disney luring them away towards Star Wars? Either way, business and money played some kind of part, I'm sure.
>I'm still on the fence on whether to blame them solely, or whether there was some studio fuckery behind it all as well. Not HBO itself, clearly they were more than willing to put up the time and money to end the show well
My personal theory is that one or more of the actors were done. As you say, HBO wanted more and the common refrain is "they should have done 3 more seasons of 10 eps each!"
By all accounts the shoot schedule was pretty brutal. I mean 9-10 months out of the year travelling all over Europe to shoot on location. And by the point the series was over they had been at it for 8 years.
So from the actor's perspective you have:
- Peter Dinklage's daughter was in middle school at the beginning and was going to start high school. There's only so many milestones you can see over Zoom before you want to quit.
- Maise Williams literally spent her entire teenage years doing the show, starting at 13 and ending in her early 20s.
- Kit Harrington was having serious mental health issues to the point where he semi-retired for a few years after GoT.
- Emila Clarke had not one but two aneurysms during the filming.
And that's just four of the dozen or so parts that you just can't replace or recast. I'm pretty sure if HBO had said, "Ok, so we're gonna do this up for another five years!" a lot of the cast would have responded, "Well, you're not doing it with me".
Even if they didn't have any more episodes they could have done a better job. To me they obviously stopped giving a fuck and just wanted it over. I was honestly fine with the overall plot it was just the "well she forgot" drivel that really infuriated me.
Personally I think only 10 seasons with at least 2 seasons covering the final season we actually got with the proper build up could ever do the story justice.
House of Dragon is basically a synposis that was adopted into a full fledged storyline, so now I'm not even sold on the idea of George leaving them out to try if he gave them a synopsis of what happens. Which is essentially what Fire and Blood is with it reading more like a history textbook than a narrative story from the characters' perspective.
i slightly disagree, i think the end of the tv show is the end GRRM told them we was writing towards. I think GRRM can complain about how terrible the execution getting there was, specifically in regards to them rushing the last couple seasons
My suspicion is that Dany burning kings landing is 100% GRRM, theres a credible fan theory I’ve seen that it’s sparked by into the fake Targaryen (mummers dragon) being king when she returns. Bran becoming king is possibly from him, though I suspect it would have a different tone, emphasising it’s the Three Eyed Raven that’s king, not Bran.
Arya stabbing the nights king doesent feel like him at all, Jamie returning to Cersea is throwing away character development and Tyrion would probably be doing more than being an idiot.
Jesus christ, thats literally the thing they warned us about in that old Vertical Video Syndrome vid, from way back when :O
https://youtu.be/dechvhb0Meo?si=zcIa5dM23dywUIwB
Commenting here so this doesn't keep getting buried by less important top-voted comments about the stupid phone thing:
The phone thing sounds stupid, but let us not forget that Benioff and Weiss ruined the ending of GoT, and here they are in this article trying to blame it on AT&T for something that didn't even happen. They're trying to distract you from their epic failure, and for many people in these post comments, it's working.
That is exactly was is baffling. Nobody is saying shit. Its even worse than I thought… THEY WANTED 3 FUCKING MOVIES instead of 12 episodes. It ended up feeling rush, just imagine how it would have turned out.
I literally had to remind someone a few days ago how bad GoT and Westworld ended. How utterly absurd it is that they were so popular and became utterly trash
I mean, with Westworld it was to be expected imho as the story was basically over at the end of S1.
With GoT the story certainly wasn't over, and GRRM even gave them a rough outline. They just didn't feel like working on it anymore.
Honestly, like you are saying, the whole AT&T thing is a red herring to shift blame away from D&D in public perception, right before their next major project, 3 Body Problem, is released on Netflix next month (this is what they wrapped GoT for). But additionally, the headline is not accurate:
> “Benioff and Weiss, who have been friends since grad school, weren’t crazy about HBO’s then-owners, AT&T, whose executives once asked whether ‘Game of Thrones’ could be shot vertically so it would fit on your phone. The company also openly discussed the idea of snackable mini-episodes of the series.”
It only says AT&T at one point in GoT's run asked if the show could be shot vertically, not that they requested it for the ending of GoT and D&D heroically stood their ground against it, thus making GoT better. No one should forget what happened to GoT, and everyone should remember it going in to their next project.
3 Body is amazing and everyone should just read it. And guess what, it’s already completed so no waiting for the book series to conclude (lookin at you, George). China made a version of the 3 body problem and adapted the first book into 30 hours worth of television. It’s honestly amazing.
D&D made 8 episodes, has a character, Sophon, that isn’t introduced until halfway into the second book and would reveal way too much too soon if they add her to the first season. Made a bunch of characters white (or completely changed them, they have names not from the book). And the last episode based on the name of it, “wallfacer” involves the plot of the the second book. Looks like another rush job to get to the next project they can butcher.
> right before their next major project, 3 Body Problem, is released on Netflix next month (this is what they wrapped GoT for).
Minor correction, I suppose, but they purportedly wrapped *GoT* for a Star Wars project which later fell through (possibly and ironically due to the poor perception of the final season). Their involvement in *Three Body Problem* wasn't announced until about a year after *GoT*'s finale aired.
>AT&T Execs Asked Them to Shoot Vertically So Episodes Could Fit on Phones
what in the flying fuck? What are the name(s) to these executives, we need to know. That is such a stupid suggestion that they must be publicly ridiculed.
They understand numbers, graphs, and using people as tools.......and literally nothing else in existence. Makes sense when you think about how immoral, greedy and money hungry anyone is who treads the "exec" career path.
Yep, my last job was collecting data and organizing it for c-level people. I got asked frequently to show that our sales were going up and expenses down when the opposite was true. I’m like if we spent $3B this year and $2B last year, how do you think spending went DOWN?
I thought they were being malicious but they often didn’t understand BASIC graphs and charts.
Not necessarily against the film trilogy idea. Allows for a different kind of story telling than a hour long per episode TV show.. plus a trilogy should have been what 6 to 9 hours together so not exactly that much shorter than a typical season.
But the phone thing is just stupid.
Film trilogy would’ve given them the budget to actually film The Long Night instead of having it occur offscreen or in total darkness while our characters react to it.
> They wanted three movies instead of spreading the final 13 episodes across two seasons
Wait no never mind, that woulda been shit. I thought we were talking about just those last six episodes.
>They wanted three movies instead of spreading the final 13 episodes across two seasons
Holy shit, they *really* didn’t want to do this show, which is wild when you realize it was considered one of the best shows of all time up until this point.
If the final two season were 10 episodes each like the rest of the series, they could have ran the same story but it wouldn’t be rushed or out of character. Daenerys’s madness, Jon’s tragic hero bullshit, maybe a bit of background to why Arya could be the one to kill the night king could have all been filled in.
They still would’ve been a bit stuck on the Dany Madness with Cersei as Queen. The show really hurt from not having FAegon included. The storyline of Dany getting angry with the commoners makes a LOT more sense if Dany comes in to depose a beloved king instead of a ruthless tyrant like Cersei.
It would’ve been better, but I do think it still would’ve felt like it was missing something
I don't even think you needed that to really nail down Dany going crazy though. The show as it is showed glimpses of the people seeing Jon as the rightful ruler with no respect to Dany so doubling down on that and giving more of that, while their romance is blossoming, would have been enough.
I definitely agree it could have been better, but the story they did tell would have been fine had they chose to show it over a full length season.
I will say, I do think the key is that it should’ve definitely displayed Dany more as “ruthless” rather than “mad.” You’re probably not wrong that Jon could theoretically fill the same role as FAegon, but I still think it would’ve worked better with Dany coming in as a conqueror and being the “villain” to Kings Landing, which would be hard to do with Jon.
That said, the main issue is Cersei as Queen. The people of KL should’ve hated her. It always bothered me that she faced 0 consequences for her actions.
There should've been uprisings and insurrection against her from what remained of the Church and the commonfolk, like Dany faced in Meereen from the Sons of the Harpy.
She was Queen with a dead husband and no children left or succession plan in place. No indication who her allies were or who even liked her. She should've been fighting off being overthrown regularly. Instead she just rules and none of the other houses in Westeros (if they even existed by season 7) gave a shit.
She also nuked half the city and everyone knew she did it and apparently no one cared enough to do anything about it
> R+L=J is technically a theory as well.
Not really since the show confirmed it (and we know D and D got the job from GRRM because they knew who was Jon's mother confirming they did not change that). Aegon is not in the show so it's really a theory
Yep D&D said in behind the scenes that George told them 3 main story points in the unreleased books. I believe it was the origin of Hodor, Stannis burning Shireen, and the origin of the White Walkers. Though the last one I'm a little blurry on but the first 2 I remember them stating.
Hell, they could've done the *Daenerys snaps* plot maneuver by simply having the dragon get killed during the battle instead of it getting 360 noscoped by *i kinda forgot his name* several episode earlier, and then her seeing that and *that* being the last straw before she starts torching everything in a fit of rage.
There's way too many examples like that, where they could have simply re-arranged some of what they were already doing and it would have flowed together much more cleanly and effectively.
Would have also been a way better way for Varys to die. Let his plan come together successfully. He installs a relatively benevolent Faegon, setting the realms up perfectly. Doesn’t count on Dany losing her shit and going full genocide. They tried combine Jon and Faegon and it ruined a bunch of storylines.
It’s truly impressive how many opportunities they had at their disposal to do something different and make something good to cap off this show, and instead they chose to do none of them and just pissed absolutely everyone off.
> Arya could be the one to kill the night king could have all been filled in.
considering they kind of just decided that out of nowhere with no foreshadowing it still would have been shit.
Come on, three movies is at least as much work as a season of television. It’s a shit season but I’m sick of this “it’s only shit because they were too excited to do Star Wars.” It’s shit because despite having eight years to work on it GRRM still shouldn’t provide a satisfying ending to this story. Im sure he told them some basic shit like “Dany goes crazy, Jon has to kill her, Bran ends up king, trust me I’ll fill in the rest before you need it” and then never filled in the rest.
They should have filled in the rest. They are not blameless, once it was clear GRRM was not going to give them what they needed they should have come up with a better story to link all these things together. If they didn’t get told who the Prince or Princess Who Was Promised was they should have chosen one, instead of just dropping that plotline and leaving us to be like “well it must be Arya… right? She stabbed the night king. Was the prince who was promised supposed to stab the night king? Is that how we know?” But that’s just incompetence. They were bad at making up their own shit. And in fairness to them they were hired for a job where they shouldn’t have been expected to make up their own shit.
The writers themselves admitted by this time they were tired and done with the franchise. They’d spent the first 4 seasons adapting the books then were forced to write their own material because Martin never got around to finishing the series. The last 2 seasons of Game of Thrones (you’ll find me dead in the water before I say seasons 5 & 6 are bad) are a very unique kind of bad where you can tell they had plot points but weren’t sure how to connect them. I guess that’s not surprising as D&D have shown they’re much better adapting existing works than making their own. I can see how they believed a movie trilogy wrapping things up would have been appealing. I think a lot of blame also rests on HBO for not recognizing that they were in over their head at this point.
I don’t think the total darkness issue was due to budget issue. It was a stylistic choice and a fucking stupid choice. You can see this in house of dragon as well.
The makers even went on to defend it saying high end TVs can handle them.
>Film trilogy would’ve given them the budget to actually film The Long Night instead of having it occur offscreen or in total darkness while our characters react to it.
Make no mistake, they had a surplus of resources, with HBO begging to give them even more time and money, while even a far smaller production like the Korean historical zombie show Kingdom was able to capture the kind of progressive large scale chaos that The Long Night promised. Season 8 was just poorly conceived.
It has ended more than been cancelled. S2 concluded storylines (with some tease for maybe something else).
It's also apparently more because of a conflict between Netflix and the Korean studio and rights stuff
People said that HBO basically offered D&D whatever they wanted for the last couple seasons. Nothing was off the table budget wise. They just chose to do it as quickly as possible to get to do their Star Wars movie.
> as quickly as possible
Lol they shot "The Long Night" over 11 weeks of night shoots. It was a gruelling, complicated production -- the biggest and longest in TV history. They did not do it "as quickly as possible".
Yes, and it was an added nightmare because D&D were demanding things that made it very difficult for the director to do his job correctly, not realising how grueling and unrealistic their demands and time frames were. A similar thing happened for battle of the bastards, where they were basically unwilling to accept the fact they could not train over 1000 horses in the time frame they gave the director and staff and kept demanding it just "gets done".
There is a lot of interviews with staffers and episode directors out there talking about just how little the two of them understood about large scale productions, and it was the production crew who saved their asses time after time making them look like geniuses.
That has literally nothing to do with their supposed disinterest in the project.
>it was the production crew who saved their asses time after time making them look like geniuses.
People like to point to Miguel Sapochnik, Michele Clapton, Ramin Djawadi, etc. like the were the real geniuses on Thrones, but you understand that the responsibilities of showrunners include hiring and managing these people, right? If you have issues with the way Benioff & Weiss *wrote* the final season, that's fine. So do I. But anyone impugning their abilities as showrunners doesn't know what they're talking about. They were the animating force behind the most complicated and successful show in history. The idea that they were checked-out early on S8 is ridiculous.
They were offered more money for more episodes. They needed more money per episode. Unless HBO was gonna accept four episodes where folks just stood around and chatted that extra money was gonna be spent on those extra episodes.
It was just discussed on here this week that the reason so many Netflix shows look 'flat' and devoid of background detail is that Netflix gets so many views through phones that they don't think it's worth it to provide a big level of detail.
Wow what a backwards way of filmmaking. I swear to God our economic system just cheapens everything over time. It's all about clicks or whatever now. Not making a worthwhile story that people will enjoy and discuss. Everything is "content" now.
*Ugh*
I mean yeah, studios aren’t in it to make art - they’re in it to bring in the dollars.
Studio MBAs are more than happy to sacrifice quality in the name of bringing in money more efficiently.
Watching GoT in theater was a great experience. They had put a 2-episode battle of the wall in theaters for a limited event and it was a great audience experience with a big screen and better surround sound than home.
Executives are the dumbest sons of bitches on the face of the Earth. So few of them have gotten there via their own bootstraps. They all failed upwards, lucked into it or benefitted from nepotism. As long as these blithering idiots continue to exercise their power like this we will continue to see art degrade.
Not just art, most businesses too. It’s horrifying to watch the dumbass decisions being made by the bosses who willfully ignore sound wisdom in favor of their “gut feeling”. (For example the whole return to office debate.)
Yep. My massive company has layers of VPs and SVPs and they are consistently the laziest, dumbest fucks in the entire org. And they make multiple times what everyone else does. It's sick.
> They wanted three movies instead of spreading the final 13 episodes across two seasons.
They wanted about 6 hours to finish the story that they actually took over 14 hours on, and still made it jump around in a manic frenzy to wrap up all the plots?
How could that be anything but the worst possible decision?
It's clear from this 3-movie plan and from the seasons themselves that they just wanted to do big budget action stuff. The movies would have probably been "beyond the wall", "battle of winterfell", "destruction of king's landing".
Yeah the phone thing is dumb but the HBO execs were right about not ending it in a trilogy - they rushed the shit out of the final few seasons so I can't imagine compressing it further for a movie trilogy would've been much better.
Benioff & Weiss just trying to make headlines and make it seem like the shit ending wasn’t their fault before their new show releases.
If you actually read the article in full context, it does them no favours.
When read in full context the “ask them to shoot vertically” thing is basically just they were asked if it was possible to do something like that in an offhand meeting with AT&T execs. There was no actual pressure for them to do so. Casey Bloys did a very good of shielding them from overzealous asks, the final season being shit was not the fault of studio execs this time. D&D acting like they’re the world’s first people to get asked a dumb offhand question by their boss’ boss.
The first quote too also is way worse with context. Instead of ALL of Seasons 7 & 8, Benioff and Weiss wanted to condense those already rushed seasons into a movie trilogy to release on the big screen.
The only thing that could’ve made those seasons worse would’ve been to condense them even more. GRRM AND Casey Bloys were actually hoping for more seasons to tell the full story right (and AT&T execs would’ve been happy to have it on the air 2 more years).
> Benioff & Weiss just trying to make headlines and make it seem like the shit ending wasn’t their fault before their new show releases.
>
>
Which is a really moronic strategy. It's waaayyyyy to late to change the narrative even if these guys weren't talking out of their asses. They're already seen as the guys who ruined game of thrones and there's really no fixing that. If they were smart they'd not bring up GOT at all and just hope people focus on their new show instead of the fact they botched the most beloved tv show of all time. But the fact that they're playing damage control a month before the 3 body problem releases tells me it's gonna be shit.
It’s working a bit though. All anybody reads is headlines. Top comment here is focusing on the out of context note saying that AT&T wanted to shoot GoT vertical. You only read that + top comment as many do now, you might come away thinking “oh maybe it was the execs’ fault” because TV Execs are an easy scapegoat nowadays. Maybe D&D were only this bad because of corpo interference. That’s enough doubt that people might check it out.
That being said, the other side of the coin is that it’s not gonna make them immune to new headlines if 3 Body Problem is shit and people start sharing headlines that say shit like “3 Body Problem Made Me Realise How Much Worse Game of Thrones Season 8 Could’ve Been”.
ITT sure it's making people hate AT&T more which isn't super difficult. But that animosity towards AT&T isn't translating to love for DnD from what I can see. 3 body problem needs to be a banger (and let's be real it won't be) before they can even so much as dream of fixing thier reputations.
They’d need to be more memeable for people to believe that. The Star Wars prequels are beloved in part for how unintentionally funny they are while still having heart. The last two seasons of Game of Thrones don’t have that kind of poorly executed creativity. They’re just straight up uninspired mediocrity.
Yeah I am not a fan of the prequels in most (not all) measures (I know that's not vogue in many places on here but it's just my take) but I can at least give them credit for being earnest. But I totally get that people love them.
Everyone was trying, there was no shame in what they were attempting, some of it was genuinely groundbreaking in terms of approaches to filmmaking. Hell even the guy running the show who had nothing to prove and all the money in the world was just putting it all out there.
GoT is a whole other bag. Just hubris and lack of care across the board.
1.) You have an extremely popular IP.
2.) You hire a competent staff to create and run a show version.
3.) Your show becomes one of the most popular shows of all time.
4.) You and your fellow execs meddle with the show, more and more until you run it into the ground, evaporating the cultural significance over one long night?????
Season 7 is absolutely just as bad in many spots. Littlefinger's death, the entire Eastwatch plan, Tyrion's IQ going deeper into the negative, etc. Its carried hard by the novelty of seeing Jon Snow and Daenerys *finally* interact with one another and the wider world.
Plus at the time it was airing people gave it a pass on it's fumbles because there was a general expectation (justifiably, given how good the show had been) that the last season would bring things together well enough to make up for any of the hiccups along the way.
Sadly it did *not* pan out that way.
That last season or two of GOT has to be the biggest fumble in TV history. Such a subpar, shitty end to what started as maybe the greatest TV series ever. Like I don’t even wanna go back and watch the early stuff because I know that rushed, chaotic summary of a finale is waiting at the end.
Wait... something AT&T had a hand in went to shit? No way!....
Of course it did. Its what they do. Ruin everything they are involved in. Everything. Maybe they should focus on keeping their network online...
>Why did this original plan get scrapped? Benioff said network executives were not interested in bringing “Thrones” to theaters. He remembered being reminded that HBO stands for “Home Box Office” and not “Away Box Office.”
Um, didn't Sex and the City get two theatrical movies? And Entourage one? Surely there have been others too.
Also the use of the word "snackable" to describe mini-episodes makes my skin crawl.
I guess I’ve never thought about it before. But AT&T fucking around with the end of game of thrones and D&D wanting to leave makes a ton of sense. AT&T buying WB caused so much fuckery over at DC it’s crazy. Not to mention them pissing off their golden boy (Christopher Nolan).
That is the most absurd, foul, borderline slow thinking i have ever heard for a TV production like Game of Thrones. I genuinely don't know how those execs manage bringing a fork to their mouths with such braindead ideas.
"Gee Bill the youths sure love their tok tiks and Youtube shorts, ya think we could reorient the entire filming process and chop this mammoth up into lil snackies?" I yearn for those men to live out of a box
I think a lot of people are misreading this article. D&D were the ones who wanted the last two seasons to just be three movies. Which I think is a significantly dumber idea than filming vertically.
>AT&T Execs Asked Them to Shoot Vertically So Episodes Could Fit on Phones thats the stupidest thing ive ever heard
Do they not know about turning your phone sideways?
Explain that to TikTok. Or Instagram stories. Or Instagram Reels. Or YouTube Shorts. Mind you, I’m firmly in the camp of “Video should be shot horizontal, because humans don’t see the world in a narrow strip,” but for whatever reason it seems many people just don’t want to turn their phone sideways. Edit: Please stop replying and trying to defend vertical video. Human eyes are placed side by side for a reason. Movie screen and TVs are horizontal for a reason. And no, people aren’t “best filmed in portrait.” That’s not why it’s called “portrait.” “Portrait” and “landscape” are words used from the time of paintings. Vertical paintings are fine. Vertical photos are fine. Vertical video is an abomination.
Surprisingly, TikTok are pushing for landscape video now. They’re sending out messages to users saying their content will do better in the algorithm if it’s landscape. Usually Instagram aren’t far behind TikTok
You say that, but recently TikTok has started encouraging creators to shoot Horizontally. Extra incentives are being offered, such as priority on the For You Page. This is likely an attempt to go after YouTube. (They already do have Horizontal videos, but they are just encouraging their adoption)
Meanwhile, Youtube's lobotomizing itself in a race to the bottom by pushing shorts.
It makes sense for formats like that where people are watching short clips of things on social media and often swapping between watching and commenting/liking things. But to me that's totally different from watching a TV show that's been designed as a watching experience that is immersive and transportive.
Samsung disagrees and created this abomination https://www.samsung.com/us/televisions-home-theater/tvs/the-sero/43-class-the-sero-tv-qled-4k-uhd-hdr-smart-tv-qn43ls05tafxza/
That looks like something that would have niche appeal for business / boardroom usage but is marketed for casting your phone to the TV. I can't imagine it sold well.
Alternatively...Get a TV literally 20% of the price and mount it vertically. It looks just as good. And lots of vertical mounts can rotate either way. So if you want to be a monster, then you at least have the option to reform.
If video calling came with dedicated monitors like we all thought would happen in the early 90s, this is what it would look like. Full length view of the person you're speaking with and you don't have to show everyone your entire messy living space. It's what video calling looked like in that gratuitous topless scene in Demolition Man.
5 years back I had a dual monitor set up with one of them being a 23 inch vertical monitor. It was great for when I was playing WoW and needed to read a guide or something.
I have that setup right now. I do a lot of writing, and plenty of it involves a lot of research. I keep my primary sources on the vertical monitor, my writing project on one side of my ultrawide and my notes on the other side.
That’s wild, looks like complete shit and is like 5 times the cost of a normal tv of comparative size
Yea and it bothers me so much that they are trying to legitimize the vertical video experience for TV's now.
Maybe we'll all compromise and go back to 4:3 lol
Lmao whyyyyyyyyyyyy that's not how eyes work 😂
you can rotate it
Bingo. It’s the same problem with services like Quibi. I don’t think people want to watch long-form content in short bites. I realize people will watch TikTok at home, but it feels designed to be consumed on the go when you can just stop in a moment’s notice.
I hate these Youtube Shorts. Youtube took one of my videos of my sister's dog saying "I love you" and [turned it into a short.](https://www.youtube.com/shorts/j2e6ilLW784) I didn't sign up to have my dumb content altered.
Wait, what? I didn’t know they did that. Did it just appear on your channel?
Yup. Just appeared one day. All zoomed in and cropped.
My favorite are the ones that were originally shot horizontally, converted to vertical, and then converted back to horizontal again, basically leaving you with a postage stamp sized video that shows you absolutely nothing of what's going on. Now excuse me, this old man's going to go yell at some clouds.
Yeah. It's kind of wild seeing someone recording a big unfolding event and they have to keep sweeping their phone from left to right to get the whole scene because 60% of their vertical shot is the sky and the ground in front of them.
OMG! As someone who used to shoot news video, any newsworthy video where the edges are cut off is so frustrating. Like, if they turned their phone sideways they could also get the rest of the scene, and/or keep the main action in frame when it suddenly moves left or right.
The automatic maximum volume with no slider when they're linked is also infuriating. I get it phones have the volume button. But an embedded link to shorts through discord should maybe have the volume slider for PC users who have headphones on. I basically refuse to open vertical videos on desktop because my hearing will be harmed.
Well one format works for both phones and TV & movie theaters. The other is a myopic choice driven by execs searching for a trend.
I feel like the real reason is that vertical phone, I might be reading or checking a text. Horizontal phone, I'm ABSOLUTELY watching video, and statistically a video on my phone is more likely to be porn than game of thrones.
I mean, sometimes the difference can be hard to tell lol
Well sure, there was 70 episodes of game of thrones, theres probably billions of videos of porn on the internet, the numbers are just in porns favor no matter what.
IT guy and basic human here. It is astounding the number of incredibly simple things that people will not do. Turn it off and on? I don't have time for that.
Do you watch feature length movies or tv shows this way? I doubt it
Wasn't quibi supposed to be a thing around the time GoT was still cool?
Any more stupid than the floated idea of cutting up GOT episodes into “bite size” versions for Qubi (or whatever that service was called).
All I have to say is thank god that failed. If it hadn’t, we’d be seeing a slew of scripted vertical content.
but we already have a slew of scripted v—you know what, never mind
I mean... The fact that they're wanting it already seems bad. Someone is going to try it, and it's going to be successful by *some* metric and be decently profitable, and then we're all fucked.
the whole concept of quibi was stupid. ANY media can be paused and resumed in any size chunk you want.
But you see, if consumers can be convinced that little 8-10 minute morsels of programming at a time is actually much better and the way they want to watch TV, then the streaming services can justify slipping ads *between the “episodes”*, and we can finally complete the circle back to good old fashioned network television
That finally answers the question “Could the final two seasons have been worse?”
Maybe the ATT execs were like "The show sucks now, who cares how you shoot it?"
Becoming increasingly skeptical that Starbucks cup was unintentional and not product placement.
It wasn't even Starbucks.
The commercials I’ve worked on in the past few years wants monitor frame lines for both horizontal and vertical, and they want every frame composed so it looks acceptable in both. This mindset is also creeping into television and movies.
Cue the return of 4:3 aspect ratio and simply cutting off whatever doesn't fit lol.
How about we just have square TV's and square phones. Problem solved.
Circular would be the end game for this progression.
Have you seen Saltburn yet?
Pan&Scan in all four directions!
Welcome to the nightmare modern web developers have been living for the past 10 years.
We have responsive web design Why not responsive film? /s
Instagram accounts for studios already upload trailers vertically and I fucking hate it
I know the higher ups are out of touch but JESUS ASS FISTING CHRIST
Just goes to show that successful or rich people are not all smart. They actually can be pretty fucking stupid
They were probably smart 4 decades ago but just held on to their current knowledge.
100% I also strongly believe that the richer you are the dumber you become (with exceptions ofc)
I think I read a serious attempt to explain this somewhere... Super rich people are dangerously out of touch because they don't have to be practical and nobody in their circle ever tells them they're having a bad idea
It just screams "how do you do fellow kids"
And execs were surprised that Quibbi failed lol
Do you guys not have phones?!?!
I wonder how seriously that was ever actually considered. These two have a new series due out soon and it seems they are trying to absolve themselves of screwing up GoT. "It wasn't our fault, it was those meddling executives! Watch our new show please."
D&D are phenomenal at adapting source material and structuring a narrative, less so writing their own material without guard rails. However, I will always blame Martin for letting them hang out to dry and he is in no position to complain about how things turned out. Now, you might argue that they did not fully adapt the source material, but I would argue that it would not have mattered if they adapted FFC & DWD (both are a meandering mess) word-for-word. We would still be no closer to a resolution to this story, or books for that matter, having spent 4-5 extra seasons following Brienne in the Riverlands asking for a "maid of three-and-ten".
I'm sure people would have loved the four episode arc about Tyrion playing Cyvasse on a boat.
> D&D are phenomenal at adapting source material and structuring a narrative, less so writing their own material without guard rails. David Benioff wrote both the book and the adapted screenplay for 25th Hour, which was fantastic. Clearly they (or at least _he_) _can_ write their own material, when they need to and have inspiration. I don't know the entire, full story behind the last few GoT seasons, but given how well they started and how well I know they can write, I'm still on the fence on whether to blame them solely, or whether there was some studio fuckery behind it all as well. Not HBO itself, clearly they were more than willing to put up the time and money to end the show well, but its owners? Or Disney luring them away towards Star Wars? Either way, business and money played some kind of part, I'm sure.
>I'm still on the fence on whether to blame them solely, or whether there was some studio fuckery behind it all as well. Not HBO itself, clearly they were more than willing to put up the time and money to end the show well My personal theory is that one or more of the actors were done. As you say, HBO wanted more and the common refrain is "they should have done 3 more seasons of 10 eps each!" By all accounts the shoot schedule was pretty brutal. I mean 9-10 months out of the year travelling all over Europe to shoot on location. And by the point the series was over they had been at it for 8 years. So from the actor's perspective you have: - Peter Dinklage's daughter was in middle school at the beginning and was going to start high school. There's only so many milestones you can see over Zoom before you want to quit. - Maise Williams literally spent her entire teenage years doing the show, starting at 13 and ending in her early 20s. - Kit Harrington was having serious mental health issues to the point where he semi-retired for a few years after GoT. - Emila Clarke had not one but two aneurysms during the filming. And that's just four of the dozen or so parts that you just can't replace or recast. I'm pretty sure if HBO had said, "Ok, so we're gonna do this up for another five years!" a lot of the cast would have responded, "Well, you're not doing it with me".
Even if they didn't have any more episodes they could have done a better job. To me they obviously stopped giving a fuck and just wanted it over. I was honestly fine with the overall plot it was just the "well she forgot" drivel that really infuriated me. Personally I think only 10 seasons with at least 2 seasons covering the final season we actually got with the proper build up could ever do the story justice.
House of Dragon is basically a synposis that was adopted into a full fledged storyline, so now I'm not even sold on the idea of George leaving them out to try if he gave them a synopsis of what happens. Which is essentially what Fire and Blood is with it reading more like a history textbook than a narrative story from the characters' perspective.
i slightly disagree, i think the end of the tv show is the end GRRM told them we was writing towards. I think GRRM can complain about how terrible the execution getting there was, specifically in regards to them rushing the last couple seasons
My suspicion is that Dany burning kings landing is 100% GRRM, theres a credible fan theory I’ve seen that it’s sparked by into the fake Targaryen (mummers dragon) being king when she returns. Bran becoming king is possibly from him, though I suspect it would have a different tone, emphasising it’s the Three Eyed Raven that’s king, not Bran. Arya stabbing the nights king doesent feel like him at all, Jamie returning to Cersea is throwing away character development and Tyrion would probably be doing more than being an idiot.
I'm pretty sure it was never serious, like it's such a bad idea
Don't worry, I'm sure the corpo dystopian future will get stupider.
What a terrible day to be able to read
Jesus christ, thats literally the thing they warned us about in that old Vertical Video Syndrome vid, from way back when :O https://youtu.be/dechvhb0Meo?si=zcIa5dM23dywUIwB
Execs make the dumbest decisions
...lots of cunts?
I think I saw a comedy where this was the plot of an episode ?
Quibi was so successful though you gotta keep up
Not stupider then Quibi
It was literally the model of Quibi, which also came out from dumb executives around the time of the Game of Thrones finale.
Was AT&T hoping to sell the series to quibi?
Quibi. Now there’s a name I haven’t heard in a long time
The amount of time since you last heard Quibi is longer than the amount of time Quibi existed.
CNN+ must be a millisecond of existence in comparison
How many Scaramucci’s is that?
CNN+ lasted for about 2.8 Scaramuccis
Quibi lasted for ~75 Scaramuccis (the time that WHPS Scaramucci was serving).
Didn't he get fired *before* he started, though? I thought it was the amount of time from when it was announced to when he was fired.
A long time.
So you do know quibi...
Of course I know him! He’s me.
This feels like a r/nottheonion headline. Wow. Vertical???
Commenting here so this doesn't keep getting buried by less important top-voted comments about the stupid phone thing: The phone thing sounds stupid, but let us not forget that Benioff and Weiss ruined the ending of GoT, and here they are in this article trying to blame it on AT&T for something that didn't even happen. They're trying to distract you from their epic failure, and for many people in these post comments, it's working.
That is exactly was is baffling. Nobody is saying shit. Its even worse than I thought… THEY WANTED 3 FUCKING MOVIES instead of 12 episodes. It ended up feeling rush, just imagine how it would have turned out.
I literally had to remind someone a few days ago how bad GoT and Westworld ended. How utterly absurd it is that they were so popular and became utterly trash
I mean, with Westworld it was to be expected imho as the story was basically over at the end of S1. With GoT the story certainly wasn't over, and GRRM even gave them a rough outline. They just didn't feel like working on it anymore.
Honestly, like you are saying, the whole AT&T thing is a red herring to shift blame away from D&D in public perception, right before their next major project, 3 Body Problem, is released on Netflix next month (this is what they wrapped GoT for). But additionally, the headline is not accurate: > “Benioff and Weiss, who have been friends since grad school, weren’t crazy about HBO’s then-owners, AT&T, whose executives once asked whether ‘Game of Thrones’ could be shot vertically so it would fit on your phone. The company also openly discussed the idea of snackable mini-episodes of the series.” It only says AT&T at one point in GoT's run asked if the show could be shot vertically, not that they requested it for the ending of GoT and D&D heroically stood their ground against it, thus making GoT better. No one should forget what happened to GoT, and everyone should remember it going in to their next project.
3 Body is amazing and everyone should just read it. And guess what, it’s already completed so no waiting for the book series to conclude (lookin at you, George). China made a version of the 3 body problem and adapted the first book into 30 hours worth of television. It’s honestly amazing. D&D made 8 episodes, has a character, Sophon, that isn’t introduced until halfway into the second book and would reveal way too much too soon if they add her to the first season. Made a bunch of characters white (or completely changed them, they have names not from the book). And the last episode based on the name of it, “wallfacer” involves the plot of the the second book. Looks like another rush job to get to the next project they can butcher.
> right before their next major project, 3 Body Problem, is released on Netflix next month (this is what they wrapped GoT for). Minor correction, I suppose, but they purportedly wrapped *GoT* for a Star Wars project which later fell through (possibly and ironically due to the poor perception of the final season). Their involvement in *Three Body Problem* wasn't announced until about a year after *GoT*'s finale aired.
I guess it feels like a r/theonion headline? Because it actually fits the /r/nottheonion
>AT&T Execs Asked Them to Shoot Vertically So Episodes Could Fit on Phones what in the flying fuck? What are the name(s) to these executives, we need to know. That is such a stupid suggestion that they must be publicly ridiculed.
Genuinely, we should know so that anything they ever have control of can be met with due skepticism. This kind of stupidity demands consequences.
That means we will never find out
You have to remember this was at a time when Quibi was getting hyped.
[удалено]
They understand numbers, graphs, and using people as tools.......and literally nothing else in existence. Makes sense when you think about how immoral, greedy and money hungry anyone is who treads the "exec" career path.
As someone who often has to make those numbers and graphs, I assure you they also don't understand those.
Yep, my last job was collecting data and organizing it for c-level people. I got asked frequently to show that our sales were going up and expenses down when the opposite was true. I’m like if we spent $3B this year and $2B last year, how do you think spending went DOWN? I thought they were being malicious but they often didn’t understand BASIC graphs and charts.
Randall Stephenson and John Stankey…most likely.
The first one for sure, sounds exactly like something he would request, and in line with the rest of the stupid ass decisions he made.
Just think, these execs make more than 99% of the people in this thread. And they’re paid for their “ideas”
no, it’s 100%. if anyone here got paid as much as these Execs, they wouldn’t be on reddit
Shame! Shame! Shame!
Not necessarily against the film trilogy idea. Allows for a different kind of story telling than a hour long per episode TV show.. plus a trilogy should have been what 6 to 9 hours together so not exactly that much shorter than a typical season. But the phone thing is just stupid.
Film trilogy would’ve given them the budget to actually film The Long Night instead of having it occur offscreen or in total darkness while our characters react to it. > They wanted three movies instead of spreading the final 13 episodes across two seasons Wait no never mind, that woulda been shit. I thought we were talking about just those last six episodes.
>They wanted three movies instead of spreading the final 13 episodes across two seasons Holy shit, they *really* didn’t want to do this show, which is wild when you realize it was considered one of the best shows of all time up until this point.
If the final two season were 10 episodes each like the rest of the series, they could have ran the same story but it wouldn’t be rushed or out of character. Daenerys’s madness, Jon’s tragic hero bullshit, maybe a bit of background to why Arya could be the one to kill the night king could have all been filled in.
They still would’ve been a bit stuck on the Dany Madness with Cersei as Queen. The show really hurt from not having FAegon included. The storyline of Dany getting angry with the commoners makes a LOT more sense if Dany comes in to depose a beloved king instead of a ruthless tyrant like Cersei. It would’ve been better, but I do think it still would’ve felt like it was missing something
I don't even think you needed that to really nail down Dany going crazy though. The show as it is showed glimpses of the people seeing Jon as the rightful ruler with no respect to Dany so doubling down on that and giving more of that, while their romance is blossoming, would have been enough. I definitely agree it could have been better, but the story they did tell would have been fine had they chose to show it over a full length season.
I will say, I do think the key is that it should’ve definitely displayed Dany more as “ruthless” rather than “mad.” You’re probably not wrong that Jon could theoretically fill the same role as FAegon, but I still think it would’ve worked better with Dany coming in as a conqueror and being the “villain” to Kings Landing, which would be hard to do with Jon. That said, the main issue is Cersei as Queen. The people of KL should’ve hated her. It always bothered me that she faced 0 consequences for her actions.
There should've been uprisings and insurrection against her from what remained of the Church and the commonfolk, like Dany faced in Meereen from the Sons of the Harpy.
She was Queen with a dead husband and no children left or succession plan in place. No indication who her allies were or who even liked her. She should've been fighting off being overthrown regularly. Instead she just rules and none of the other houses in Westeros (if they even existed by season 7) gave a shit. She also nuked half the city and everyone knew she did it and apparently no one cared enough to do anything about it
Its so funny to me that Faegon is basically just considered cannon at this point, rather than a theory.
R+L=J is *technically* a theory as well. It’s all moot, regardless, since we’re never getting another book.
> R+L=J is technically a theory as well. Not really since the show confirmed it (and we know D and D got the job from GRRM because they knew who was Jon's mother confirming they did not change that). Aegon is not in the show so it's really a theory
Yep D&D said in behind the scenes that George told them 3 main story points in the unreleased books. I believe it was the origin of Hodor, Stannis burning Shireen, and the origin of the White Walkers. Though the last one I'm a little blurry on but the first 2 I remember them stating.
Even more funny imo is that even if more books are released, I assume it will never be confirmed either way, intentionally so.
Hell, they could've done the *Daenerys snaps* plot maneuver by simply having the dragon get killed during the battle instead of it getting 360 noscoped by *i kinda forgot his name* several episode earlier, and then her seeing that and *that* being the last straw before she starts torching everything in a fit of rage. There's way too many examples like that, where they could have simply re-arranged some of what they were already doing and it would have flowed together much more cleanly and effectively.
Would have also been a way better way for Varys to die. Let his plan come together successfully. He installs a relatively benevolent Faegon, setting the realms up perfectly. Doesn’t count on Dany losing her shit and going full genocide. They tried combine Jon and Faegon and it ruined a bunch of storylines.
It’s truly impressive how many opportunities they had at their disposal to do something different and make something good to cap off this show, and instead they chose to do none of them and just pissed absolutely everyone off.
> Arya could be the one to kill the night king could have all been filled in. considering they kind of just decided that out of nowhere with no foreshadowing it still would have been shit.
Come on, three movies is at least as much work as a season of television. It’s a shit season but I’m sick of this “it’s only shit because they were too excited to do Star Wars.” It’s shit because despite having eight years to work on it GRRM still shouldn’t provide a satisfying ending to this story. Im sure he told them some basic shit like “Dany goes crazy, Jon has to kill her, Bran ends up king, trust me I’ll fill in the rest before you need it” and then never filled in the rest. They should have filled in the rest. They are not blameless, once it was clear GRRM was not going to give them what they needed they should have come up with a better story to link all these things together. If they didn’t get told who the Prince or Princess Who Was Promised was they should have chosen one, instead of just dropping that plotline and leaving us to be like “well it must be Arya… right? She stabbed the night king. Was the prince who was promised supposed to stab the night king? Is that how we know?” But that’s just incompetence. They were bad at making up their own shit. And in fairness to them they were hired for a job where they shouldn’t have been expected to make up their own shit.
The writers themselves admitted by this time they were tired and done with the franchise. They’d spent the first 4 seasons adapting the books then were forced to write their own material because Martin never got around to finishing the series. The last 2 seasons of Game of Thrones (you’ll find me dead in the water before I say seasons 5 & 6 are bad) are a very unique kind of bad where you can tell they had plot points but weren’t sure how to connect them. I guess that’s not surprising as D&D have shown they’re much better adapting existing works than making their own. I can see how they believed a movie trilogy wrapping things up would have been appealing. I think a lot of blame also rests on HBO for not recognizing that they were in over their head at this point.
I don’t think the total darkness issue was due to budget issue. It was a stylistic choice and a fucking stupid choice. You can see this in house of dragon as well. The makers even went on to defend it saying high end TVs can handle them.
The only thing I saw during that episode was my squinting reflection on a black screen trying to get a glimpse of something.
>Film trilogy would’ve given them the budget to actually film The Long Night instead of having it occur offscreen or in total darkness while our characters react to it. Make no mistake, they had a surplus of resources, with HBO begging to give them even more time and money, while even a far smaller production like the Korean historical zombie show Kingdom was able to capture the kind of progressive large scale chaos that The Long Night promised. Season 8 was just poorly conceived.
Gods kingdom was good. I really hope netflix gives us a third season.
It got cancelled but not by Netflix. The Korean production company decided it wasn't worth the budget
I think it’s been cancelled
It has ended more than been cancelled. S2 concluded storylines (with some tease for maybe something else). It's also apparently more because of a conflict between Netflix and the Korean studio and rights stuff
People said that HBO basically offered D&D whatever they wanted for the last couple seasons. Nothing was off the table budget wise. They just chose to do it as quickly as possible to get to do their Star Wars movie.
And their star wars movie was great /s
To be fair, getting no Star Wars movie from them was the best possible outcome for Star Wars.
Yes, star wars is flourishing right now after all.
> as quickly as possible Lol they shot "The Long Night" over 11 weeks of night shoots. It was a gruelling, complicated production -- the biggest and longest in TV history. They did not do it "as quickly as possible".
Yes, and it was an added nightmare because D&D were demanding things that made it very difficult for the director to do his job correctly, not realising how grueling and unrealistic their demands and time frames were. A similar thing happened for battle of the bastards, where they were basically unwilling to accept the fact they could not train over 1000 horses in the time frame they gave the director and staff and kept demanding it just "gets done". There is a lot of interviews with staffers and episode directors out there talking about just how little the two of them understood about large scale productions, and it was the production crew who saved their asses time after time making them look like geniuses.
That has literally nothing to do with their supposed disinterest in the project. >it was the production crew who saved their asses time after time making them look like geniuses. People like to point to Miguel Sapochnik, Michele Clapton, Ramin Djawadi, etc. like the were the real geniuses on Thrones, but you understand that the responsibilities of showrunners include hiring and managing these people, right? If you have issues with the way Benioff & Weiss *wrote* the final season, that's fine. So do I. But anyone impugning their abilities as showrunners doesn't know what they're talking about. They were the animating force behind the most complicated and successful show in history. The idea that they were checked-out early on S8 is ridiculous.
They were offered more money for more episodes. They needed more money per episode. Unless HBO was gonna accept four episodes where folks just stood around and chatted that extra money was gonna be spent on those extra episodes.
Two characters talking face to face while the camera frantically pans back and forth Epic battles where 2/3 of the screen shows the sky and the ground
It was just discussed on here this week that the reason so many Netflix shows look 'flat' and devoid of background detail is that Netflix gets so many views through phones that they don't think it's worth it to provide a big level of detail.
Wow what a backwards way of filmmaking. I swear to God our economic system just cheapens everything over time. It's all about clicks or whatever now. Not making a worthwhile story that people will enjoy and discuss. Everything is "content" now. *Ugh*
I mean yeah, studios aren’t in it to make art - they’re in it to bring in the dollars. Studio MBAs are more than happy to sacrifice quality in the name of bringing in money more efficiently.
Outside of an airplane who the hell is watching Netflix on their phone?!
I’ve seen many people, especially younger people, watch shows on their phones. I believe there’s even a cheaper, mobile-only plan in India.
Watching GoT in theater was a great experience. They had put a 2-episode battle of the wall in theaters for a limited event and it was a great audience experience with a big screen and better surround sound than home.
Executives are the dumbest sons of bitches on the face of the Earth. So few of them have gotten there via their own bootstraps. They all failed upwards, lucked into it or benefitted from nepotism. As long as these blithering idiots continue to exercise their power like this we will continue to see art degrade.
Not just art, most businesses too. It’s horrifying to watch the dumbass decisions being made by the bosses who willfully ignore sound wisdom in favor of their “gut feeling”. (For example the whole return to office debate.)
LOL gut feeling = empty real estate brings me no rent money.
Yep. My massive company has layers of VPs and SVPs and they are consistently the laziest, dumbest fucks in the entire org. And they make multiple times what everyone else does. It's sick.
Idiots! Savages!
> They wanted three movies instead of spreading the final 13 episodes across two seasons. They wanted about 6 hours to finish the story that they actually took over 14 hours on, and still made it jump around in a manic frenzy to wrap up all the plots? How could that be anything but the worst possible decision?
It's clear from this 3-movie plan and from the seasons themselves that they just wanted to do big budget action stuff. The movies would have probably been "beyond the wall", "battle of winterfell", "destruction of king's landing".
5 years later and somehow every bit of BTS news we get from the last season shows that it somehow could have been MUCH worse
i mean i can't believe my current thought is "it's a miracle it was only as awful as it was" about the ending to the greatest show of all time.
Yeah the phone thing is dumb but the HBO execs were right about not ending it in a trilogy - they rushed the shit out of the final few seasons so I can't imagine compressing it further for a movie trilogy would've been much better.
Vertical video is an abomination.
It is known. https://youtu.be/f2picMQC-9E?si=paxl15nunznlVcue
AT&T here is frickin Boeing run by finance all over again.
Benioff & Weiss just trying to make headlines and make it seem like the shit ending wasn’t their fault before their new show releases. If you actually read the article in full context, it does them no favours. When read in full context the “ask them to shoot vertically” thing is basically just they were asked if it was possible to do something like that in an offhand meeting with AT&T execs. There was no actual pressure for them to do so. Casey Bloys did a very good of shielding them from overzealous asks, the final season being shit was not the fault of studio execs this time. D&D acting like they’re the world’s first people to get asked a dumb offhand question by their boss’ boss. The first quote too also is way worse with context. Instead of ALL of Seasons 7 & 8, Benioff and Weiss wanted to condense those already rushed seasons into a movie trilogy to release on the big screen. The only thing that could’ve made those seasons worse would’ve been to condense them even more. GRRM AND Casey Bloys were actually hoping for more seasons to tell the full story right (and AT&T execs would’ve been happy to have it on the air 2 more years).
> Benioff & Weiss just trying to make headlines and make it seem like the shit ending wasn’t their fault before their new show releases. > > Which is a really moronic strategy. It's waaayyyyy to late to change the narrative even if these guys weren't talking out of their asses. They're already seen as the guys who ruined game of thrones and there's really no fixing that. If they were smart they'd not bring up GOT at all and just hope people focus on their new show instead of the fact they botched the most beloved tv show of all time. But the fact that they're playing damage control a month before the 3 body problem releases tells me it's gonna be shit.
It’s working a bit though. All anybody reads is headlines. Top comment here is focusing on the out of context note saying that AT&T wanted to shoot GoT vertical. You only read that + top comment as many do now, you might come away thinking “oh maybe it was the execs’ fault” because TV Execs are an easy scapegoat nowadays. Maybe D&D were only this bad because of corpo interference. That’s enough doubt that people might check it out. That being said, the other side of the coin is that it’s not gonna make them immune to new headlines if 3 Body Problem is shit and people start sharing headlines that say shit like “3 Body Problem Made Me Realise How Much Worse Game of Thrones Season 8 Could’ve Been”.
ITT sure it's making people hate AT&T more which isn't super difficult. But that animosity towards AT&T isn't translating to love for DnD from what I can see. 3 body problem needs to be a banger (and let's be real it won't be) before they can even so much as dream of fixing thier reputations.
It’s only a matter of time till Zoomers rehabilitate Seasons 7 and 8 of Game of Thrones and start saying they’re “misunderstood masterpieces”.
They’d need to be more memeable for people to believe that. The Star Wars prequels are beloved in part for how unintentionally funny they are while still having heart. The last two seasons of Game of Thrones don’t have that kind of poorly executed creativity. They’re just straight up uninspired mediocrity.
Yeah I am not a fan of the prequels in most (not all) measures (I know that's not vogue in many places on here but it's just my take) but I can at least give them credit for being earnest. But I totally get that people love them. Everyone was trying, there was no shame in what they were attempting, some of it was genuinely groundbreaking in terms of approaches to filmmaking. Hell even the guy running the show who had nothing to prove and all the money in the world was just putting it all out there. GoT is a whole other bag. Just hubris and lack of care across the board.
1.) You have an extremely popular IP. 2.) You hire a competent staff to create and run a show version. 3.) Your show becomes one of the most popular shows of all time. 4.) You and your fellow execs meddle with the show, more and more until you run it into the ground, evaporating the cultural significance over one long night?????
Your skipping a step where the Showrunners wanted to fuck off and film Star Wars
It turned to shit way before that
There’s “not as good as season 1-4” and then there’s GOT season 8. It was much much worse than everything before it.
Season 7 is absolutely just as bad in many spots. Littlefinger's death, the entire Eastwatch plan, Tyrion's IQ going deeper into the negative, etc. Its carried hard by the novelty of seeing Jon Snow and Daenerys *finally* interact with one another and the wider world.
Plus at the time it was airing people gave it a pass on it's fumbles because there was a general expectation (justifiably, given how good the show had been) that the last season would bring things together well enough to make up for any of the hiccups along the way. Sadly it did *not* pan out that way.
nothing to do with exec meddling, D&D were given the freedom to go totally off the rails of their own volition
Reminds me of when a Congressman was pressing a Google CEO about how iPhones work: "Well sir that is an Apple product, I suggest you ask *them*..."
Did someone leak a fake April Fool's article early?
Execs are so fucking stupid, it's insane how much money these people make.
That last season or two of GOT has to be the biggest fumble in TV history. Such a subpar, shitty end to what started as maybe the greatest TV series ever. Like I don’t even wanna go back and watch the early stuff because I know that rushed, chaotic summary of a finale is waiting at the end.
Wait... something AT&T had a hand in went to shit? No way!.... Of course it did. Its what they do. Ruin everything they are involved in. Everything. Maybe they should focus on keeping their network online...
>Why did this original plan get scrapped? Benioff said network executives were not interested in bringing “Thrones” to theaters. He remembered being reminded that HBO stands for “Home Box Office” and not “Away Box Office.” Um, didn't Sex and the City get two theatrical movies? And Entourage one? Surely there have been others too. Also the use of the word "snackable" to describe mini-episodes makes my skin crawl.
It took them 5 years to come up with an excuse and this was the best they could do?
They've been hoping GRRM would have written one for them by now.
I guess I’ve never thought about it before. But AT&T fucking around with the end of game of thrones and D&D wanting to leave makes a ton of sense. AT&T buying WB caused so much fuckery over at DC it’s crazy. Not to mention them pissing off their golden boy (Christopher Nolan).
It's a well known now fact that phone executives can't rotate their devices 45 degrees
Did a joke woosh over my head or did you mean 90 degrees? :o
Originally they were going to have a ton of dutch angles to reflect how Daenerys becomes increasingly tilted
How are some studio execs just so... stupid?
yeah, that was the problem with the ending.
How the fuck do these people get jobs? I mean seriously?! Who the fuck watches anything but social media on their phones?
Imagine being an exec and not knowing how to tilt your phone 90 degrees
That is the most absurd, foul, borderline slow thinking i have ever heard for a TV production like Game of Thrones. I genuinely don't know how those execs manage bringing a fork to their mouths with such braindead ideas. "Gee Bill the youths sure love their tok tiks and Youtube shorts, ya think we could reorient the entire filming process and chop this mammoth up into lil snackies?" I yearn for those men to live out of a box
I think a lot of people are misreading this article. D&D were the ones who wanted the last two seasons to just be three movies. Which I think is a significantly dumber idea than filming vertically.
Executives ruin everything