Benioff & Weiss spoke at a panel at the Austin Film Festival and the insight into their "writing process" of Game of Thrones leaves a lot to be desired.
Needle & Pen
@ForArya
At 3PM David Benioff and D.B Weiss #DnD started a session at the #AustinFilmFestival, I am a little late, but will live tweet as soon as I get there. #GameOfThrones
Highlights:
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.”
Benioff & Weiss spoke at a panel at the Austin Film Festival and the insight into their "writing process" of Game of Thrones leaves a lot to be desired.
Not great, Bob.
You seem pretty disparaging about the process of what turned out to be an insanely awesome show that kept many of us entertained for years.
This is how most stuff in the world gets done from my experience. Just do it and make it happen. Do you ever listen to podcasts or interviews or read articles on the creative process? Some of your favourite songs were written in 20 minutes without any forethought or planning.
What do you care how their creative process worked, anyway? They knew they had a good story (the books were already written), and they started adapting it for TV. What's your problem with that, exactly?
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Most of those quotes aren’t really a big deal. The concerning one is this:
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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”...
If you've read those books you'll know why they cannot boil the material down to simple narratives or themes. They are meandering vessels to explore a world, with little thought to an end game. Quite frankly, I think they did a good job of creating a cohesive plot from 20 or 30 different narratives.
Also, if there's one thing I've learned over the years it's that nobody should listen to fans of sci-fi/fantasy. They are one group of consumers that is nearly impossible to fully please. See Star Wars reactions as evidence.
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I understand their perspective. As others have mentioned, parsing down the books would have been a monumental undertaking in itself. However, with these notes it is not hard to see why the show started falling apart when they had no source material to work from.
Seems they really didn't invest that much Martin's works, which really shows up on screen when it was clear they had very little idea where to go with it all. Apart from Arya, the major implications of the characters' developments didn't really have a huge payoff.
If I'm reading this right, it's kind of alarming to know they didn't really take it as seriously as they should have from the get go. Although I am thankful we received about 5 seasons of truly epic television that may never be matched.
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If you've read those books you'll know why they cannot boil the material down to simple narratives or themes. They are meandering vessels to explore a world, with little thought to an end game. Quite frankly, I think they did a good job of creating a cohesive plot from 20 or 30 different narratives.
Also, if there's one thing I've learned over the years it's that nobody should listen to fans of sci-fi/fantasy. They are one group of consumers that is nearly impossible to fully please. See Star Wars reactions as evidence.
This opinion would make sense if the best seasons weren't the ones that has the books to use as guardrails. Once they didn't have them it got significantly worse.
This is simple, they wanted out, they wanted to get to the next big paycheck so they rushed it. We don't really need to delve deeper into their psyche than that.
You seem pretty disparaging about the process of what turned out to be an insanely awesome show that kept many of us entertained for years.
This is how most stuff in the world gets done from my experience. Just do it and make it happen. Do you ever listen to podcasts or interviews or read articles on the creative process? Some of your favourite songs were written in 20 minutes without any forethought or planning.
What do you care how their creative process worked, anyway? They knew they had a good story (the books were already written), and they started adapting it for TV. What's your problem with that, exactly?
Fair enough.
I guess I was thinking more about the conversations that were happening while Season 8 was airing (mostly between fans) about whether the story was going all according to plan, or if it was kind of last minute. Based on their quotes about focusing more on individual scenes versus storylines, that contextualizes Season 8 better for me.
If I'm reading this right, it's kind of alarming to know they didn't really take it as seriously as they should have from the get go. Although I am thankful we received about 5 seasons of truly epic television that may never be matched.
Yeah, I guess that's the other part that I found noteworthy (and that some people on Twitter were not happy about). I can understand being green and learning from the experience of the pilot and even the first season or two, but it seems like they just kind of put it on autopilot to an extent, and then were caught off guard around Seasons 5-6.
A lot of the questions seem to be about the original pilot (which has been widely acknowledged as being awful) and the process of pitching and selling the series to HBO. This makes sense since it was at a writers conference where the people in attendance want to know how to do those things.
Without knowing the full context of the questions, it's tough to know if some of the answers are about the series as a whole or just the beginning of the series.
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Looking for an opinion. I recently subscribed to crave. I watched up until season 6 when it aired. Is it worth is for me to watch season 7 and 8 or is it better to be happy with the show as it ended in season 6?
I watched it, yeah it wasn't as good in the last two seasons, but it didn't annoy me all that much, and to me its still worth watching. I still liked the Dany's not unexpected heel turn and destruction of everything.
There are just some must see moments as well in terms of visual moments.
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I watched it, yeah it wasn't as good in the last two seasons, but it didn't annoy me all that much, and to me its still worth watching. I still liked the Dany's not unexpected heel turn and destruction of everything.
There are just some must see moments as well in terms of visual moments.
I look at it this way in regards to the last two seasons. It's like a Mercedes S-Class owner that takes their car to the dealer for service and is given an A-class loaner. It's the entry level MB that's clearly not as good as what the owner is accustomed to driving. However an A-Class is still a higher quality, better car than the typical compact car such as a Civic or Corolla. The last two seasons aren't up to the standards of the first six seasons but have some memorable moments/episodes and you could do a lot worse.
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I think it depends on how you feel about Arya's quick transition in Braavos. She was stabbed in the stomach, jumped in filthy water, and killed an experienced assassin. For me, it pissed me off enough that I should've stopped there.
Expect much more of that feeling in seasons 7 and 8. If that didn't bother you, then have at er imo.
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I think it depends on how you feel about Arya's quick transition in Braavos. She was stabbed in the stomach, jumped in filthy water, and killed an experienced assassin. .
Yeah, but you forget that the random actress introduced a whole two episodes earlier was an expert doctor as well!
I remember all the people trying to justify how she could live going into the next episode. "It wasn't actually Arya, but another faceless man" "Arya knew the person was going to stab her so hid fake guts under her clothes." "Arya actually died and is being replaced by the waif!" But actually, it was just a shock cliffhanging ending to get people to tune into next week, no better than the crappy writing that plagued The Walking Dead in later seasons.
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