There is a universe where Game Of Thrones was filmed vertically to fit on a phone
In a new profile, the Game Of Thrones showrunners introduced a new potential series ruiner into the narrative
Aux News Game of Thrones
Former Game Of Thrones showrunners David Benioff and D.B. Weiss have borne the cross of the series’ terrible final season for nearly half a decade now, but in the streaming wars as in the Westerosi wars, sometimes there are far darker forces at play. In a new Wall Street Journal profile, the much-maligned duo revealed that they may have been the Cersei, “devil you know” type villains to a different insidious, unbeatable White Walkers (or at least… they should have been) all along.
GOT fans, you may want to sit down for this one. Apparently, AT&T, who owned HBO at the time, once asked the directors if they could film episodes of Game Of Thrones vertically so they could fit on people’s phones. Vertically! Can you imagine watching an epic, sweeping scene like the Battle of the Blackwater for the first time up and down? It would seem more like the Kerfuffle of the Blackwater than anything else.
“When you sign a five-year deal with a company, you want that company to be stable so you can be left alone to do your work and not have to worry about it being bought by the phone company,” Benioff said in reference to the pair’s $200 – $300 million Netflix deal, under which they’ll be releasing their sci-fi epic 3 Body Problem late next month. “Finding the smoothest ride in the ocean was key.”
If these reports are accurate, their former home at HBO was about as choppy as it could be. In addition to the vertical filming, Benioff and Weiss also confirmed that they had originally pitched execs on doing three theatrical-run movies to end the series instead of a final season, an idea novel writer George R.R. Martin discussed back in 2020. According to the duo, the concept was struck down and they were reminded that HBO stood for “Home Box Office,” not “Away Box Office.”
The company also apparently “openly discussed” the idea of “snackable mini-episodes” of the series, whatever the hell that means. Would Quibi have fared better if Game Of Thrones was its flagship product? Probably, but thank god we’ll never actually have to know the answer to that one for sure. Maybe this isn’t the absolute worst timeline, after all.
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“Former Game Of Thrones showrunners David Benioff and D.B. Weiss have borne the cross of the series’ terrible final season for nearly half a decade now,”So… almost five years?
Almost 5% of a century, in fact!That’s, like, .0275 Rhode Islands!
-_-
The hyperbolic headline and butchering of the original quote sure makes it sound like full episodes were going to be filmed vertically (which makes no sense for the tv viewing public), when in reality hbo was proposing short “mini” episodes filmed vertically. Still a dumb idea, but not as colossally dumb as the article makes it seem.
Unless human beings mutate, filming vertically will always be colossally dumb.
Unless phones change, there will be a reason to film certain things vertically.
They will change some day. Mark my words. I thought CDs would last forever, and they has 15 years of popularity, tops. Time is a cruel mistress, and CDs, crueler still. I have every Nine Inch Nails Halo on CD from 1989 to 2006, and what the hell for? Am I gonna bust them out to listen to Head Like A Hole (Opal), or Complications of the Flesh? I don’t think so!
I got a cd drive for my car and am so glad I collected as many as I did over the years. So many good options to jam to!
Ya I’ve got one too. Can’t bring the whole collection, though. Wish I’d gotten a CD changer in the trunk.
Just wanted to commiserate with a fellow former CD obsessive. I spent I don’t know how much money buying all the Halos—including the international version of Further Down the Spiral that has the live version of “Hurt” (before he released it on And All That Could Have Been), “Self Destruction, Part Three”, and two mixes not on the US version for “Heresy” and “Ruiner”. (Even worse was tracking down all of Morrissey’s singles before realizing he’d put out the b-sides in collections down the road). Now it’s all widely available digitally, of course. Tempus fugit and all that.I will add this, though: I just purchased a CD for the first time in over a decade (at least) because I discovered that one of my favorite Martha Wainwright songs “I Will Internalize” is pretty hard to come by digitally, so I ordered a cheap EP off of Amazon (same title—and it has a few other rare tracks by her). Physical media still comes in handy.
You could tell he was trying to appeal to a more UK/European market with the international Further Down the Spiral. I used to play that Ruiner remix at parties a lot, because it wasn’t so angry.I’ve got some CDs with tracks that definitely don’t appear on streaming services, although I tend to listen to them as ripped mp3’s.I don’t know that I was obsessed with CDs themselves, so much as the music that came on them, but I probably bought more CDs than any other recording media. The format itself doesn’t especially interest me, except for the ones with the hidden track on track -1.
You do realize phones can be turned sideways and they still can play (and record) video?
Yes, colossally dumb ones. We’ve been over this already.
You strike me as the kind of person who takes every picture with the flash on.
That’s an even dumber take than the vertical bullshit. What other nuggets of ‘wisdom’ do you have?
Have you really never noticed that some things work better in a vertical aspect ratio? YouTube has short vertical clips of stand-ups and I’ve found when I spend 5 minutes flipping through those the vertical framing works better and my hand is more comfortable than if I cranked the phone over to fullscreen it. It’s also true that filming GoT vertically for phone episodes would have been dumb.
I’m just not sure why this interaction over horizontal vs. vertical is 1) so full of absolutes and 2) engendering so much rancor. Are you two going to insult each other’s mothers next?
yeah, that’s all I’m saying; a phone sits well vertically in the hand, and lots of people and apps default to video formatted that way. Even if I think horizontal makes more sense due to being inured to tv and film, I see why vertical video dominates the online/app space.I’m also confused why this fella is so furious about it but doesn’t really have much to say beyond hurling invectives.
Sorry, I’m struggling to conjure up anything as “colossally dumb” as complaining about how phones are designed, how most people use their phones as though that’s not a natural and ergonomic way to hold the dang thing, most likely while on a phone, on social media (don’t kid yourself, kinja is social media).
“how phones are designed”Like, to be held in any orientation? Stop pretending this isn’t a choice.
…who’s choice? The choice to hold a phone the most comfortable way it fits in one hand? The design and software development choices that make it so I can pull my phone out, swipe to the camera, and take a vertical video, all with one hand; it’s designed for that ease of use. I’m not not being willfully obtuse in saying this is the orientation most phones and their apps are developed, and the way most of us default to using them. You seem like you have a point to make but you’re being too smug and flippant to articulate it, friend.
I like how your argument depends on a series of conditions that keep getting more and more arcane.
I like how you say nothing over and over!
You’ve been arguing against nothing this whole time? That explains a lot, actually.
Right? Shoulda realized you were a hack troll this whole time. You’ve “won.”
All I’ve won is the privilege of you doing the dumbass “actually, your argument doesn’t exist” bit. And I’m the hack…
Me giving you the benefit of the doubt isn’t the “gotcha” you think it is, ya silly goose! Being instantly dismissive of others won’t get ya far in this life.
If you’re going to dismiss a comment, don’t reply to it. Useful tip there.
It’s called Portrait Mode for a reason: it works better for portrait-type things. Humans are vertical objects, so someone talking is generally better filmed vertically.That said I don’t need any more influencers having hilarious conversations with themselves.
I heard that phones can rotate horizontally when held that way. I can’t confirm though.
this only emphasizes how weird it is to be upset about vertical video.
Not really. It means why film something in a completely non-sensical way when the devices meant to watch can just be turned on its side to watch it. Nothing looks good in portrait mode vs. landscape when it comes to watching movies or even pictures.
Thanks for the tip! 🙏
That’s not what the Wall Street Journal quote I’ve seen says. It refers to vertical format before and independent of the idea of mini episodes: “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.”Now, maybe that’s a misquote, or maybe it’s clarified somewhere else in the article—I don’t subscribe to the WSJ myself, so I can’t check—but that’s how Variety and other decently reputable sites, not just the AV Club, are reporting it.
They do know you can turn your phone on its side don’t they?
That’s a lot of work, though.
This would only be acceptable if they filmed a spinoff about Hodor and his gigantic cousin, Hodaphonvert.
They did my Queen dirty! She won the Game of the Thrones, but Jon Snow ruined it. I don’t think she died. The Dragon brought her somewhere to be healed and brought back to life. She will have her revenge!
One of these days these people are going to realize our eyes are aligned horizontally, right?
The problem is we read vertically.
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Well, I read a lot of things backwards so that means that movies should all start from the conclusion and work toward the beginning.I really do scan a lot of my own writing that way, if it’s an important document (does point B logically follow from point !?) If it makes logical sense going backwards, I’m assured that it did going forward.
.drawrof gniog did ti taht derussa m’I ,sdrawkcab gniog esnes lacigol sekam ti fI )?! tniop morf wollof yllacigol B tniop seod( tnemucod tnatropmi na s’ti fi ,yaw taht gnitirw nwo ym fo tol a nacs od yllaer I .gninnigeb eht drawot krow dna noisulcnoc eht morf trats lla dluohs seivom taht snaem taht os sdrawkcab sgniht fo tol a daer I ,lleWLike that?!?
Dowe?
Nah, I read boustrophedonically. One direction is as good as another.
We kinda do both, right? Left -> right, top -> bottom. But, to your point, we mostly don’t print books wide, we print them tall.
yet we print books in portrait, not landscape
I always thought “webisodes” were a weird idea. Some of them are amusing, but when people re-watch The Office, Lost or Breaking Bad I suspect they’re ignoring them / ignorant that they exist. Of course they almost never mattered. As I recall the LOST ones tell you that Jack’s dead dad / smoke monsta sent the dog to wake up Jack after the crash. The Breaking Bad ones explain how Badger knows Walt before they meet on the show. I remember a Fear the Walking Dead series about zombies on a plane, and the big draw was that the webisode character was actually going to show up on the show! Then she did for like, one episode. Apart from providing somewhere to show Sam’s fat pink mast, I can’t really imagine they’d work for Game of Thrones. I do wish Marvel would go back to doing their little one shot shorts though. The movies are so overstuffed that like half the characters never get to really meet each other. I would totally watch 2-5 minutes of Ant-Man and Spider-Man being confused by each other. “wait, you can’t control spiders? Well how do you know if you never tried?”
I don’t think the people making webisodes were particularly worried about whether audiences more than a decade after the shows aired would watch them. The goal is to give viewers additional content to keep attention on the show, usually during a time between seasons when new episodes weren’t airing.
Will Game Of Thrones filmed vertically to fit on a phone properly capture The Khaleesi’s ‘Hoof hearted, Ice melted’ expression?
There are plenty of issues with the final season of GoT, but anyone who thinks that the broadstrokes weren’t exactly what GRRM was always planning, you are kidding yourself.
Some of them sure, but I find it hard to believe all the stuff the show cut out or minimized is going to be irrelevant to how the books series would have ended. They barely delt with the implications of Jon having a better claim to the throne than Dany. “Aegon” was excised completely and Dorne just sorta fucked off cause nobody liked those scenes. Lady Stoneheart…might maybe be important?They also revealed Bran can sorta time travel! and then did practically nothing with it. I have to believe that would have been expanded on in the books. I buy stuff like “Bran will be king” and “Dany burns the city.” The reasons for these developments will probably be quite different though, thus potentially making them a lot less jarring or stupid.
I find it hard to believe all the stuff the show cut out or minimized is going to be irrelevant to how the books series would have ended.
I imagine those things were cut because they aren’t / weren’t ultimately going to be important to the core ending, so they were safe to jettison from a strictly plot-based perspective, but losing their flavor ultimately made the entire conclusion feel perfunctory and rushed.
We have no reason to believe that it didn’t roughly match up to what Martin had in mind. All sides have said that Martin shared the final plot points for the major cast which means, for the most part, we SHOULD have seen that end result on the screen.
Lady Stoneheart is a revenge plot with no importance because she CANNOT succeed because that isn’t her job in the story. Last we saw her in the books she had Jamie and Brienne and was looking to maybe kill one or both of them…..
The problem is that, as a reader, the story is structured in such a way that its pretty obvious that she isn’t important enough to kill either of those characters. Those are characters that die to primary/supporting antagonists…. not zombie tweeners who are struggling to even have an impact on the narrative.
Same with Fake Aegon. The implications of the potential of his existence and the theorizing it gives the reader are the only thing about his story that is noteworthy. He is like Kashimo from Jujutsu Kaisen.
Here’s a character of supposed great importance whose goal was that stories thematic equivalent of the iron throne (beating Sukuna, the most powerful sorcerer ever so he could claim that title for himself) and he gets that chance…. only to almost immediately die at the hands of Sukuna with relative ease. Kashimo never actually had a noteworthy impact on the narrative despite the story repeatedly pointing out he had a secret technique he had to save specifically FOR Sukuna and how Kashimo was the strongest from his own era.
It’s misdirection. You setup a character with serious potential importance so you drive consumer interest and distract them from where you are actually going by letting them stew in the theories of what that, in the end, meaningless character MAY do.
My take…… Young Griff dies surprisingly, suddenly and horrifically because someone actually DOES believe his fake heritage…. only for us to find out after the fact that it wasn’t actually true and that he died for no reason. Feels very on brand for Martin’s writing style.
I think we got probably 85-90% of Martin’s vision with the series…. and the backlash the ending got is why we STILL havent gotten more books. He probably went back and started rewriting sections that got the worst response so he can basically give himself a do over. It’s the most logical thing to do…. authors would kill to get to test the endings to their stories to such a wide audience without having to take the heat themselves for the outcome.
…. and the backlash the ending got is why we STILL havent gotten more books.I think the problem with that theory is that he seemingly was having the same trouble finishing the Winds of Winter (which is not the ending) for like almost a decade before the ending backlash. And before that A Dance with Dragons also took faar longer than Martin or anyone else anticipated.It seems odd to blame the response to the show’s ending for Martin’s abysmal writing speed when he had that problem for like fifteen years beforehand.
I don’t think its ALL the reason…. I just think its a big ole straw that broke that camels back.
Yeah, could be. I don’t really think we can say though.
I actually don’t think Griff, Dorne or Lady Stoneheart will ultimately have any bearing on the conclusion to be perfectly honest, but I also doubt we’re ever getting the books so we may never know.
I still hope we’ll get Winds eventually, but yeah no way he finishes the series. I don’t even believe him when he says he only needs two more novels to do it.
I don’t have an issue with the story beats or how it ended. It’s the journey there that was infuriating. Having been a show that carefully plotted it’s threads through 5 seasons, season 6 and then egregiously season 7 just went through story at warp speed for no reason other than maybe budget reasons (although HBO says otherwise).
For funsies, I wanted to see what it was like if some poor editor had the unfortunate task of trying to convert the show into that format.
I’m a librarian and I always recommend “The First Law” series by Joe Abercrombie to anyone who liked, hated, or was disappointed by GoT. That series will make you scream for a TV series.
The term “everyone’s the asshole here” comes to mind. HBO was shitty for interfering constantly, but D&B fucking suck for being such pissy whiners for having a job that hundreds of millions of people in the world would kill for. Instead, they lazily wrapped up the series with 6 very mediocre episodes and effectively ruined what the show had built up for 6 seasons.
Help stop Vertical Video Syndrome!
I’ve been hearing some criticisms of Netflix’s live-action Avatar: The Last Airbender series saying it looks shot to be easily cropped for Tiktok clips- most shots have one thing within a fairly narrow vertical strip and the rest is empty space, not a lot of tricky angles or using the whole frame.
Is there some very powerful secret society that does not realize you can TURN THE PHONE SIDEWAYS and watch everything in a much more attractive aspect ratio? I clearly don’t understand this stupid issue.
People watching movies on 6 inch screens, lol.