The Game Of Thrones Cinematographer Calls Everyone Poor And Dumb For Complaining About How Dark The Battle of Winterfell Was
(NME) – However, as much of the episode was set at night, many viewers complained that they were unable to follow the action properly due to the producers’ intentional choice of lighting.
Fabian Wagner, the episode’s director of photography, has responded to those complaints, suggesting viewers’ TV setups could be to blame for the issue. “A lot of the problem is that a lot of people don’t know how to tune their TVs properly,” he told Wired. “A lot of people also, unfortunately, watch it on small iPads, which in no way can do justice to a show like that anyway.”
He continued to defend the look of the battle scene, saying: “Another look would have been wrong. Everything we wanted people to see is there.”
To be fair to Fabian Wagner – that episode was literally called “The Long Night.” It was not the “Long Day Time Extravaganza By The Beach.” The fought at night, there have been no signs of electrical advancements throughout eight seasons of Thrones, if the Dothraki’s sickles it would have been even darker to start that battle. It felt grim, as I would imagine a night battle outside of a castle up against an army of the dead would feel.
But you can’t tell me the episode was supposed to be dark and also that if I had adjusted my television I could have seen better. Those are directly contrary to one another. If the dark was a character of that battle, own it. I have no problem with that. Just don’t blame the same televisions we use for literally every other production in the history of film and tv. And if you knew that was going to be a goddamn issue ahead of time, you know – since you were the goddamn cinematographer – then send out a tweet. Post a story on instagram. Make the slightest effort. We live in 2019. It could not be easier to send out that message to the millions of Thrones fans itching for the smallest morsel of information. Somehow Fabian was able to alert the presses that they had filmed the longest battle in history of television or cinema but couldn’t fold in the “Oh yeah turn up the brightness on your tv so you can see it” into that press release.
PS – I completely agree with Fabian that if you watch Thrones exclusively on a small iPad you are a poor and don’t deserve to actually see. And those are even easier to adjust the brightness on so if you couldn’t figure that out there’s no one to blame but yourself. Grow up.