Game of Thrones: Why did "The Long Night" look so dark? — winteriscoming.net

“The Long Night” brought us the highly-anticipated episode chronicling the Battle of Winterfell. Our emotions were strong, our expectations sky-high (maybe past that, if there is such a thing), and our fragile hearts were ready to break at a moment’s notice.While many walked away from the thrilling 82-minute experience satisfied with the “did that just happen” ending, others felt let down. For example, you may have been frustrated with the lighting in the episode. More like “The Dark Night,” am I right? or is that already taken?Game of Thrones does have a tendency to go dark at times, but never has the audience response been so vocal. Slate, amongst others, spoke about the episode’s dim look and perused social media for fan reactions. You know, like this one.Slate explores what may have gone down here, and why so many fans were irritated with it: What’s going on here isn’t just the artistic decision to shoot Game of Thrones in very low light, or to stage the Battle of Winterfell as a horror movie in which the living dead abruptly loom out of the snowy darkness. Those were both good decisions, and it’s hard to think of a better recent use of darkness than the defeat of the Dothraki in this week’s episode. The problem is that the entire television infrastructure that distributes Game of Thrones, from the cameras in Ireland to the eyeball in your own personal head, does a uniquely bad job with dimly lit scenes. And “The Long Night” was practically nothing else. That Dothraki scene at the top was indeed dope. If the darkness ever worked in the episode’s favor, it was then.But why does it have to be so dark in the first place? As Slate explains, working in low light has become easier as a result of switching to digital film. There’s also the shift in the types of television screens we’re viewing on, which may advancing at a faster rate than the recording equipment. Just because our screens are 4K doesn’t mean that the cameras any given production crew is using can deliver 4K images. And let’s not forget that videos are often compressed when presented on different platforms.In short, a lot of things work against the final product that viewers get to see. We can’t always have it all.But not all hope is lost. There are ways to enhance your Game of Thrones viewing experience. You can sit in a dark room, you can watch on your laptop to prevent some of the compression issues, or you can mess around with the brightness settings on your television. There are solutions, but to expect that every single television in the world can deliver a flawless experience is probably asking too much, especially given the nature of the long “Long Night” battle scenes. Still, networks can test out episodes in different environments in different settings to make sure as many people as possible have a good experience.In an interview with Vanity Fair, director of photography Fabian Wagner spoke about the challenges of working on “The Long Night.” “[It was] physically exhausting,” he said. “They say don’t work with animals or kids. We had everything times 100.”It’s instructive to compare the Battle of Winterfell to battle scenes from Peter Jackson’s The Lord of the Rings films, which were also set at night but lit much more brightly. To start, Jackson had an advantage in that, despite heavy use of special effects, most of combatants — human and orc — were still played by people. In “The Long Night,” low light can help cover up CGI creatures three dragons, a giant wight, and masses of the dead.And then there’s what Wagner wanted to bring to the episode. “I wanted to evolve the lighting,” he said. He worked to make sure the “storytelling of the lighting evolve with the storytelling of the characters.” We can see this more naturalistic philosophy throughout the episode, as when Melisandre lights the trench on fire, or the way Beric’s flaming sword lights the dark hallways of Winterfell.It was an interesting experiment, but I think we were all okay when we saw that the next episode was going to be set during the day. Announcing WiC Club: the most exclusive club this side of the wall Join Now! To stay up to date on everything Game of Thrones, follow our all-encompassing Facebook page and sign up for our exclusive newsletter.Watch Game of Thrones for FREE with a no-risk, 7-day free trial of Amazon Channelsh/t Syfy Wire

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