Westeros

This last month has been one of the busiest I can remember, with road trips to neighboring Norway and Denmark and all sorts of other things, so we’ve been a bit behind in getting the initial content out for episode one, “A Son for a Son”. We’re now trying to rectify that by catching up with a report on our attending a special screening of the premiere episode of House of the Dragon in Stockholm, including some thoughts in sparked in response to a critic’s commentary on the cinematography of the new season.

But first, one part of being so busy is that while we pushed out our commentary video soon after the first episode aired, we thought we’d make a post about it sometime during what turned out to be a very long evening post-screening. So, for those who’ve missed it, here’s our video:

And now to discussing the screening, and whether the show’s cinematography has gotten worse since Miguel Sapochnik left.

Linda and Elio at the post-screening afterparty.

The MAX VIP screening took place in Stockholm—and for some reason took place on Monday, despite the episode having already released online at 3 AM in Sweden, and of course critics and other outlets had already seen the episode well before then. Despite that, it seemed like a great opportunity to see the premiere on the big screen and gauge a bit of the audience reaction.

The invitation asked guests to dress in black or green to show their allegiances, but the first thing that struck us was that the crowd was about 95% Team Black, if the clothing could be believed (admittedly, we added to that number.)

The North declares for Rhaenyra! 95% of attendees (including nearly every person working at the afterparty!) were wearing black.

The doors opened at 18.00 and before the screening started at 19.00, we were treated to fantastic Neapolitanpizza from Meno Male, tasty donuts from Donutworry and various other snacks and treats (including candies exclusively in green or black wrappings), plus of course copious amounts of beer, champagne, and sodas, all organised by Wonderland Event. We also took the opportunity to pose for some photos; when you are at a VIP event, you have to take the opportunity!

Linda and Elio on the black carpet!

Watching the episode on a big screen was a real treat, it really shows off the quality of the sets, the costuming and the visual effects. The score and sound effects also come through so much better this way, and I realized that I’d be willing to pay to watch episodes of quality shows with ridiculously high production values in a good cinema.

A few days earlier I had read a piece in Indiewire from writer Chris O’Falt who took the show to task for “bending the knee” to fans who complained about how darkly lit the first season was. Now, we personally had never suffered any of the problems that other people did, through the expedience of simply watching the show in SDR rather than HDR. As it happens, this was a major part of why so many people had issues, as explained by Vincent Teoh of HDTVTest:

I think O’Falt may have been unaware of the major findings, namely that these dark scenes were graded well below recommendation (less than 1 nit, a measure of luminance commonly used in cinematography and film projection, versus the recommended 5 nits) and in particular that many OLED TVs will slowly auto-dim more and more if the screen content is very dark, the result of a feature intended to protect televisions from screen burn-in which in some cases can only be turned off (against recommendations) by accessing a hidden service menu. The fact is that while theoretically all OLED screens can display the show well in HDR, a large segment could not do so practically.

O’Falt claims that House of the Dragon season 2 now looks pretty much like every other show on television, but I have to say I strongly disagree. Watching the first episode in HDR projection in a cinema made it clear that the blacks were still inky—consider the long scene of Blood and Cheese moving through the sewers and Maegor’s tunnels—but now they were inky where they ought to be rather than, well, almost everywhere. Another example? Even on the big screen, Helaena’s bed chamber was too dark (even by daylight) to see pretty much any of the copious graffiti we learn (and see under clear, truly bright light) that she has scrawled across walls and objects.

O’Falt is right that if you compare scenes in the Red Keep between the season, all the lighting that is motivated remains motivated but there’s also more fill lighting to make things slightly more legible. It doesn’t seem to me that this makes the show look like every other prestige production, but mileage may vary.

In any case, after a successful screening, oft we went to the afterparty outside of the very fancy Lydmar Hotel with DJs spinning and an increasingly-packed crowd taking in the very pleasant summer weather with a view of the royal palace and the Old Town. We overheard people say there were a number of Swedish celebrities around, but as it happens Linda and I don’t really watch Swedish television so didn’t really recognize anyone… except we did have a nice conversation with an actor who introduced himself as Alex, who seemed to be drawing a lot of attention. It’s only when we saw his photo and a mention of his name on a press site that we realized who he was.

Alexander Karim, perhaps best known to fantasy fans as Lews Therin Telamon in Amazon Prime’s The Wheel of Time.

Oh dear. Nice guy, though, as he made sure to introduce us to a fellow actor who he worked with, insisting he’d be the next big star out of Sweden.

One other thing we got to do at the event was to try out HBO’s Raise Your Banners web app, where you can take a selfie and then have your face incorporated onto one of a number of images based on choosing allegiance to the Greens or the Blacks. Linda and I did one of each, and were given black and green caps with “Dracarys” written on them as a special gift. According to someone with knowledge of how the system works, HBO’s Digital Innovation team (in partnership with Media.Monks) designed “a custom image generation model, built off of HOTD imagery, that operates like a real-time ‘artist’ to create a character poster(s) inspired by the show with the selfie that was captured”. It’s a very interesting use.

Besides getting an image (and the option to re-generate, or even generate a new one that includes a dragon), user’s selection of allegiances each week will show a running tally of which side in the Dance has the most support. When we tried it, it was reporting that the collective users across the world had 77% support for the Blacks, and a quick test now shows that that is unchanged. Apparently they will periodically reset it, so we may see some movement based on events on the show.

And with that, we trooped off to our hotel to head back home the next day. All in all, a grand experience, thanks to our friends at MAX.

Linda siding with Team Black, looking awesome on Dragonstone with a dragon roaring behind her…

... and Elio siding with Team Green, apparently doing his best Monty Python and the Holy Grail callout, shouting, “Run away! Run away!”

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