A Game Of Thrones cinematographer has hit back at complaints that the latest episode of the show was “too dark”.
Spoilers for Game of Thrones season 8 are posted below
- READ MORE: Game of Thrones season 8, episode 3 review: The night is dark and full of terrible visibility
Numerous fans registered their dismay yesterday (April 29) after the airing of ‘The Long Night’, the third instalment of the show’s final season. The episode featured the Battle of Winterfell as its centrepiece, which was reportedly one of the longest and most expensive battle scenes to ever be depicted in either TV or film.
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.”
Wagner had previously told Vanity Fair the darkly lit episode was intentional, explaining he “wanted to evolve the lighting” and intended to make the “storytelling of the lighting evolve with the storytelling of the characters.”
Fans took to Twitter, however, to register their disappointment with the lighting direction in ‘The Long Night’ – see a selection of the reactions below.
Live footage of the Battle of Winterfell #GameofThrones pic.twitter.com/wLbjQQcVu7
— CarolineD Framke (@carolineframke) April 29, 2019
https://twitter.com/avengestarks/status/1122672478726295554
Me trying to see who is dying with this dark ass screen #BattleOfWinterfell pic.twitter.com/dItq6FbhcO
— k (@_Klaf0202) April 29, 2019
all jokes aside I’m very happy for the dark person shaped blur that did the thing with the other dark person shaped blur and [squints] a cat? I think? https://t.co/eu1aAHTJRA
— Mark Berman (@markberman) April 29, 2019
how do u switch this show from night mode
— Desus Nice (@desusnice) April 29, 2019
https://twitter.com/guiguiroseira/status/1122678041564594177
Last week, Game of Thrones star Emilia Clarke attempted to trick fans into believing she was Kit Harington’s character Jon Snow as she launched a new competition to tie in with the show’s final season.