Why did “The Long Night” look so dark? (UPDATED)

“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?

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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.

Speaking to USA Today, John Bradley (Samwell Tarly) argued that the dim lighting was an advantage:

"I thought the darkness added to the chaos and disorientation of these characters, who are fighting in the dark and don’t know what’s coming next. They don’t even know which way they’re facing and if the (being) next to them is a friend or an enemy. It reflects how the characters are feeling a sense of confusion and fighting blind, literally stabbing in the dark."

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.

UPDATE: Wagner talked to some more publications, and he’s sounding juuuuuust a little defensive about his lighting decisions:

• Speaking to Wired U.K.: “A lot of the problem is that a lot of people don’t know how to tune their TVs properly. A lot of people also unfortunately watch it on small iPads, which in no way can do justice to a show like that anyway.… If you watch a night scene in a brightly lit room then that won’t help you see the image properly.” He also said that the lighting was different in “The Long Night” compared to something like “Battle of the Bastards,” which Wagner also lit, because showrunners David Benioff and Dan Weiss wanted it to look distinctive. “Another look would have been wrong. Everything we wanted people to see is there.”
• Speaking to TMZ: “[Game of Thrones] has always been very dark and a very cinematic show.… We tried to give the viewers and fans a cool episode to watch.… I know it wasn’t too dark because I shot it!”

Okay, so Wagner is an extremely talented guy — he also lit “Hardhome” — and I hear what he’s saying about giving the Battle of Winterfell a different look, but it kind of sounds kind of like he’s blaming people who may not have many options when it comes to watching Game of Thrones — or don’t want to fiddle around with their sets — for not viewing it the “right” way. If you watched the episode and you saw everything you were supposed to see, awesome. If you had trouble, our sympathies.

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h/t Syfy Wire, Entertainment Weekly