Board Thread:News and Announcements/@comment-5014364-20160319013001

(I'm going to be posting photos and videos into this, after which I will remove this message)

I was able to attend the special premiere showing - at Herald Square in NYC on March 15 - of the special 20 minute featurette, "The Dance of Dragons (Histories & Lore)"

It was very exciting: they closed off Herald Square for this, which is where the annual Macy's Thanksgiving Day parade ends every year. It was right in front of the big flagship Macy's and within sight of the Empire State Building (I move my camera around so you can see this).

About 200 fans were able to fill the chairs they set up on a first-come, first serve basis. Hundreds more crowded around the barriers to watch while standing. Maybe 500 people were there in all (I'm bad at guessing crowds, but you have my photos to check).

I wrote in to their press contact just asking when to line up (they hadn't mentioned what time it was going to be held), and because I mentioned I'm one of the Admins on Game of Thrones Wiki, much to my surprise they wrote my back sending me a Press pass. What did this mean? Well, it meant I got guaranteed seating - in the press pit, eighth row from the front, so I got very good video of the main stage.

There was an event in the morning I wasn't able to get out of work to go to, this "Dragon landing" thing down at Union Square where they added in a fake concrete section of street "broken up" by what would have been a dragon landing, footprints, etc. The first two dozen fans that managed to get to that were seated ahead of the press pit in the "VIP Fan" section.

The video was introduced in a surprise appearance by its scriptwriter, Dave Hill, one of the four current staff writers on the TV show and the guy who's been writing the Histories & Lore videos since Season 2 (Bryan Cogman wrote them in Season 1 but then switched to a supervisory role over them as he was promoted to staff writer in Season 2).

There was also a surprise appearance by Liam Cunningham, who plays Davos Seaworth. He also helped introduce the video.

I was most surprised by the Dave Hill appearance, personally introducing the video he wrote - because the press passes they e-mailed told you in advance that Cunningham was going to be there, but gave strict orders not to publicly post about it until after 8pm when the video started. There was absolutely no forewarning that Dave Hill himself would be there.

I'd already seen the video since the Blu-ray release on Sunday (this being Tuesday), so I was free to focus on the audience reaction, etc.

One thing I noticed was that they actually censored the video in parts - though it says in the end credits that it was censored. This was due to unavoidable rules about public screenings, I don't blame them for that.

Things that were censored included:


 * The shot of the dragon Arrax decapitated is cut.
 * The shot showing that Queen Helaena's son Jaehaerys was decapitated. This can be a little confusing, because in the process they cut the dialogue indicating that while she chose her 3 year old son Maelor to die, Blood and Cheese then tormented her by killing her older son instead (so she had to live with the grief of keeping the son she'd chosen to die - further driving her mad with grief).
 * When Helaena commits suicide by throwing herself into the castle moat and impaling herself on the spikes below, the shot of her actually impaled on a spike is cut (even though it was only presented as an in-video book illustration) - the camera just zooms to the side.
 * The shot of Rhaenys's corpse burned to a crisp of ash after Rook's Rest is cut.
 * The shot of Daemon's sword plunging into Aemond's eye is edited; as Oberyn's oration states, he plunged the Valyrian steel blade through his eye so hard that it completely impaled his head and came out through the back of his neck. The video zooms in to only show the sword and the to of Aemond's head, so you don't see the blade going into his eye or out the back of the head.
 * Shots of the dragons dying in the Dragonpit are edited to take out some of the bloody axe swings.

You know George R.R. Martin has desensitized you to violence when you're surprised they don't show on-screen decapitations in Herald's Square.

But again, they really couldn't get away with that level of violence at a public screening. You'd only have missed it if you knew what to look for in advance.

And the whole event was amazing: they shut down Herald Square itself for a non-holiday right during the busy hours of 6pm - 9 pm on a weekday. Outstanding.

The introduction to the video by Dave Hill and then Liam Cunningham was very nice. My video didn't catch the first few seconds when Hill came out and everyone cheered. During this he cracked a joke about "In answer to the question everyone is asking..." (i.e. Jon Snow's fate) "...no, we don't use actual live dragons to film in the TV series; it's actually all special effects." Liam then came out and spoke briefly but not as much as Hill.

Sadly, there was no opportunity for Q&A, even with my press pass. Tormenting, because Dave Hill proceeded to sit in the audience six rows ahead of me. After the screening was over he quickly left.

Otherwise, when the video ended Cunningham spoke again and they made this dragon-projection against one of the buildings - it was okay but they'd hyped it so much ahead of time we thought it was going to be some kind of dragon-shaped remote controlled drone or something (it would have worked better as a surprise than getting our expectations up, but whatever).

Afterwards I managed to follow the VIP crowd into the cast tent (Hill had departed) and get my photo taken with Liam Cunningham. Security said they wouldn't let me make a quick video or anything because time was short - my intention was to make a joke asking "which dragon burned Byron Swann?", have him say "Vhagar", then play the whole Tyrion dialogue of "But it was actually Syrax"...eh, obscure joke only the book readers would get, probably better I didn't.

Still kicking myself about coming so close yet oh so far from Dave Hill. I wanted to ask him a few quick specific questions purely about the Histories & Lore: where does Rhaenys fit in the Targaryen family tree? How does the removal of Jaehaerys II affect the "canon" Targaryen family tree? Etc.

Otherwise he specifically mentioned that the video is "an adaptation of Martin's novella The Princess and the Queen" - another point is that the video depicts Rhaenyra's three eldest sons with classic Targaryen features, when yet another prequel novella released after TPATQ, The Rogue Prince, revealed that they all had brown hair and didn't look Targaryen (leading some to accuse that they were bastards - their appearance is a plot point). So I wonder if there was some legal reason he couldn't draw information from The Rogue Prince but had to rely purely on TPATQ. Martin himself has mentioned that the legal relationship of his other prequel novellas to the main show is tricky, particularly the Tales of Dunk and Egg - it's in the past of the main story and mentioned in it so the show can technically mention some things from it, but not verbatim quotes or something (or at least, Martin isn't pressing the issue and letting the Histories & Lore drop references to them).

But this is all just splitting hairs. I was utterly excited by the video and have nothing but praise for Dave Hill. I've been excited about the Dance of the Dragons since...crud, since it was briefly mentioned in passing in the first novel of the main series (in the index of past kings); and like many other fans I was giddy with excitement when the other prequel novellas came out recently -- particularly because we never really anticipated that Martin would take the time to relate them, much less develop a sprawling new story nearly on the scale of the War of the Five Kings (or at least, the Tales of Dunk and Egg era) -- and tales of the Targaryens at their height, rival dragons, etc. All wonderful.

My favorite dragon of all time, living or dead, is officially [[Caraxes] :)

Anyway as I said I managed to make a good video of the event because I was sitting near the front - particularly the parts where Dave Hill speaks.

I edited all the video clips together into one 15 minute long video - not to replicate the featurette, but to illustrate the audience reaction.

Everyone cheered when Dave Hill introduced the video, but I was increasingly surprised that no one was making any noise - no cheering, no giggling or booing or anything. I had assumed people would cheer when each new narrator comes on in the video, famous and missed dead characters on the main show like Catelyn Tully, Oberyn Martell, Joffrey Baratheon, etc. .....

.....then I realized that they weren't making noise because they were bored: 500 people filling Herald Square were watching with rapt attention.

You could hear the proverbial pin drop in one of the major squares in New York City. This was all a ton of new information for them and a gripping, engaging storyline. So there was this awed hush and hundrds of faces intently focused on it. Watch in the video when at times I move the camera back for the audience reaction, just how silent and focused on the video they all are.

Hint Hint, nudge nudge, I really hope that 10 years from now, after a Tales of Dunk and Egg live-action prequel series is finished, we may some day have a Dance of the Dragons prequel series - or Targaryen anthology series, something. The fan demand is there.

So it was a wonderful event and I'm grateful I had the opportunity to go (it helps that I happen to already live in the NYC area -- in comparison I'll never have as many GOT actors coming to conventions near me as fans in Northern Ireland).

Well, head out there and help us work on the new articles related to the "Dance of Dragons" featurette! 