Arya sticks the Night King with the pointy end.
HBO
The Long Night stood out for many as one of the better episodes in the tumultuous final season of Game of Thrones. However, amid Arya victoriously offing the Night King there was a fairly major issue with the nighttime setting. When the episode first aired, many complained they could barely see what in Westeros was happening.
That’s because our TV settings, according to the episode’s cinematographer Fabien Wagner, weren’t tuned properly. But all’s good! A host of big name filmmakers including Martin Scorsese, Christopher Nolan, Ryan Coogler, Patty Jenkins and Rian Johnson have come to the rescue.
Working with UHD Alliance, a coalition including Hollywood studios and consumer electronics manufacturers, they’ve come up with a Filmmaker Mode setting for supported TVs.
“Your Skynet is motion smoothing. … Luckily our John Connor has arrived,” explained Star Wars: The Last Jedi director Rian Johnson, according to The Hollywood Reporter.
In non-sci-fi words, the director pointed to motion smoothing, otherwise known as the troublesome Soap Opera Effect, being a default setting for many TVs. Filmmaker Mode will provide “a single button that lines up the settings so it works for the benefit of the movie and not against it.”
Other huge directors, including Paul Thomas Anderson, James Cameron, J.J. Abrams, Ava DuVernay, Judd Apatow, Ang Lee, Reed Moreno and the Duffer brothers, showed their support in a video explaining the initiative.
Surprisingly, Tom Cruise and Mission Impossible – Fallout director Christopher McQuarrie weren’t among the starry names behind the initiative. Taking a break from filming Top Gun: Maverick at the end of last year, the duo filmed a short PSA on how to best watch Ethan Hunt on the small screen by turning off motion smoothing.
After the directors reached out to the UHDA about the initiative, the Alliance sought input from more than 400 filmmakers in the specification development process.
There’s no word on when Filmmaker Mode will be available, but companies like LG, Panasonic and Vizio have committed to the setting.
