If you’ve been watching the latest season of Game of Thrones, especially the most recent episode, then you may have come across a relatively common issue. It has something to do with not being able to see what’s happening on screen during most of the episode’s duration.
Aptly named, “The Long Night”, the episode was definitely dark, though not in a way we anticipated. After the episode aired on Sunday, social media got flooded with posts related to it. Amidst all the appreciation, discussion and memes, there were some posts complaining about the lighting of the episode.
Worst part of tonight’s episode for me was how damn dark the first 45 minutes were.
I get it. They battled at night…but y’all couldn’t have upped the brightness a little bit? #GameofThrones
— Jack “CouRage” Dunlop (@CouRageJD) April 29, 2019
The issue was raised to a point where the episode’s cinematographer, Fabian Wagner, took it upon himself to explain why it was like that. As it turned out, according to Wagner, there was nothing wrong with the filming and production of the episode. The real problem was the device viewers watched it on. He said, “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. Another look would have been wrong. Everything we wanted people to see is there.”
I watched the episode for the first time on my laptop, which has an LCD screen. Unsurprisingly, I had the same issues as the vast majority. However, the second time, I decided to tune it on my TV, which also had an LCD panel, but the results were far better and I could make out what was happening at every moment with ease.
So is watching the episode on a TV the ultimate solution to this problem? Not quite. For you see, not everyone finds it feasible to do so. Laptops are portable and in this day and age, more accessible by many. Not being able to watch episodes of their favorite shows on them may put off fans from watching shows altogether.
Fortunately, there’s a solution for people having laptops running Windows OS. Here’s how you do it:
Step 1: Open your Graphics Settings
To access them, right-click on an empty portion of your desktop. A drop-down menu will appear. Click on the option that corresponds to your Display Driver settings. In my case, the Display is controlled by the integrated Intel Graphics Card (The AMD option you see in the screenshot above is for dedicated graphics only).
Step 2: Navigate to the Display Options
Once done, a new window will open, displaying all things your selected graphics card controls. Choose the one which says Display.
Step 3: Change the Brightness and Contrast
This is the final step. Calibrate the brightness and contrast of the display in such a way that the episode becomes watchable. I recommend doing this with the episode running in the background, as shown in the screenshot above. That way you’ll know which settings suit your display best.
There you have it. Follow all that and your episode will definitely become more watchable. It won’t be the same quality as what you’d get on a TV or an LED panel but hey! Something’s better than nothing. And with this being the final season of the legendary show, you can’t miss any detail.