and yet I was late to this AMA...
Hope you guys enjoy it when you get a chance to watch together (forget the show -- just the together part). All the best.
Did you ask her where she left the car keys?
Asking for a friend -- who's your favorite director on Westworld, Jeffrey?
um... ahem...
He's misremembering. We built the actual park during the last cycle. This time he wanted to do rockets to see if he could find the edge of the simulation, and I thought it would be funny to make a tv show about the previous iteration to see if we could set up recursion between cycles.
also thank you for the cupcakes.
Dear Mr. Djawadi, how are you so damn good-looking and talented?
Then tonight's game is meant for you.
You in NYC?
Hah! Chris and I always read each other's projects, whether we're working together or not. He watched the cut on the pilot a couple times (the director's cut was looooong) and gave us some good advice on trims. He has refused to hear any spoilers after that, however -- he wanted to see it fresh.
We were hoping to cast Amy in season 2 but she got snapped up on her show on Fox! We're so happy for her, but so bummed for us.
Sorry -- missed this one. Too busy shitposting and eating falafel. Lisa and I planned out the big tentpole moments while we were writing the pilot (Dolores kills Ford, Maeve escapes, Bernard's consciousness is uploaded into a sentient Agave plant in the distillery, etc). So we had the headlines for several seasons planned out before we shot a thing. We wanted to be really ambitious -- to significantly raise the stakes and the scope every season. But the beauty of TV is you get to collaborate -- to get the benefit of the writers, directors, actors that you're working with. There are some amazing ideas that have come up that we didn't start with. You'd be foolish to not be open to the opportunities that come up along the way -- but it would be more problematic to start out without a plan.
All right guys. We left this in your hands. Some may feel this is a drastic step, but I, for one, love and trust this community. Here's the link
Hey Reddit!
Many thanks for your great questions and thoughts. As I've said before, I've been a member of the reddit community for years (no I'm not going to share my original username...). And I greatly enjoyed watching the friendly folks at this subreddit guess the twists and turns of the season.
It creates a larger problem for us, though, in terms of the way your guesswork is reported online. 'Theories' can actually be spoilers, and the line between the two is confusing. It's something we've been thinking about since last season. The fans of Game of Thrones, for instance, rallied around and protected the secrets of the narrative in part because they already knew those secrets (through season 5).
We thought about this long and hard, and came to a difficult (and potentially highly controversial) decision. If you guys agree, we're going to post a video that lays out the plot (and twists and turns) of season 2. Everything. The whole sordid thing. Up front. That way the members of the community here who want the season spoiled for them can watch ahead, and then protect the rest of the community, and help to distinguish between what's 'theory' and what's spoiler.
It's a new age, and a new world in terms of the relationship between the folks making shows and the community watching them. And trust is a big part of that. We've made our cast part of this decision, and they're fully supportive. We're so excited to be in this with you guys together. So if this post reaches a 1000 upvotes we'll deliver the goods.
Hasta victoria siempre!
Jonah and Lisa
I don't feel qualified to answer whether the theories in Jaynes' excellent book have any bearing on human cognition. We were fascinated, however, by the idea that engineers could use any model they wanted -- even a flawed one -- to try to create consciousness in an AI. In other words, Jaynes' book might not have found its true subject. Yet.
One of the directors tried to sneak it in to an episode in season 3 and Sean had to call him and get a little rough with him. We were waiting for the right moment...
Humans are really weird. We're able to extend empathy to all kinds of things. If you draw a smiley face on a volleyball (and you have Tom Hanks handy) you can get an audience to feel badly when it's washed out to sea.
But if I tell you something is slightly less than (or different to) a human, you can turn that empathy off. Just like that. We had some disturbing conversations with people when we were working on the pilot. When we altered a host's performance too much with VFX, people stopped caring about the hosts. They didn't care if they were tortured or killed. Which was a crazy thing to realize.
So we had to work overtime to make sure the audience cared about the hosts. But we didn't want our human characters to seem one-dimensional, either. It's a balancing act. Luckily we have the most gifted cast on TV.
Please keep all your answers related only to Rampart, Jeffrey.
that's not quite how I explained reddit...
more fun stuff this season: first ever use of a film camera on a drone (no, not the creepy white skin job type drone). But we still used the chopper for the big stuff. (sadly we weren't allowed to race them against each other).
Thank you! No overthinking involved -- it's us and a group of brilliant writers and directors working on this sucker, so lots of fun references in there to find. Season 2 references include: East of Eden, The Auguries of Innocence, Tarkovsky's Stalker, and, last but not least, Piggie and Elephant 'We are in a Book.' (been reading to the kids a lot)
Yup. It started when we realized that each season was going to have it's own identity. It's not an anthology show, but we knew that a: each season was going to take a long ass time to make; and b: we wanted each season to have it's own themes, questions and ideas. All connected together, obviously, and all tracking the same characters. The idea of a title for each season grew naturally from that. And we'll hide the title of season 3 somewhere for you guys to find as the show wraps up...
Yes you would.
They say they like to mess with Reddit....
westworld