#westworldao

[aostormborn-blog]

Cosplay in the Westworld Community

Cosplay in the Westworld Community Like most large communities, Westworld has an active fanbase who portray their favourite characters. I have compiled a series of images of cosplayers to highlight this.

A user dresses up as Dolores, the show's main character. The silver lining on the left side of the user's face is there to show the 'internals' of Dolores as she is a host.

Two fans dressing up as common character combo Bernard and Dolores.

Somewhat of a joke post, this is 'Clementine' cosplaying as Dolores. It is simply a character from another storyworld who has the same exaggerated features as Westworld character Clementine put in the attire of Dolores.

Another user portraying Dolores

A couple playing on-screen couple Dolores Abernathy and Teddy Flood.

Two fans playing Maeve Mallay and Hector Escaton

Portrayal of Armistice, including her signature snake tattoo which runs from her thigh to her forehead

Two users. The person portraying Dolores sewed her own dress

User dressed as Dolores

Love given to minor characters Felix Luiz and Sylvester, two technicians who are somewhat pivotal in the plot.

[aostormborn-blog]

Music of Westworld

Music of Westworld Music can easily make or break a story. While many do not notice it while it is playing, its absence is very easily noticed. Westworld is one of the few programmes where I could honestly say that I was actively thinking about the music while watching. I think many other people agreed because HBO in an uncommon move decided to release a preview of the full soundtrack on Spotify. A few of the popular songs were made available and received tens of thousands of Spotify 'plays' despite the season being only at the halfway point. The full soundtrack even made it to the U.S. Billboard 200 chart after its release. I could tell it would early on because I was hooked from the opening credits of the very first episode.

The soundtrack was composed mostly by German composer Ramin Djawadi, who is best known as the composer for all seven seasons of HBO's Game of Thrones. The main theme of the show is very enthraling in visuals alone, but the music takes it to another level and piques the interes of even those who came in with no prior knowledge.

Many of the soundtrack's songs are covers of popular songs. One of the most notable is "Paint it Black", originally by the Rolling Stones, which epically plays in the first episode during a brothel heist. Another, which is played during a critical scene nearing the end of the season, is "Exit Music (For a Film)", originally by Radiohead is quite fitting for the scene. One of my favourites is the piece "Motion Picture Soundtrack" by Radiohead and covered by Vitamin String Quartet. It is played during a scene where one of the "Hosts" is walked through the world where she was created, seeing it for what it is. The emotion conveyed in this scene is beautiful and so much of it is shown by the music.

Despite me mentioning the covers earlier, the original pieces in the soundtrack are phenomenal. Djiwadi did an amazing job composing every piece and it brought together the scenes well. "This World", which is played in many of the ending scenes, and "Dr. Ford", which is played in many scenes featuring Robert Ford, are masterpieces remembered by anyone who watched the entire season. Overall, even if you have not watched the series, I would still give the soundtrack a listen.

[aostormborn-blog]

Cinematography of Westworld

Cinematography of Westworld Often times, a visual medium is distinguishable by ... well ... it's visuals. Westworld was created by husband and wife duo Jonathon Nolan and Lisa Joy and executive produced by JJ Abrams. Jonathon Nolan is the younger brother of non other than acclaimed Hollywood director Christopher Nolan. Anyone who knows the Nolan brothers knows that they are huge proponents of using traditional film rather than the now more common digital formats. Just this summer, Christopher Nolan released Dunkirk, which was filmed mostly on 70mm IMAX; a rare and very expensive form factor.

Despite the higher cost and increased editing difficulty of using film, HBO gave Nolan and Joy the go ahead for it and cinematographer Paul Cameron decided to use Kodak 35mm film stock paired with the ARRI Arricam LT. Many will not notice the differences brought on by film, especially because 99.99% of people are watching it digitally, but the people who do will likely appreciate it.

Many are used to seeing things like QHD, Ultra HD, 4K, 1080p, and other technical terms thrown around. These all refer to digital resolutions where one pixel will represent the colour shown on each pixel on the TV. A higher resolution will (most of the time) lead to a sharper picture. Film usually ends up looking far superior to digital. 35mm film, depending on the quality of the film stock, is said to potentially be up to a 16K digital resolution, which is 64x the 1080p resolution found on most TVs today. Much of the love for film revolves around this fact since it could continue to look better. This is the reason why old films such as The Wizard of Oz, Ben Hurr, and West Side Story can still look amazing when remastered despite being recorded many decades ago.

Both Nolans are proponents of practical effects over CGI and while Westworld does include many CGI shots, most notably a young Anthony Hopkins, there are many visual effects that are placed in the show that highlight the beauty of practical effects. Many of the interior scenes make heavy use of glass and 'futuristic' elements and the reflection of characters is meant to show internal feelings or a character's state of mind. I think I will go into more detail on this in a future post.

Many will not get to see Westworld in all of its glory since many will stream it from HBO Go, HBO Now, or on TV, but people who purchase the Blu-ray versions can see it in amazing quality, the way Nolan likely wished most could see it. Many still images released by official sources show much higher quality footage than we could get from bandwidth limited streams or television, so I have included a few in this post.

[aostormborn-blog]

Why Westworld?

From the very first trailer released for this HBO show, I knew I would be hooked. I have always had a great respect for HBO in their ability to constantly release amazing content and essentially be a sticker for a quality product. In addtion to the HBO sticker of quality, the show was created by Jonathon Nolan and executive produced by J.J. Abrams, which further heightened my hopes for it. The first episode comforted all of my expectations and each subsequent episode held up to them. The world built by Nolan and Lisa Joy is a relatively realistic one. Being a computer science major, I've often heard the debate on whether or not programmed, artificial beings can truly be conscience. It was very interesting to see Westworld's take on the topic. From the perspective of ML/AI perspective, it's really interesing to see what will become of 'hosts' whose training set is vacationing humans who know they can do just about anything they want with the hosts. A reveal at the end that I won't spoil here also opened the doors for a much larger storyworld to explore. The world in which Westworld takes place is clearly a slightly futuristic version of the universe we live in today and, honestly, a lot of what they have isn't completley out of the realm of possibility, which makes it all the more interesting to look into. On a non-story related note, the cinematography of the show is absolutely phenomenal. It was shot on 35mm film, which isn't something that is seen commnoly on television programmes and it gives it a distinct cinematic feel. Especially in the wide-angle shots. I would definitely like to delve deeper into each of the characters to analyze their motivations and 'histories' in order to better realize how that caused the story to build. This show is definitely one which deserves multiple watches for the sake of analysis and deeper understanding.