Oh that's no problem. I'll try to explain. I'm not expert in American productions, but I've seen a few work (biggest would be Day after Tomorrow, and The Aviator but for that last one I've only seen it through the rushes we got everyday and tons of set pictures. And oh, Wicker Park... I've seen a US team spend two days and a half just to dress up a the entrance hall where the facilities I worked at as an airport counter for just short scenes. As for US TV shows, filming-wise, I've only seen an oval office/WH set for a mini I forgot the title of, from around 15 y. ago. They used the big soundstage, as big as a football field, just for that.) The production methods aren't very different (scale is), and even the restrictions aren't that different. The big difference is that in the US everything costs far more, and US teams work much slower and have many more union restrictions and rules (which is why so many TV shows, e.g. X-files, had moved to Vancouver before the lobby groups and unions forced the Governor to pass all kind of protectionist measures and other incentives (some tax credits, etc.). That was good for the LA workers, providers and such, but that only increased the economical pressure on your movie studios and TV networks.).





Actually, it's not as simple as that.

Yes, if there's a scene in Elayne's room, and another in Dyelin's, the same set will simply be used for both, just re dressed. Same for the halls, there would be only one set, redressed. The throne room would be its own set. That's commonly done on TV series, but if you notice, that kind of series is restricted to one main studio location (with several sets). That's how studio-heavy shows like BSG, B5, Alias etc. can work. They used one giant soundstage (football field sized) and often a smaller one as extra (used for one or two sets, and/or for bluescreens and such). Whenever shows like Alias or 24 could, they used real locations for all the other locations than the very few main ones - it's much cheaper than building and managing sets, as long as they find the locations fairly close to LA (you don't want to go on a road trip with a US filming crew - compensations, per diem, overtime - they really have good unions.. and employers that once made insane profits. Scaling down now is very hard... automobile industry style, I guess).

Using real locations. Of course, you can't do that for a early modern era regular TV show in the US (unless it's an historical movie set in the US, that is... though US productions are very fond of coming and fake locations from old Chicago, NYC etc. using areas/buildings in Montreal's historical quarter, which is very diversified and versatile). A show like GOT can - but even them have to move around in Europe (from UK to Malta etc.), but it's all on an HBO budget, spent abroad where it's cheaper. A regular TV series can't afford that. GOT looks to me like a 4 to 6 (ma million $/per episode series, making it look much bigger by clever production choices. That's comparable to really huge primetime shows on network TV. A full season would be well under half as expensive as a movie like The Phantom Menace, which is another one considered to have been done very "economically". A big Québécois series might have the budget of one GOT or Lost episode for 8 or 13 episodes (and the apparent production value isn't always that different)

Studio space is very expensive, whether you rent it or build your own. On big features, it would be perfectly normal to film all scenes set in the Caemlyn palace, then switch to a second soundstage with sets for the Cairhien palace scenes, while teams are tearing down the sets of soundstage 1 and build the Cairhien academy sets and the White Tower Amyrlin's rooms sets.

But that's Hollywood scale... several teams of builders, many executive assistants to the set designer who can oversee construction of each set, teams of grips to set up the lighting, assistants to the DOP to oversee, if you want him to keep filming while other sets are prepared. More than one team of set dressers, a big art/design department which can cope with that pace and workload... No regular TV show works on that scale.


TV sets also used to be much, much cheaper than movies' (a lot less detailed, tons of cheating), but since HD that's no longer true. Oh, you can still fake marble etc, but many cheats no longer work and costs of construction, materials and set dressing in general are on the medium-size movie scale now. You can't build, dress, light six or seven sets in a day, it typically takes over a week even for a movie. That's not affordable for a TV series = they rarely even have that long a time to shoot a whole episode. At best they might have a few teams preparing the studio for the episode while the production is filming on location (TV series rarely shoots more than one or two episodes at once, the logistics would be far too complicated). That's another reason why they have either permanent sets, or that and a few modular elements easy to assemble to create other related, usually very simple extra locations (as on B5 or BSG)

Then enter the matter that a ton of sets would be recurring on WOT (many by season, and many recurring over seasons), a problem you don't have on movies. Even on many franchises, they store the dressing and props and scrap the sets and rebuild them for the next installment (someone like Lucas even does this for re shoots) which is of course pricey and wasteful, but less costly than the alternatives. Why? Again several reasons. Fully modular sets made to be put up and down easily cost a fortune. More typical if you can't have a permanent set (à la 24/Alias, or BG C&C) is to have only a few removable elements to allow cheats with cameras. Full modular sets need to be much better built, with better materials, and easy to assemble and bring down after. They need extremely careful handling and storage, with numbered parts. You need a team just to take care of them and make small repairs and replacements parts at need. Of course, that's also very time consumming, and that's one reason why not much recycling is done - sets are undressed, torn down and put in dumpsters (another reason is design-related: imagine how absurd it would be for a designer and his purchase manager and construction head to start calculating he needs 102 sheets of one material for location 12, plus they'll recut piece B4 from panel 17 on location 6, piece c55 from location 18 etc. Oops.. that one got damaged. That other one got lost, sh*t, someone used a 5/8" sheet instead of 1/2" for that piece etc. They buy nearly everything new, except occasionally for full elements, like columns they'll repaint and re dress) And then there's storage space, which is at a premium (insane) on studios complexes. You can't use their storage space in-between seasons (they need it for other productions), or it will cost you massively. You can build your own studio... a major investment, but that still won't make it affordable for a TV series to rotate between a huge amount of studio sets. Of course, if you use two-three soundstages permanently to allow rotations, you double or triple your studio costs, and also you lighting and equipment rentals as you don't have the time to start moving most of the lights from one set to another etc.



Again, it's not as simple as you think. Architectural differences are far more important for non-fans. Of course you want the series's big fans to approve of and follow you show - if you do it well they're your core audience that you stand a chance will be loyal to the end after all. But on any location-heavy series or movie, notice how hard the set designers work their asses off to make each one distinct and instantly recognizable. That's an important aspect of storytelling in the movie and TV medium. Part of it is that you spend precious time the first time around to establish a location, give your audience a feel and sense of orientation in it. You'll have scenes that beside introducing characters or issues show the audience the locations so they get familiar quickly, and for an invented culture, to give them a rapidly a sense and feel of the culture (watch ep. 1 of GoT to see an excellent demonstration of all this) You don't want to have to do this each time, you want your audience to instantly recognize where the story has moved to. And for that each one has to be quite unique. As for creating believable invented cultures, visual elements are very important in the type of Fantasy like RJ, GRRM and co. write (even in the books, they describe a lot). Good set production designers will follow the source (here, the book) but also add a great deal of their own input. All to make them believable for the culture, and easy to recognize. Even in historical movies they often cheat if they have many cultures in one movie. The French will be very exclusively French, the Venitians very venitians, the English very English.



WOT is not a medieval era story at all. It's mostly early modern, plaster and paint, gilding, expensive fabrics, fancy carvings (a rare exception would be like the Fal Dara fortress). late 17th- early to mid 18th centuries without gunpowder is how RJ coined it, quite more elaborate than medieval, with sharper national distinctions than in a medieval context, of course. WOT locations are far more the kind of stuff you could see on a mini like John Adams, or in European historical movies set in the Baroque Age.



No way a regular TV show would build much at all of outdoor cities sets. They'd build the fronts of a few buildings if they have no choice, and again, unless the whole series is in one village - that was what my Little House comparison was mostly about - and they can build real empty houses in the countryside somewhere, they'll restrict that kind of stuff to the strict minimum. You'd get random mostly out of focus/ barely seen buildings in scenes with extras shot fairly tight, to give the impression it's crowded streets. Forget about scenes of Elayne or Rand riding through the city and stuff like that. Elayne rides to the walls to watch the armies outside? You'd get a scene on the wall period, with mostly sky or rocks as BG, or a matte painting (as GOT very often do that).

Most of what's we see of the cities on a WOT series would be a few CGI "establishing shots". They're not that expensive to use once the city CG model is built, but building a city model and dressing it and lighting it (all CG processes) is fairly expensive... When you have 2-3 it's not so bad, but WOT has Caemlyn, Cairhien, Tar Valon, Tear, Illian, Rhuidean, SL, Ebou Dar and more, plus many villages and towns from various cultures, steddings, Ways etc. Of course, you won't use a city scale model for buildins (not enough details), so you keep going with each palace, the WT, manors, inns etc. That's really a lot of CG sets for a regular TV shows and a lot of money to invest before you have them all. Once you could go cheap and use just matte paitings for such, but nowadays people don't stand for pictures, they want those shots more alive to believe in them.

The reason why GOT has more than on TV normally is that they have many less locations, a bigger budget than a series (which let them build parts of Winterfell like the courtyard for instance), and they managed to find suitable locations they could just dress for the street scenes of King's Landing and such.

The difficulty of securing their services for years (or decades) despite multi-year gaps in between appearances is one of the biggest reasons I think established actors would be out of the question for parts not present in all but one or two books. If memory serves, EVERY character except Rand and the Wonder Girls has been absent from at least one book; Perrins total absence from TFoH is just one more reason it is my favorite, and Mats total absence from TPoD is just one more reason it is my most despised. Aviendha, a near constant presence either with the girls or Rand between TGH and ACoS, has rarely been sighted in recent volumes, but the actress playing her would need to be available at least until the "three on a boat" scene in the last novel.



And no production would invest the kind of money required for WOT and then rely on third-grade bad (soap-level) actors to carry it. Would an American audience stand for All My children calibre of acting on prime time TV? Nope. Unknowns are also all well and good, but that's mostly good for young leads and such. Far more difficult to cast unknowns for older folks, unless you start to make the rounds of amateur theatre troops.

If the cast wasn't so insanely huge, the number of locations so high, the logistics of adapting such an intricate/detailed story without not much of it remaining to really hook a large audience, a series like this could really only be produced in eastern Europe (Czech Republic, for instance, is a favourite of TV shows/movies).