Acephalous

Filming the sausage being made is very, very expensive, my friends.

My promised follow up post about Peter's sad descent into the trappings of Draper's life is nearly half-complete, but I wanted to address something that's come up in the comments first, because I encounter variations of it every time I teach. Uncle Ebeneezer
March 27, 2012 wrote

On a tangent–a friend of mine read your post and remarked that they doubt that THAT much thought really goes into it. I disagree, but I’m sure you must hear that sort of sentiment all the time and I’m just curious how you usually respond.

He's correct in that I encounter this all the time–frequently as a back-handed compliment about me putting more thought into the show than the people who made it–but it's usually the person doing the slapping that has no clue what they're talking example. For example, in an interview I can't relocate, Christopher Nolan was discussing the logistics of using an IMAX camera to capture Christian Bale hanging off of a skyscraper in Hong Kong. The joke of it was that between the helicopter, its pilot, safety equipment, those equipped to use it, Nolan and Bale's salaries, the insurance policy on Bale, the rental cost of the IMAX camera and its crew, every single syllable was costing Warner Brothers $300,000, "so if everyone would quit fucking cursing they could fucking film this fucking shot for under three million dollars."

And that's pre-production. So do I occasionally hazard into a situation in which I over-read some last minute practicality? No doubt. But should the wizards with the duct tape see my analysis and note that I missed their wizardry, don't you think they'd be proud that they'd done their job so well I couldn't imagine it having been done differently? But if your friends are still unconvinced–and if my students are any indication, many of them will be, send them to the "full credits" listing of a show like Mad Men. John Rogers—friend of the blog and showrunner of Leverage—can add to any of the many things I’ve forgotten, but keep in mind that all of the following people must be paid, eat, have their equipment plugged in and powered up, etc., and remember as your friend’s scrolling down that very, very long list, there are a number of unusual positions, such as:

1. hair stylist/background hair stylist
2. hair stylist/key hair stylist
3. hair department head
4. special effects makup artist
5. on-set dresser
6. art department coordinator
7. greensman
8. set decoration buyer
9. second assistant camera “a” cameria/ second assistant camera “b” camera
10. best boy rigging electrician
11. genny operator
12. post-post production assistant coordinator
13. colorist dailies
14. final colorist

I’ve chosen that list a little randomly, but it’s also a little representative of the collaborate work involved in any significant production. Odd as it may seem, the burden of proof that something isn’t in a particular scene should fall to the casual viewer, who thinks television is magic and all you need is a camera, some costumes, and a few pretty pictures to make it work. Granted, that’s true of some reality television — it wear its cheap production for all to see — but for quality, scripted television, each minute of which costs thousands to film, there’s a reason why certain mediocre actors are come to be called “character actors” as they age. It’s not that Benjamin Bratt — and I’m not picking on him — is a good actor, but there’s a reason why people want to work with him. To my knowledge, he’s polite, shows up on time, knows his lines, and is forgo having a potentially short or taller stand-in sit for him in the rehearsals and run-throughs. (That’s anecdotal evidence, but I trust the source, and if I’m wrong, there are a million others I could substitute for him.) Point being:

Shooting quality film/television is very expensive, so it’s all planned out in advance, then modified, script-color-change-by-script-color-change, then ideally handed to actors who behave professionally. In short, the implicit answer to why there aren’t more great television shows is sort of the same as why they aren’t more perfect storms.

 

Vincent and the Doctor, Together Alone

(This be another one of those posts in which I “[feign] some kind of cultural superiority … even though [my] opinions and tastes are largely shite of the first water [that force most commenters to] make an effort to shaddup when [I] want to wax long and philosophical about some mainstream film [I'm] content to call art.”)

I covered the palette of "Vincent and the Doctor" in my post about the Leverage episode "The Van Gogh Job," so I'll save some time and just say the wheat:

The wheat: 

The wheat: 

The wheat may not seem that important—though damn do I love it—but it calls to mind Woody Allen's famous parody of Ingmar Bergman in Love & Death, which is relevant because "Vincent and the Doctor" is an episode devoted to the consequences of loneliness (felt or otherwise). The Doctor's alone because he's the Doctor; Amy's alone because (unbeknownst to her) Rory's been unwritten from existence; Vincent's alone because Vincent's always been alone; and the Krafayis is alone because it's been abandoned by its fellows. This is a story that's fundamentally about lonely people "coming together," only director Jonny Campbell doesn't shoot it that way. I bring up the visual punning on the wheat because the shots it parodies are relevant. To wit:

Scott Eric Kaufman's Visual Rhetoric Compendium Now Easier than Ever to Find!

It's a permanent fixture in the right sidebar now, and I'll continue to update it regularly. 

Now if you'll excuse me, I have a terrible cold to attend to. (Stupid midterms wreaking havoc with stupid students' stupid immune systems ...)

On Leverage ("The Van Gogh Job")

(This be yet another one of them posts.)

Before analyzing a sequence from the "Van Gogh Job" episode of Leverage, I need to discuss a little something about color and continuity. First, you may be familiar with Vincent Van Gogh, but if not, all you need to know is the man loved his yellows:

If you're thinking those yellows are a little brown, you're not wrong. But that's the fault of history and chemistry, not intent, so imagine those yellows are as vibrant as they were the day he painted them. This is important. So too is another of his paintings with which you're probably familiar: 

What's significant here is the contrast between the once-vibrant yellows and the rich swirls of blue that these lights fail to illuminate. The stars and moon exist independently of the night sky, which has always struck me as a visualization of a menacing thought: things can hide in the presence of all this light. Light can not only fail to illuminate, it can be swept up and away by raging torrents of darkness. (Which invariably contain monsters, because darkness light can't penetrate always contains monsters.)

That I'm going on about Van Gogh in a post about the "Van Gogh Job" should be fairly self-evident, but it's not just that the director of this episode/author-of-the-challenge-to-write-this-post, John Rogers, employs a palette similar to that of his subject. More significant is how he employs it, which is both 1) often to the same end and 2) create continuity between his parallel narratives. In the modern narrative, Charlie Lawson (Danny Glover) sits in a hospital bed recounting the events of the World War II narrative to Parker (Beth Riesgraf):

Note the color of her hospital gown. (And her hair, for that matter.) In the flashback, Riesgraf plays Lawson's love interest, Dorothy Ross:

That would be her doing her best "Starry Night" impersonation. I'm normally reluctant to put too much stock in the analysis of color—such analyses usually end up sounding like impressionistic pseudo-psychoanalytic shtick—but in the frame above you don't even have to know what the episode's about to realize that this isn't a case in which a bright color's emerging from a deep dark as a visual representation of hope. Instead, Rogers captures an image of a bright color about to be overwhelmed by a pervasive and pernicious darkness. (Which, again, most likely contains monsters.) All of which is a belabored way of making a simple point: the color yellow is doing double-duty in this episode: 1) creating narrative continuity between the two historical periods and 2) suggesting a connection between the earlier narrative and its content (the loneliness and isolation evident in the stolen Van Gogh). 

One last note about continuity, in particular, the decision to use the Leverage team in both narratives: it may seem like a strange decision, one designed to cause confusion, but it actually makes perfect sense. After all, in the modern narrative, Lawson's narrating his experience to Parker, the result of which is the WWII narrative, which comes from Parker. We all do this when we're being told stories. When I taught journalism, one exercise I used to emphasize the importance of detail was to give my students a description of a man, e.g. "He is short and squat with brown hair and wears clothing typical of workers," then have them describe him in more detail. Invariably, the Asian-American students described an Asian-American man in a white shirt and cheap khakis, the white students described an overweight man in a hard-hat, etc. Point being, we all draw on our own experience when constructing narratives, and Parker's "decision" to cast her friends in the historical narrative is simply another example of this logic.

Why did I spend all this time talking about continuity? Because Leverage is, in the end, a heist show. Rogers describes it as a show about "punching rich guys in the neck [b]ecause they have Sinned, and Deserve It," but I'd go one further: it's a show about sucker-punching those who deserve it. They're not supposed to see the punch coming—or if they are, it's only to distract them from the one they don't. So a number of the shots in any episode are functional not in the deragotory sense, but in that they exist in the service of a shot later in the episode. A number of examples of these service shots occur as Historical Parker (H.Parker from here on out) aims to escape to France with Historical Hardison (H.Hardison). H.Parker is about to start playing an old organ at a skating rink as a performance begins:

First, note the colors: H.Parker's in yellow and framed by it. This is before she makes the escape depicted in the previous frame, so more than a little hope is allowed to creep in. After all, this is a heist show in which the Leverage team typically pulls off successful heists, so the audience expectation is that she'll successfully escape, and Rogers' palette plays to that expectation here. As she leaves to take her place at the organ, the camera reverses but stays on her father, the villain of the piece:

That awkward, empty space on the left side of the frame makes an audience uncomfortable. We want balanced shot composition, and those blurry folks in the background don't qualify. This isn't poorly shot, it's the only way to make an absence visible on screen: you have a character vacate an occupied space without altering the shot's length or its angle or level of framing. Everything's the same, except that one element's absence is suddenly pronounced. Moreover, it's a moment in which the audience feels, however fleetingly, what the character does (or believes he soon will): the absence of H.Parker. Because he's about to do something about his forthcoming loss, Rogers then balances the shot by having the camera and the father move to the left:

And by having a henchmen immediately enter the space vacated by the father:

Everything may not be right with the world, but everything in shot is going according to plan. H.Parker's father is setting his world aright, which means that he's the one who suddenly has the Yellow Light of Hope:

Which is predicated on, we soon learn, the Blue Light of Despair:

The angle and level of framing are significant here, as both indicate that the audience occupies a position in space they'd rather not: the underside of a speeding freight train. Rogers then cuts to the tunnel beneath the tracks, where H.Hardison leans against a wall writing the times the trains pass:

Two elements are being established here: the first, crucial to any heist, is to provide the audience with an understanding of what's to come. In this case, we know that the timing of the trains will be crucial to any escape. The second element is spatial: this isn't just an ordinary tunnel, which is why Rogers uses a long shot instead of just the close-up on H.Hardison's face he'll cut to momentarily. He needs to establish the importance of this space (which attentive readers will recognize as the same one H.Parker stands in above). The long shot allows him to do that; moreover, the fact that it's off-balance brings some of the same unease as the scene with H.Parker and her father, only moreso, because in that scene the shot was unbalanced by an element leaving the frame, whereas in this one it's unbalanced because something's going to enter it. Could be H.Parker, but it could also be something else. (Monsters?) Rogers then cuts back to the skating rink as 1) the performance begins and 2) H.Parker begins to play:

The second frame is strangely balanced by H.Parker and the element on the right, but there's still an empty space in the central portion of the screen. Instead of filling it, Rogers cuts to her hands:

Often times such shots are merely ornamental, i.e. proof that the something that seems to be being done is being done. Not so here, but more on that in a minute. Rogers cuts back to the oddly balanced medium shot:

Only now the empty space is occupied by Historical Sophie (H.Sophie). What's she doing there? SQUIRREL!

The audience will get to see why crowd at the skating rink is being distracted, but first they're made to understand that this performance is a distraction. As long as the room's dark and everyone's focused on the skater in the spotlight, they won't see this:

The purpose of showing the hands earlier is, in part, to point to the technical flawlessness of the switch. Neither the performer nor the crowd can tell that H.Sophie has replaced H.Parker, which means that we, the viewing audience, think everything's going according to plan. Which, so far, it is. At least until the performance ends and the scene transitions:

Note the continuity in the lighting: we're blinded by the spotlight as it shines directly at the camera, then transitioned to a dark scene in which the light source seems be similarly located (the upper-right corner of the frame) but ominously dimmed. Again, the off-balance shot creates a little anxiety, as there's no telling what might come to occupy it. Actually, there is telling:

Only not really. Like the spotlight moments earlier—not to mention "Starry Night"—these lights don't illuminate anything. They're the kind of lights that hide their source, suggesting that they're being held by people who'd rather not be seen doing what they're doing. And they barely can be:

There's just enough light to recognize that that's H.Parker's father, and the fact that he's there means all the Yellow Light of Hope we've seen so far has been so much misdirection. Or has it? In the following shot-reverse sequence, the domination of the frame shifts from what is typical of this episode (H.Parker's father lording over his domain):

To what's typical of the series (H.Hardison controlling his environment):

This dynamic works for regular viewers of the series—because they strongly believe in the eventual success of the Leverage crew—even though it defies the laws of physics regarding hills. H.Hardison can't be both below and above H.Parker's father, which seems to indicate that Rogers specifically wanted to toy with his audience's expectations about the eventual success of this escape. Because if the angle of framing is a little lower when on H.Hardison, it's only a very little lower. Rogers isn't toying with us the way, say, Toby Haynes did here. In terms of composition, H.Hardison's advantage is, literally, the tip of a cap. Cut back to the rink, below it, if I'm not mistaken:

And even if I am—it could be behind or around as well as beneath—it's still a highly confined space. The formal elements of this shot militate to make H.Parker seem entrapped. She's escaping down a tunnel that's both brightly lit but yet still dark. The lines of the brickwork appear to stream seamlessly to a vanishing point except that they're abruptly terminated by a door. That everything's pointing at the door makes her escape seem contingent. It's a door, certainly, and doors are perfectly fine vehicles for egress, but it's not an open door, nor is it a brightly lit hall. Combined with the previous scene on the hill with H.Hardison, this shot of a tiny woman rushing down an over-long hall seems an indication of imminent failure. And, sure enough, she's quickly stopped by that door-that's-not-an-open-door:

What's stopped her?

Someone who's emerged from the dimly lit empty space she just traversed. Is it one of her father's henchmen?

Nope. It's Historical Nate (H.Nate). All is well. He's yelling at her for involving his wife, H.Sophie, in her plans, but despite the H. he's still Nate. Hope can be restored! Cue its Yellow Light!

That hall is only dimly lit in medium and long shots. H.Parker seems to receive the classic three-point treatment the very moment H.Nate agrees to aid in her escape. Things are looking up!

But still only by the tip of a cap.  Or maybe not:

H.Hardison both occupies the central portion of the frame and physically dominates—by a head—every other character on screen. How can the tide have turned so quickly? Rogers incorporates a flashback within his flashback:

As the Saving Private Ryan palette indicates, this isn't a flashback to the WWII era, but to a moment in Occupied France in which H.Hardison acquired a handgrenade. You can guess what's in that rucksack being rummaged through in the previous frame, and why H.Hardison is suddenly in control of the situation. Not that he still doesn't do the smart thing and run:

He runs through the same tunnel he'd been in earlier, only from the opposite direction, and in that previously established space he finds:

Hope? She seems to be occupying the space from the earlier shot, but she's not centrally positioned. She's slightly to the left of center, which leaves a little room for:

More bad lights. Only this time, the identities that're trying to hide behind them have been established, so it seems like these bad lights in this bad tunnel will lead to a bad result. Except!

Medium close-up on our resident hero, H.Nate, shooting at the bad lights. There's a long-established righteousness to these medium and medium close-up of sheriffs in hats shooting at slight angles off-screen. (For example.) They can't shoot directly at the camera without being off-putting to the audience—no one enjoys being shot at—and it needs to be a close-up of some sort because the steeled quality of his face is crucial to establishing the justness of his violence. Rogers didn't need to have H.Nate speak a word, as the composition of this shot speaks to the justice of his cause. Speaking of which:

H.Nate put down the cover fire, and H.Parker and H.Hardison took advantage of it. Everything seems to be coming together just as it does when the Leverage team pulls a heist: perfectly timed. They bolt for the train just as it arrives through the upper right portion of the frame, and Rogers' shot indicates that they'll collide, in the good way, somewhere in the upper left. Freedom is at hand! Everything went according to plan! Or did it?

I won't spoil the episode for those who haven't seen it. 

Leverage and the Liberal Pornographic

Unlike their counterparts on The Definite-Indefinite Article-Team, the Robin Hoods on John Rogers and Chris Downey's Leverage aren't joyful militarists whose idea of helping people invariably involves vans and walls. Because, unlike Leverage, that other show

was a guy's show. It was male-driven. It was written by guys. It was directed by guys. It was acted by guys. It's about what guys do. We talked the way guys talked. We were the boss. We were the God. We smoked when we wanted. We shot guns when we wanted. It was the last truly masculine show.

In the 1980s, heroism only came from the barrel of guns aimed by incompetent men at similarly scattershot adversaries—because for all the gunplay, no one was ever shot. When these world-historically poor shots grew tired of wasting ammunition, they would chase each other in vans until one of them found a wall in need of Kool-Aid, then someone would punch someone, everyone would laugh, and the day would somehow have been saved.

The Definite-Indefinite Article-Team was a male fantasy about a world in which simpleminded evil could be thwarted by brute force, the implication being that had the government allowed these clowns—who, the audience was to believe, were once ex-Special Forces—free rein in Vietnam, America would have won the war. How you win a war with soldiers who can barely hit the broad side of a barn with a van is beside the point: the 1980s needed manly men to manly deeds, and when they did, nothing made much sense, but everything worked out.

[Insert here a clunky summary of the arching plot.  Describe how it's a show in which a former insurance investigator hires the talented specialists he formerly investigated to help those that corporations have rendered helpless.  Maybe mention that the official website describes it as a show that features "elaborate scams designed to exact revenge against those who use power and wealth to victimize people."  Then move on because exposition is necessary, but good God damn, is it ever boring.] 

With Leverage, the issue isn't whether nothing makes sense and everything works out, but whether the audience can make sense of how everything worked out. According to John Rogers:

Testing indicates—and I'm not kidding—that about 30% of our audience never understands the con at all.

Despite the fact that almost one-third of viewers have no clue what's happening or why, Americans have voted with their eyes and elected Leverage the most popular show on basic cable. Which means that Americans love something they don't understand, fully aware that they're not understanding it. Unlike Twin Peaks, where the ignorance was as collective as its ratings were impressive, Leverage is a caper show, so the visceral narrative enjoyment should come from watching the plot hatch.

Let me literalize that:

Ideally, the audience should watch a hen have sex with a mutant rooster, then see the egg appear and, knowing what's in the egg, watch with gleeful anticipation as the fox steals into the hen house and is confronted not with a delicious yellow chick, but a mutant-blue chick with the proportionate strength of an ant:

Only then should they treasure their anti-corporate catharsis.

Instead, almost one-third of Leverage's audience sees chickens having sex, is momentarily confused, but then marvels at the sudden appearance of an egg and squeals with glee when a just-born peep beats down the full-grown fox. For a caper show to be popular without being, for much of its audience, a caper show, means that its appeal is rooted in soils unwatered by Ocean's 11 and ff.

So it is.

Rogers again:

Bernie Madoff stole FIFTY BILLION DOLLARS. In a PONZI SCHEME. Which is the criminal equivalent of convincing people you are going to fly to the moon in a refrigerator box. The single, unpleasant truth is that most people, particularly criminals, are NOT complex. They are shallow, greedy sons of bitches to whom we attribute genius planning or complex motivations in order to preserve a false sense of order in our universe.

We desperately want to attribute otherwise. We want to believe that simpleminded evils are not, in fact, simpleminded, but that we've been duped by highly competent con artists whose methods are so arcane they can only be countered by other, more highly competent con artists. We enjoy the show despite the con because we want to believe such cons can't be understood and really just want some vicarious vengeance.

Reaction to the show, then, is primal and political: we want to see for-profit military opportunists suffer for their trespasses against our soldiers, because war is more complicated now than it was thirty years ago; we want to see contractors who prey on over-extended homeowners in the wake of natural disasters be punished, because disaster relief is now politicized; by which I mean, we want to see ordinary criminals so offended by the non-crimes immoral profiteers lawfully commit that a third of us will devote thirteen hours to a show we don't understand just to watch a mutant chicken gore a cowering pro-corporate fox.

[Tomorrow I'll post a more in-depth analysis of "The Bank Shot Job."  I was going to do it tonight, but I think there's enough to chew on there already.]