Mid0nz&#x27;s Sherlock Meta Archive

The Adventure of the Yellow Face happened before Reichenbach.

Ack. More race stuff to deal with.

Noticed things

#221b set

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Wow - this brought back mostly awesome memories. Friends, fellow travelers, thinky thoughts - for whatever reason there is very little wank in this archive. That is nice. Very nice.

Some Camera Shots in Sherlock PART 2

PART 1

CROSS CUT

the editing technique of alternating, interweaving, or interspersing one narrative action (scene, sequence, or event) with another - usually in different locations or places, thus combining the two; this editing method suggests parallel action (that takes place simultaneously); often used to dramatically build tension and suspense in chase scenes, or to compare two different scenes; also known as inter-cutting or parallel editing. (x)

FADE

a transitional device consisting of a gradual change in the intensity of an image or sound, such as from a normally-lit scene to darkness (fade out, fade-to-black) or vice versa, from complete black to full exposure (fade in), or from silence to sound or vice versa; a ‘fade in’ is often at the beginning of a sequence, and a ‘fade out’ at the end of a sequence. (x)

LAP DISSOLVE

a transitional editing technique between two sequences, shots or scenes, in which the visible image of one shot or scene is gradually replaced, superimposed or blended (by an overlapping fade out or fade in and dissolve) with the image from another shot or scene; often used to suggest the passage of time and to transform one scene to the next; lap dissolve is shorthand for 'over'lap dissolve (x)

SLOW MOTION (SLO-MO)

refers to an effect resulting from running film through a camera at faster-than-normal speed (shooting faster than 24 frames per second), and then projecting it at standard speed; if a camera runs at 60 frames per second, and captures a one second-long event, a 24-frame playback will slow that event to two and a half seconds long;… this filmic technique is usually employed to fully capture a 'moment in time’ or to produce a dramatic (or romantic feeling) (x)

…

We did [the slow motion shot of Cumberbatch] on a bungee 1000 fps on a Phantom camera. -Steve Lawes, Director of Photography (x)

OVER EXPOSED

refers to a film shot that has more light than normal, causing a blinding, washed-out, whitish, glaring effect; deliberately used for flashbacked or dream scenes; aka flared or bleached (x)

STEADYCAM

a hand-held camera technique using a stabilizing Steadicam (introduced in the late 70s), developed by inventor Garrett Brown, with a special, mechanical harness that allows the camera operator to take relatively smooth and steady shots, though hand-held, while moving along with the action (x)

WIPE

a transitional technique or optical effect/device in which one shot appears to be “pushed off” or “wiped off” the screen by another shot replacing it and moving across the existing image (x)

The amount of time I spent on this TV show boggles the mind of older me.

The Inspiration for the Sherlock Title Sequence is The Sandpit by Sam O’Hare.

As Mark Gatiss said when that Russian show “stole” Sherlock’s titles: imitation is the sincerest form of flattery!

From the horse's mouth...

It’s been an emotional night. I’ve heard so many individual’s stories - people run out of a fandom they loved over hardcore wank - people who were once happily active but retreated angry and wounded. Some of them were (rightfully) among the most well-known fic writers and artists. The people who broke my heart the most were the less well-known fans who felt completely alone and afraid when they were targeted b/c they didn’t have lots of followers to support or defend them. I’ve heard from people who might like to be involved in a Sherlock fandom again, but are afraid to come back after all they went through. And people who still feel timid to post *anything* remotely provocative for fear of being seriously harassed.

That’s not the fandom I want to see post-S4 newbies come into.

It’s NOT RIGHT.

theleftpill

We can change that, all of us in the fandom. We’re the only ones who can.

This is the way the world ends. Not with a bang but a whimper...

#wank and grief

Neville Kidd was the Director of Photography on His Last Vow. So Yeah. He Knows.

finalproblem

World. Officially. Revolves. Around. Sherlock.

stravaganza

So that’s how he actually did Reichenbach.

finalproblem

YES.

Loved twitter once upon a time...

The Hobgoblin of Little Minds: Why I Still Believe in Sherlock

A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines.

-Ralph Waldo Emerson (x)

I think The Great Game, directed by Paul McGuigan and written by Mark Gatiss, is the consummate Sherlock. It’s the first episode they filmed and I don’t think they’ve equalled it. I don’t think they ever will. It’s everything, to my mind and heart, that the show should be: complex, funny, poignant, beautiful, exhilarating, just dark enough in every respect. I love the portrayal of Sherlock’s and John’s relationship, Sherlock’s petulance and longing. John’s rage, his inability to connect with Sarah or with Sherlock. Mrs. Hudson comically avoids cerise. Lestrade listens to her intently and that’s all we ever need to know about the DI to understand his moral character. Mycroft is pitch perfect. And Moriarty! Andrew Scott, too, is perfection. I didn’t care for Molly’s meekness but, overall, I think they got it right the first time.

I believe in Sherlock precisely because it will never, ever, for me, be that good again. Counterintuitive, no? No. I view each and every episode as a stand alone. As its own movie, yes, but more than that I see each episode as an opportunity for the three writers, Gatiss, Steven Moffat, and Steve Thompson, to come at the world of Sherlock Holmes anew. Let’s be honest with ourselves. There is very little consistency between the episodes. While consistency may comfort the viewer who revels in repetition, in the case of Sherlock it would be small minded of the show runners to strive for it.

I believe in Sherlock because it’s never executed exactly the way I would have done it. And, true, that can be disappointing and frustrating initially, but more often than not, it’s interesting in the long run. TGG was magical. What else can Mofftiss do with ACD? It doesn’t matter just try something new. Make Sherlock Holmes new. Risk thrilling me with your “failures.”

There have never been guarantees with this show. It’s a nightmare to produce. Gatiss and Moffat are right to write it as if each episode is their last, to ask themselves how they would, given one opportunity and one opportunity only, approach, as in Gatiss’s case, The Bruce-Partington Plans, or The Hound of the Baskervilles, or write the script for a case ACD mentions but never writes such as The Giant Rat of Sumatra. I adore Gatiss’ scripts because they’re plot-driven and erotic, camp in Isherwood’s sense. With The Empty Hearse Gatiss even granted us a lovingly spoofed, post-modern Sherlock. I absolutely adored it and I’ll bet hard cash that we won’t see its precise like again.

While Gatiss approaches his opportunities to update his beloved ACD primarily through plot, Moffat is a romantic at heart. He’s all about who Sherlock Holmes is as a character. How he must feel about The Woman, what kind of best man he’d be, why, in canon, he might admire Watson’s wife. Moffat is a writer of the “what if”… Let’s drop Sherlock into scenarios and watch him dance.

I believe in Sherlock because I read it from a writerly point of view. I spend endless hours putting myself in the place of the people who make the show, wondering what they’re thinking, what their hopes are, their squee, how they solve problems, the risks they take and the chances they let escape. Each episode is, for me, the result of (as Michael Price puts it) 100,000 micro decisions made daily by scores of people. They’re delightful to dissect. The bliss is imagining yourself in their enviable position. How would you have done it differently? Nearly each of us has a a lengthy, impassioned response to that question if only the makers would pose it to us. Thankfully that’s not their job.

I had dinner with a respected mystery novelist last night. She’s spent 50 years married to a prominent theater scholar. I asked her what, to her mind, makes an excellent theatrical production or an excellent mystery. She said, “Think of it! Think of allll that has to go right in order to make something perfectly average. Excellence is a marvel. It seems like magic.” In terms of a fine mystery plot she said there must be a twist that you didn’t see coming but, in retrospect, was there undetected all along.

I believe in Sherlock because it is not a detective show and never will be. It is a show about detectives. You’re free to treat it like a fine mystery, seek what you hope are intentionally planted clues, but that isn’t how ACD constructed his Holmes stories and it’s not what Mofftisson are interested in. (Think of how Moffat retcons Who. He does it because constancy is a hobgoblin. Plot, schmott, Give me the glory that is River Song. The specifics of her timeline are beside the point, Sweetie.) Sherlock is not an exquisitely hyper-intentionally plotted Thomas Harris thriller-mystery. Everything, everything in The Silence of the Lambs is a clue. Sherlock is not that. You can pretend it is. By all means seek uncanny consistency. You will not find it in the first three seasons unless it’s of your own manufacture.

Mofftiss have plotted an arc for seasons four and five, they say. I believe them. Until now it’s been a mad rush to do the big stories while they could. And it’s worked for me. There’s been an urgency, an anxiety about doing everything they possibly can with their adaptations of ACD while they have the fleeting chance. It’s an aesthetic shared with ACD of the episodic. (It’s how I feel about my Sherlock maker interviews— what do I ask when I’ve got one shot at it. If I had the luxury of, say, five shots at getting it right, you’d see a very, very different result.) This is the first time Mofftiss have had enough insurance that future productions will, indeed, happen. It’s a new problem to think in terms of six potentially interconnected episodes.

How to cope with that hobgoblin consistency!? Obvious. Write one single stand-alone Christmas episode first!

Things you forgot you wrote...

Mark Gatiss’s Sherlock Fan Fiction or, I Don’t Care Why He Did It. I Want to Know How.

You all have so many mixed feelings about Hearse, don’t you? I’m going to spend many hours of my life explaining why I think it’s fucking narrative genius. It’s on par with my favorite X-files episode: “Clyde Bruckman’s Final Repose.” The writers of both episodes brilliantly take the piss out of the show in the way only somebody who loves it can. Both episodes are Meta (post-modern)— self-consciously crafted, self-reflexive, genuine love letters to the series in which they belong as well as to the fandom who adores them.

Let’s look at the solutions to the Fall. We have Anderson’s high tech crazy-making Mission Impossible, a Hollywood spy thriller with plot so complex that the only audience members who can claim to understand it are the fans who’ve watched it several times. Spy thrillers are intoxicating. That’s their whole purpose. Practical schmactical.

The plots of these spy thriller films are never the point, aren’t meant to hold up to logical scrutiny. Like Arthur Conan Doyle’s universe they’re hopelessly inconsistent. The viewer-reader has to perform mental gymnastics to make sense of the non-sensical. In that readerly act of contortion, we create our own fiction. As Anderson says after Sherlock’s reveal— that’s not the way he would have done it. That’s because he’s already “made his own movie.” Interestingly Anderson ships Sherlolly.

Next we have the darling fangirl’s version of the Fall. Its production values are on par with the earliest episodes of Trek.

Hers is not a suspense film like Anderson’s. It’s a slap-dash romance. The Sherlock/Moriarty kissing scene isn’t just a bone for Morlock shippers (though it’s clear from his script of The Great Game that Gatiss ships them), it’s a loving spoof of the narrative cliches and aesthetics of slash where everything leading up to the climatic “kiss” is clumsily crafted, that is to say it’s “poorly” written (at least by “Traditional Standards.”)

But isn’t the money-shot close-up glorious! Like much slash, the homosexuals are sinister (poor John— the one rounded character), their interaction cliched. Didn’t Ben do wonders with his eyebrows!? He and Andrew didn’t have to speak and we knew all the dialog they left unspoken. Why? Enemies-to-lovers is a slash genre known to us all. Gatiss has sympathy for the Morlock shipper and he gives her a beautiful new year’s present. The gif to end all gifs. No manip necessary.

And at last, there is the documentary Anderson is filming.

But. We all know that documentaries, too are constructions. No matter how definitive and “true” they pretend to be, in the end they’re just another text. They’re fictions in the sense that they are only one version of “reality” (whatever that is), a version which itself is open to a million interpretations (not an unlimited number mind you. All texts have some semantic boundaries). Sherlock on film, the True Version of Events. There were 13 possible scenarios, Sherlock repeats that fact several times. Each of the scenarios was fully worked out. This is a nod to the writer’s conundrum, what Mofftisson had to contend with. Gatiss chose to show us at least these three with a nod and a wink. Each solution to the final problem is valid in that each is written for a specific purpose, specific audience with specific needs.

Anderson is the only character who actually does care about HOW Sherlock did it if for no other reason than to prove himself right. I could hear all the ball-under-the-arm theorists squealing with delight from the four corners of the globe. Who’s to say Gatiss didn’t toss them that ball on purpose after-the-fact? For my part, I still believe that 29 was one of the codes and that they simply didn’t have enough time to work it into the final resolution. Nobody will convince me otherwise. It could have just as easily been the rubber ball that Gatiss made insignificant in the end. Isn’t that what documentaries do? Make some events, objects, people more significant than others in the interest of telling the “truth” in a limited amount of time?

Each of these resolutions is delightful in its own way. But we never really do find out why Sherlock did it though the why can inspire just as many theories as the how. As a stylist Gatiss prefers emotions to remain ambiguous. We should thank him. Ambiguity. There be ships.

I’ll just conclude this with a few thoughts on the fictions I write about Sherlock. The first principle of a convincing reading is that the why of a character’s actions is a governed by a degree of authorial logic.

That which drives BBC Sherlock’s characters, the why can be deduced from textual data, the facts of the story, the how of how the writer wrote it. The musician scored it. The cinematographer shot it. The director framed it.

Sherlock Holmes’s deductions of “the truth” might be the greatest literary device in all of English fiction.

Mark Gatiss understands that, delights in it. Plays with it. After all he’s a fan himself.

Going on...

I Am You: Two Very Different Games

Cheeky.

A 7% Solution? Sherlock’s Injection Gun

The most dangerous and interesting prop in 221b is this syringe pistol. It only appears in Hounds and it’s on the top of one of Sherlock’s four printers in the lounge (one on the desk, two near the music stand and one on the shelf behind the door).

One obvious interpretation given the evidence is that Sherlock is hell on printers! Maybe he simply abandons them when they run out of ink? Is it thrifty John (eco-conscious!John?) who’s using the injector to refill the ink cartridges to prevent our Petulant Consulting Detective from buying yet another?

The fact remains that even if the confounded thing is being used for good it’s still a freaking injector gun! And it’s in the possession of a known user who (barely?) overcame a Danger Night just one episode ago! What the hell is John thinking even letting it in the flat at all?

Well this is the same enabler doctor who will, a few minutes after the gun appears on screen, relent and toss our Consulting Addict a pack of cigarettes to calm his ass down.

Also known as [a syringe pistol], an injector gun or a medical injector, an injection gun is a device that is used to efficiently and safely inject medication into the body. Devices of this type…offer a higher degree of accuracy at the injection site. …the gun makes is possible to deliver a more precise dosage than is usually possible with a traditional syringe. In many countries, no type of injection gun is available to the general public without the express permission of a licensed healthcare provider.

An injection gun can be used for just about any type of medication injection. This includes the delivery of pain medication, or of antibiotics… While there is some variation in the design, most of these injectors are equipped with a chamber for the medication, a barrel, and a trigger… The trigger is located below the chamber and barrel, making it easy to hold the device in one hand, position the needle at the point of entry, and squeeze the trigger to insert the needle and deliver the dose of medication. (x)

WTH?

#221b set

The Cinematography of Mycroft and John’s First Meeting

Steve Lawes/Mary Jo Watts

THE FIRST SHOT

Wetdown- to hose down the floors with water in order to use the reflections to light the scenes. This is a technique that he uses often (see the Belarus scene in TGG) but Steve says it winds everyone up– an additional hassle that’s well worth it cinematically.

THE BIGGEST WIDE SHOT

It restricts where Steve can get the light in because so much of the scene is in camera. He establishes contrast in the frame by using different colors of lights at different depths in the scene. Look at the color of the headlights versus the fluorescent lights and then there are the film lights that you can’t see. Most importantly, there is the color of the light as it kicks off the water on the ground.

A KEY LIGHT ON MARK | A POOL OF LIGHT OVER THE EXIT

Steve has used a conventional key light to illuminate Mark’s face. The light over the exit sign was already in the warehouse, but Steve turned some of them off to create a pool of light rather than have a completely bright background. The shadows give a shape to the frame and create a foreboding mood.

FRAMES WITH BODY LANGUAGE

If this scene were shot more conventionally their conversations would all be in a medium shot or a closeup. They elected to use a few long shots to show the silent communication between Mycroft and John.

PUTTING MYCROFT & JOHN IN THE SAME PART OF THE FRAME

Steve likes to put people in the same part of the frame when they’re conversing in an intense way. He does it with Ella and John, for example. It’s a trick you’ll see in movies- done so people don’t have to move their eyes across a big screen. Conventionally Mycroft would be further to the left of the frame.

A SLOW PUSH IN

Quite often in television they’ll shoot a wide shot, then a medium shot, then a closeup. In this case Steve is on a dolly, pushing into the actors ever so slightly to get the medium then close up shots by camera movement in one take rather than having the editor cut the different kinds of shots together.

CONSTANT IMPERCEPTIBLE CAMERA MOVEMENT

The camera is in constant movement throughout the scene but you probably didn’t notice until I just told you. This shot of Mark also demonstrates what Steve calls his lazy style of operating. Rather than keep Mark’s face in the frame at all times, he allows Mark to lift his head up out of frame THEN he follows with the camera to get Mark’s head back in frame.

A DIFFICULT SHOT TO GET SHARP (in focus)

It’s hard to tell in this gif below, but Martin isn’t in sharp focus the entire time. In the audio Steve explains that the camera is on a track moving backwards as Martin limps towards it. The combo of these simultaneous movements gives the focus puller trouble.

HEADROOM

I have another post about this bit, but I decided to keep it in this audio clip b/c this audio is Steve’s full commentary on the scene.

Yeah ok - mistakes were made with the people but the content is still five star.

Holmesosexuality: On Mark Gatiss’s Camp

Mark Gatiss’s gay Sherlock characters and scenarios in The Great Game (in particular) are an emotional homage to Billy Wilder’s film, The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes. This is a film that Gatiss (an out and proudly married gay man) credits with changing his life and claims that it was a template of sorts for him and Moffat as they conceived of Sherlock.

Gatiss’s version of Sherlock and John’s relationship mirrors what Gatiss reads in TPLoSH— that Sherlock falls in love with John gradually over the course of their relationship.

The relationship between Sherlock and Watson is treated beautifully; Sherlock effectively falls in love with him in the film, but it’s so desperately unspoken. -Gatiss on TPLoSH (x)

I can’t help but see this scene from Sherlock when I think of Gatiss’s comment about TPLoSH.

Holmes’s unspoken tenderness in TPLoSH is complicated. There are two conversations about homosexuality going on simultaneously in the film: the overtly gay campy performances and plot line; and the hints that Holmes’s erotic attachments are to his own sex, hints that are only expressible because of the situations engendered by campy plot.

There’s an amazing scene [in TPLoSH] where, to get out of a situation where a Russian ballerina wants Sherlock to father her child, he claims Watson and he are gay. Watson is outraged and, when he calms down, speaks of the women all over the world who could attest to his sexuality. He says to Sherlock, “You do too, don’t you?” Holmes is silent, and Watson says, “Am I being presumptuous? There have been women, haven’t there?” Holmes says, “The answer is yes – you are being presumptuous.” Sensational. -Gatiss on TPLoSH (x)

Humor is what Holmes has. Humor protects him. Innuendo says so much and nothing at all. Gatiss uses it masterfully in the pool scene.

Glad No-one Saw That

Parallel this scene from TPLoSH to the “glad-no-one-saw-that” pool scene where all Sherlock can utter is that thing that John did was good. Sherlock can’t express in any clearer terms (until Hounds, Gatiss’s next script) his emotions over John’s willingness to sacrifice his life and what the kind of love they share means. John diffuses the poolside tension with a lame joke about sex— the “you-ripping-my-clothes-off” and “people-will-talk” bit. Note the grin on Sherlock’s face when he says that people do little else. You get the sense that Sherlock likes the idea. The fact is that people DID see it— we, the audience, saw it (and possibly the snipers and Moriarty we can imagine). The performance was both visible and utterly private— mocking, overt sexual expressions with a genuine unspoken erotic subtext.

But this tender dialog and demonstration of loyalty, love, and vulnerability can only arise between Sherlock and John because of the roles they play in Moriarty’s campy theatrical. He’s the first of them to give voice to the gay subtext overtly when he scolds Sherlock that “daddy’s had enough now.” (Daddy is a term dripping with campy gay signification.) And it’s Moriarty who breaks the spell of the desire expressed but not said. The sexual tension between John and Sherlock cannot linger too long. Moriarty is a better joker. He’s soooooo changeable and he and Sherlock to have a “special something” between them to attend to.

Notes on Camp

There are so many definitions of “camp” that it can be confusing. What most people can agree on is that it’s a sensibility that’s got to do with homosexuality, love, and performance. Here are two useful attempts at defining it. The first expresses so aptly Gatiss’s approach to Sherlock:

“You can’t camp about something you don’t take seriously. You’re not making fun of it; you’re making fun out of it. You’re expressing what’s basically serious to you in terms of fun and artifice and elegance.” - Christopher Isherwood, The World in the Evening (1954)

and

In American writer Susan Sontag’s 1964 essay “Notes on ‘Camp’”, Sontag emphasized artifice, frivolity, naïve middle-class pretentiousness and shocking excess as key elements of camp. (x)

Sontag cites Tchaikovsky’s ballet Swan Lake as a prime example of camp. And it’s Swan Lake that leads to the campy gay antics of TPLoSH.

As Gatiss said. SENSATIONAL!

cosmoglaut

Just to add, in case it hasn’t been pointed out, Billy Wilder actually wanted to show Holmes as gay. “As it is, Holmes sexuality is quite ambig[u]ous for much of the film and Wilder has stated that he thought he didn’t go far enough with the character, originally wanting to present him as gay.” - bakerstreetdozen article.

Most of my meta I wrote out of my ass. I'm good with that.

#mark gatiss #camp

221B Baker St London NW1 6XE, UK

(HD 1, 2, 3, 4)

#221b set #221b baker street

221B on my mind…

I love this wipe transition in Sherlock, The Sign of Three!

The much maligned wipe – infamous for its inclusion in “tacky” wedding videos – has recently become a regularly implemented but rarely seen, or noticed, technique. The wipe is the technique where one shot is replaced by another by the movement of an edge, or line, which replaces the previous shot by “wiping” it. By revealing a new scene, environment or space the wipe offers a spatial or temporal transition to the director. (x)

We’re shooting a wedding video alright. What are we wiping? Well. we’ve got Archie, a stand-in for— hold your horses— John. Yes, that’s right. You might think he’s Little Sherlock because curls! (I won’t argue with you.) But he’s literally and figuratively standing in for John:

Archie: What’s all that stuff in his eyes?

And grown Sherlock expecting to terrorize the child.

Sherlock: Maggots.

And Archie replies with Johnish enthusiasm:

Archie: Cool!

Grown Sherlock seems a bit surprised by the reaction, that Archie doesn’t freak out and that he sees the obvious truth. It IS cool. Sherlock hums in agreement with Archie.

Sherlock: Mmm.

Then the wipe.

Look at what it’s doing! It replaces the little boy with the morbid interests, the boy that surprises Sherlock with their shared enthusiasm for the gross, the boy who LOVES Sherlock, who hugs him at the wedding, the boy Sherlock has, according to Archie’s mum “brought out of his shell”…

…the wipe replaces THAT kid with John…

…with a newly wedded John who’d already given Sherlock a hug that day, with the John who was so alone and who owes Sherlock so much, the John that Sherlock had brought out of his shell.

Sherlock doesn’t quite know what to do with their affection and gratitude.

Archie loves Sherlock. Did you see THAT Mary?