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jwaneeta at 12:02am on 20/02/2004
jwaneeta at 12:02am on 20/02/2004Oh, I am not so wiped out. My creepy job made life better for several old helpless confused people today and I almost feel perky. Ungh.
Per ATS (and let's love it while we can) I wrote this below. If you want intelligent Josscrit go to
www.teaattheford.net
because all your fave LJ people are there and they let me hang around, for some unfathomable reason.
Elevators are a gift for any director/storyboarder: they're the equivalent of a curtain that can be drawn across the action and withdrawn after a beat, permitting a snappy Reveal and allowing the mind of the audience to insert the action that wasn't shown (which promotes audience participation, always a good, even if it's a cheapo ploy). Entrances and exits are (as has already been noted here, and God knows I fall back on them too often when writing) natural scene brackets, and an elevator delivers that kind of punch within a scene, if desired.
That said, I think that the elevators in AtS are far too ubiquitous to be merely elevators. This series is rather heavy on the art direction and symbolism; there's too much weight given to the ideas of up and down (and inversions of up and down, as has also been noted here) for me to think elevators are simply serving as script puncutation.
Ever since Alcibiabes' Escher posts I've been noticing the staircase in the lobby, noticing that extras are always going down, never up; that motion always seems to be one way in W&H: obsessive stuff like that. I'd feel silly except that shortly after Alci's Escher post Fred mentioned Escher in a bit of dialogue, in a line where any other name or reference would have served as well, and that sealed the deal for me (barring a better theory that has yet to emerge). I have never directed, but I have been the lowly servant of same as a storyboarder. Directors communicate with storyboarders in a pidgin code of visual reference: they toss you a marked up script and start yammering "And here I want a Ford Fairlane convertible, and make it look Delacroix, yeah, I want The Barque of the Medusa, okay, and make sure the detailing on the car is tight, because that car rolled off the assembly line the day the Tonkin Incident went down and I want the audience to make that subliminal connection, and oh, yeah, make the woman hang onto the car like a Medusa drowner, but like a real Fifties type would do it: Doris Day plus naked naiad, minus nudity channeled through Ingres, because Delacroix and Ingres equals meltdown and by the way you need to deliver on this sequence because you're the only one here who can do the female body language..."
When the eyes of the storyboarder begin to bug and bleed under this assault, the director hands them about seventy lbs. of coffee table artbooks festooned with tabs and shoos the hapless wretch out to take a call or bedevil another storyboarder. (It need not be said that the storyboarder is thinking: There goes my weekend!that crazy motherfucker!like anyone will ever notice or care!) The conference may have been gibberish and the storyboarder may be in a daze, but that doesn't matter: if what is returned doesn't sort with what the director wants, it will come back (and back and BACK) until it's exactly what the D wants.
*coughs* Anyway, I can well believe that the elevator/up/down/Escher stuff is Creative Vision - Direction, not merely storytelling convenience. I, uh, just have a feeling.
Per ATS (and let's love it while we can) I wrote this below. If you want intelligent Josscrit go to
www.teaattheford.net
because all your fave LJ people are there and they let me hang around, for some unfathomable reason.
Elevators are a gift for any director/storyboarder: they're the equivalent of a curtain that can be drawn across the action and withdrawn after a beat, permitting a snappy Reveal and allowing the mind of the audience to insert the action that wasn't shown (which promotes audience participation, always a good, even if it's a cheapo ploy). Entrances and exits are (as has already been noted here, and God knows I fall back on them too often when writing) natural scene brackets, and an elevator delivers that kind of punch within a scene, if desired.
That said, I think that the elevators in AtS are far too ubiquitous to be merely elevators. This series is rather heavy on the art direction and symbolism; there's too much weight given to the ideas of up and down (and inversions of up and down, as has also been noted here) for me to think elevators are simply serving as script puncutation.
Ever since Alcibiabes' Escher posts I've been noticing the staircase in the lobby, noticing that extras are always going down, never up; that motion always seems to be one way in W&H: obsessive stuff like that. I'd feel silly except that shortly after Alci's Escher post Fred mentioned Escher in a bit of dialogue, in a line where any other name or reference would have served as well, and that sealed the deal for me (barring a better theory that has yet to emerge). I have never directed, but I have been the lowly servant of same as a storyboarder. Directors communicate with storyboarders in a pidgin code of visual reference: they toss you a marked up script and start yammering "And here I want a Ford Fairlane convertible, and make it look Delacroix, yeah, I want The Barque of the Medusa, okay, and make sure the detailing on the car is tight, because that car rolled off the assembly line the day the Tonkin Incident went down and I want the audience to make that subliminal connection, and oh, yeah, make the woman hang onto the car like a Medusa drowner, but like a real Fifties type would do it: Doris Day plus naked naiad, minus nudity channeled through Ingres, because Delacroix and Ingres equals meltdown and by the way you need to deliver on this sequence because you're the only one here who can do the female body language..."
When the eyes of the storyboarder begin to bug and bleed under this assault, the director hands them about seventy lbs. of coffee table artbooks festooned with tabs and shoos the hapless wretch out to take a call or bedevil another storyboarder. (It need not be said that the storyboarder is thinking: There goes my weekend!that crazy motherfucker!like anyone will ever notice or care!) The conference may have been gibberish and the storyboarder may be in a daze, but that doesn't matter: if what is returned doesn't sort with what the director wants, it will come back (and back and BACK) until it's exactly what the D wants.
*coughs* Anyway, I can well believe that the elevator/up/down/Escher stuff is Creative Vision - Direction, not merely storytelling convenience. I, uh, just have a feeling.
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