Top Five Camera Tricks: Buster Keaton

Buster Keaton’s movies have a very modern feel to me – not that they’re like today’s movies, but that they feel very modern for the times they were made in.  Buster was a real filmmaker’s filmmaker, and he employed innovative camera techniques to do stuff that a) must have been incredible to his audiences, and b) add a lot of signature flavor to his movies. 

The Playhouse

The whole multiple-Busters dream sequence is of course astounding.  For several minutes, there are variously two, three, or nine Busters onscreen at once, and they’re all him – no doubles.  He recorded the same shots multiple times, each time covering up a different segment of the film.  The camera had to be hand-cranked at precisely the same speed throughout, and when Buster dances with himself, he used a metronome to make sure the steps would line up perfectly.

Sherlock, Jr.

More dream sequence stuff, different but still great.  Buster steps into an onscreen film-within-a-film and then starts jumbling said film into a bunch of random shots from various locales.  He moves about a city street, a desert, a winter scene, an ocean, and a jungle, the movements in each carrying him smoothly into the next shot.  It’s seamless; I can’t imagine how much work it took to ensure he started each shot in exactly the same position as he ended the last one.

Sherlock, Jr. revisited

Sherlock, Jr. is totally Buster’s auteur movie – the whole thing shows off what an excellent filmmaker he was.  This second instance is, if I recall correctly, a modification to an old vaudeville trick where it looks like one person jumps through another’s stomach.  Buster’s vaudeville roots influenced his work a lot, but he also took advantage of new technology, and here, he used clever camera work to expand the gag and make it look more authentic.

Seven Chances

I like this little trick, a shot of Buster getting into his car in one location that melts into another of him getting out at his destination.  Though not as impressive as some of the scenes here, it’s noteworthy because it’s so small.  He easily could’ve filmed himself driving up to his destination instead of having it seemingly materialize around him, but he did it just cuz.  That’s the kind of filmmaker he was; why do something ordinary when he could dream up something different?

The Cameraman

Given the subject matter, Buster plays around a lot with camera techniques here, especially in the myriad mistakes his character makes in filming his first newsreel footage.  My favorite, though, is this wonderful bit.  It’s a great combination of Buster’s technical skill and his visual creativity, because he doesn’t just overlay two random shots on one another – it’s a downtown New York shot and a harbor shot, making it look like a ship is floating down the street.  Love it!

Character Highlight: Jackie Tyler (Doctor Who)

Like Mickey, Jackie is introduced as fairly broad and unimpressive, but she rises similarly in terms of genuineness/likeability.  Though it doesn’t come through in her first appearance, Jackie is characterized chiefly by her love for her daughter and the great lengths she’ll go, despite her relatively limited capabilities, to ensure Rose’s safety.  (Some Jackie-related spoilers.)

The Jackie we meet in “Rose” is a comic thumbnail, nothing to write home about.  She’s sort of a fluff character, somewhat shallow and mildly trashy.  Not a bad person by any means – she comes across as blunt and clueless more than anything – but when Rose decides to travel with the Doctor, you’re not left thinking, “Oh, but what about her mum?”

Skip ahead to “Aliens of London,” where a TARDIS mishap results in Rose having missed a year of life on Earth.  Jackie, we learn, has been understandably frantic during this time, and Rose’s return finds her mother hostilely suspicious of the Doctor and distraught that Rose won’t say where she’s been for the last year or why she hasn’t called.  Over the course of the ensuing earthbound adventure, her main concern is getting Rose away from the Doctor’s dangerous way of life.  At a critical moment, she calls him out on his ability to keep Rose safe, arguing that if he can’t, he has no right to involve Rose in his exploits.

This, like I said, emerges as Jackie’s most prominent trait.  She’s always at her bravest, toughest, and cleverest when she’s working to protect Rose, and it’s why, even though she gradually starts coming around to the Doctor, she still keeps him the tiniest bit at arm’s length, knowing that he’s the reason Rose’s life is so precarious.  Whether it’s fighting aliens herself, withholding important information from untrustworthy people, or simply preparing the food when they need to hunker down and hide out in the TARDIS, she does whatever she can to help Rose.

Because, while Rose would obviously be safer staying home instead of traveling time and space and leaping into the alien-fighting fray, Jackie ultimately realizes how devoted Rose is to life with the Doctor and doesn’t try to stop her.  It’s a very self-denying conclusion for her to make, because beyond worrying about Rose’s well-being, there’s another hardship for Jackie herself.  Quite simply, Rose’s travels mean she’s rarely home and Jackie hardly ever sees her, hardly ever knows where or when her daughter is.  And that’s painful.  “Love and Monsters” is an uneven episode, but Jackie’s scenes with Elton, sharing what it’s like to be left behind and missing Rose, are quietly heartbreaking, something I wouldn’t have expected from the Jackie I met at the start of the series.

But that’s the thing about Jackie.  Regardless of her fears for Rose or her loneliness at being without her, Jackie makes the best of her daughter’s choice and supports her anyway.  In “The Parting of the Ways,” when the Doctor sends Rose back home for her own protection, Jackie is enormously relieved.  However, when Rose makes it clear that she needs to get back to the Doctor, even though it’ll be the greatest danger she’s ever faced, Jackie still accepts Rose’s decision and helps her to leave again, coming up with a way to help in Rose’s desperate attempts to interface with the TARDIS.  I can’t imagine how hard it must be for her, how it must break her heart to see Rose so determined to put herself in jeopardy, but she acknowledges what her daughter feels she has to do and makes up her mind to help.

The Hour (2011-2012)

I talked a lot about series 2 of this British period drama back during Capaldi Fall, thanks to Peter Capaldi’s stunning turn in that season.  However, the show itself is splendid, and after a recent rewatch, I wanted to give it a more holistic write-up (I’ve been rewatching The Thick of It as well – signs that I’m antsy for Who to return?)

Set in a gorgeously-realized 1950s London, The Hour follows a BBC news show of the same name, a weekly one-hour program that hungers for putting out real hard-hitting news with no ads, padding, or fluff.  Bel is the ambitious producer, given the sink-or-swim opportunity to run her first major program.  At her side is longtime best friend Freddie, a clever, dogged reporter who’s obsessed with spy tales and chases great stories at all costs.  Also on Bel’s team is Lix, a hard-drinking, dry-humored veteran journalist with her finger on the pulse of the world’s tempestuous political situation – the Suez Crisis is a major series 1 plot, and nuclear armament in the Cold War factors into series 2.  The newcomer of the bunch is Hector, the charismatic “face” brought in to present the program, who’s not used to having to work to get what he wants.

I know I ran through the main characters in my old episode reviews, but they’re so instrumental to show’s success that it bore repeating.  Though all have hints of archetypes in them – from the career woman with something to prove, to the charming but philandering TV personality – each is executed with beautiful specificity.  (I should reiterate that Peter Capaldi’s Randall in series 2 is almost wholly original from the start; I just love that no-nonsense but deeply-empathetic head of news with OCD.)  They all jump off the screen magnificently.  The show’s overarching narrative threads can be pretty involved, juggling weekly news plots, ongoing investigations into season-long mysteries, significant historical context, and a handful of internal/interpersonal character arcs, and the characters allow the various elements to come together in a cohesive way.

The series does a nice job exploring mid-20^th-century issues of gender, class, race, and sexual orientation.  I especially like how the first is handled.  Bel, Lix, and Hector’s wife Marnie are all pretty complex characters; Marnie in particular becomes fascinating as the show goes on.  All three, along with many of the men, address gender inequalities, but in such a way that they never feel like mouthpieces.  For example, when Bel asks why women have to be “married” or “not married” (in other words, why they’re defined by their relationship status) while men do as they like, she’s expressing a universal problem, but she doesn’t say it like Everywoman.  She says it like Bel, in a scene of overwhelming frustration, after we’ve seen weeks of accumulating microaggressions lobbed at her as a woman in an important position.  The series also shows women calling out men for entirely failing to recognize certain imbalances or their own privilege as men.  This is significant to me, because again, while the story doesn’t crusade or anvil-drop, it holds its characters accountable for passive discrimination as well as overt, understanding that one can be sexist even without a “women belong in the kitchen” mentality.  That’s something I wish I heard half so often on TV, and I’m thrilled that The Hour takes the time for it.

Warnings

Sexual content, violence (including offscreen domestic abuse,) drinking/smoking, language (including racial slurs,) and thematic elements.

Top Five Performances: Farscape – “Out of Their Minds”

I’m still working my way through Farscape on Netflix, so I haven’t talked about it yet.  For now, I’m holding off until I finish the series, but the latest episode I watched, “Out of Their Minds,” is a big body-swap extravaganza just begging to be talked about.  Zhaan doesn’t get in on the action, but the other six members of the ensemble switch consciousness with each other, not once, but twice in one episode.  I always like seeing cast members playing one another’s characters – here are my top five for the story.

Rygel in Crichton’s Body

Oh man, this is a hoot.  Ben Browder has Rygel’s voice down pat, as well as his little grunts and mumbles.  It helps that the writing gives him such terrific material, but Browder’s performance takes it from funny to hysterical.  And even though Browder’s obviously not a puppet, his bearing and movements seem so Rygel.  Looking at him, I always saw Rygel and not Crichton.

Crichton in Aeryn’s Body

Crichton-in-Aeryn is an interesting one for me, because while both characters are confident, take-charge types, they go about it in different ways, and it’s neat to see Claudia Black differentiate between the two and capture Crichton’s particular brand of commanding.  Again, the voice is spot-on, not just in manner but delivery.  Black really feels like Crichton here, down to the smaller mannerisms (like chewing on his thumb.)  Oh, and Crichton-in-Aeryn having to talk Rygel-in-Crichton through the process of peeing with a human body is sensational. 

Pilot in Chiana’s Body

So far, my feelings toward Gigi Edgley are just so-so, but she does such a great job as Pilot.  The voice is very well-done, and she really gets Pilot’s still, quiet gravity.  She’s… I don’t want to say “regal,” because that’s not it, but you can tell she’s much larger, a higher form of being, when she plays Pilot.  He’s operating at a more complicated level than anyone else (which, by the way, makes the body-swap even harder on him,) and Edgley captures that beautifully.

Rygel in Aeryn’s Body

Though not quite as fun as Rygel-in-Crichton, this one’s still a stitch.  Black gets lots of exasperated!Rygel to work with, and she has his pompous irritation down to a tee.  Her posture is excellent, too.  Of everyone, I think Black does the best job at cross-gender body-swapping.  She’s really effective at sounding/seeming male without it feeling over-the-top or put-on.

Chiana in Pilot’s Body

This one’s not as dramatic as the others, since the puppet work for Pilot can’t really match Chiana’s distinct physical movements.  But even without those visual cues, Lani John Tupu’s voice work conveys Chiana so well.  I associate Chiana so much with the way she moves that I wouldn’t have guessed someone could create such a good impression of her just from her voice.