I’m still not over HLV, so have some more meta
(Once again, I am certain I am far from the first to mention this, but never mind. Here are my thoughts)
I’ve been thinking about the framing of shots in Sherlock a lot lately, then I got thinking about this scene. Look at that for a sec.
John’s hilarious reactions and the just plain bizzare sight of Sherlock kissing a woman aside, check out the framing of the shots with Sherlock and Janine. Two different angles, and in both of them Janine is blocking out John. She is almost perfectly filling the space where he would otherwise be in those shots (meaning that in a two-dimensional sense Sherlock’s line of sight is matched to where John is).
In the first, she is obstructing him and filling in his space (yes, double meanings) plus bonus horns over her head.
In the second, not only is she doing this but she’s kissing Sherlock as well. Meanwhile Sherlock has his eyes closed (even screwed shut) and is barely responding. He doesn’t tilt his head or move it forwards/backwards aside from the force of Janine’s kiss moving him, so his and John’s head’s remain aligned. If Janine wasn’t there, John’s outline would be touching Sherlock’s. If John were in focus there would almost be a forced perspective whereby they would appear to be face to face (much like the shot in TEH where we are led to believe Sherlock and Mycroft are playing chess).
You may say this is unintentional but framing is super important and almost always deliberate (this is true in all visual art forms). I mean John doesn’t need to be there really. He could do what I imaging most people would do if their best friend started making out with someone which is leave, go make a cup of tea, pretend to be immersed in a magazine or something. They could have shot this from the other way around so that the camera was pointing towards the stairs, leading on to Janine’s immediate departure. But no, they shot it with John obstructed, with the audience made aware that he is there, but we can’t see him. With Sherlock (who we are led to believe has just bathed in front of this woman and was fine with her sitting in his lap) making the bare minimum effort to respond to her kissing him while his best friend is in the room.
In summary, Janine is in John’s place, physically and metaphorically, and Sherlock knows it.
avacantchair replied to your post: i love how they chose not to include t…
Wait, did I miss a dildo?
enjoy ur new life
OH MY GOD
I love the tech crew so muchI need that dildo fucking photoshopped over the ashtray from the sequence in the cab during ASiB.
“You see but you do not observe, John. ” //pulls out giant frosted glass dildo
Can we just photoshop it into every episode?
Imagine instead of the cabbie pulling out this instead of a fake gunWHAT
WHAT ON EARTH IS THAT
ARWEL WYN JOOOOOONES
/screams from the rooftops
OH MY FUCKING GOD
Plot twist: Janine dies at the age of 60, after a long bout with cancer. In her will, she leaves the cottage in Sussex to Sherlock and John, jointly, but with the caveat that they could only accept it if they both lived there.
“I know what kind of man you are, Sherlock Holmes,” she wrote in the will. “It’s time to let John know too.”
Green With Envy: John & The Women in Sherlock’s Bedroom
I was working on my I’m going to watch Sherlock S3 in one sitting liveblogging when I noticed something in HLV: We all talk about the look on John’s face during the scene when he discovers Janine and she joins Sherlock in the bath and how it just screams jealousy. He’s shocked too, but there’s just so much raw jealousy there it’s hard to miss. In fact, I can’t not see jealousy when I watch these scenes and do you know why? It’s not just because of the look on John’s face. It’s because of all the fucking green in these shots.
