Torchwood Children of Earth DAY ONE
Jul. 13th, 2009 04:39 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
beccaelizabethI'm doing the transcript. So far I'm... 3 mins 55 seconds in. It's taking a while cause they're being clever.
On first viewing we don't know that we need to know this stuff, but they pour a *ton* of data into this opening section. And we meet everyone important. *Fast*.
Opening sequence we don't know at the time is Clem, but the camera makes him our pov kid even in a crowd, and his behaviour marks him out as different and draws the attention. He's the silent slow one in a group of chattering walk together kids.
Then there's Gwen in the street. We get Gwen and Rhys in this initial sequence, connected with the kids, but set apart by being the only ones focused on who aren't parents(!) We also get the three families we're going to follow hereafter. Davies, Frobisher, Carter. And between establishing shots of the outside of their houses and set dressing inside we get a whole ton of data about their relative status in the world. Add Frobisher talking about a car coming for him and we get that economically he's top of the food chain. I love the clues though - both Davies and Frobisher kids eat at the kitchen table, but the Davies house is crowded, plates are on the drying rack, food is in packets and bottles, table is just big enough for the kids already at it, and there's known brands everywhere, plus the camera stays still and has stuff walk past right close, giving us a sense both of confinement and of this being all there is to see. Frobisher house the camera moves around from the start so you can see they've got space. Nobody gets crowded up to it. The kitchen is big, the table is bigger than they need, and there's more food choices on it, many of them fresh and healthy like fruit and orange juice. All the china matches and is on display, but there's cupboards for everything else. Bread is on a breadboard, not sliced. So we get one house that says 'poor' because it's small, cluttered, and with the convenience foods, and the other says 'rich' because large, coordinated, and with the fiddly time consuming stuff. Not to mention use of color and lighting to make Davies blue cold and a bit drab and Frobisher yellow and bright and warm.
Would I consciously notice all this if I hadn't had the rest of the series to tell me to pay attention? Probably not.
But they've packed into one short sequence all the data we need to know this is happening to a wide variety of people everywhere AND given us quick backgrounds on everyone we're going to need to know and what groups they connect in.
Someone else observed there's color coding throughout. We get blue, green, red uniforms. We get enough attention to detail I don't doubt the observation.
This is well made stuff.
On first viewing we don't know that we need to know this stuff, but they pour a *ton* of data into this opening section. And we meet everyone important. *Fast*.
Opening sequence we don't know at the time is Clem, but the camera makes him our pov kid even in a crowd, and his behaviour marks him out as different and draws the attention. He's the silent slow one in a group of chattering walk together kids.
Then there's Gwen in the street. We get Gwen and Rhys in this initial sequence, connected with the kids, but set apart by being the only ones focused on who aren't parents(!) We also get the three families we're going to follow hereafter. Davies, Frobisher, Carter. And between establishing shots of the outside of their houses and set dressing inside we get a whole ton of data about their relative status in the world. Add Frobisher talking about a car coming for him and we get that economically he's top of the food chain. I love the clues though - both Davies and Frobisher kids eat at the kitchen table, but the Davies house is crowded, plates are on the drying rack, food is in packets and bottles, table is just big enough for the kids already at it, and there's known brands everywhere, plus the camera stays still and has stuff walk past right close, giving us a sense both of confinement and of this being all there is to see. Frobisher house the camera moves around from the start so you can see they've got space. Nobody gets crowded up to it. The kitchen is big, the table is bigger than they need, and there's more food choices on it, many of them fresh and healthy like fruit and orange juice. All the china matches and is on display, but there's cupboards for everything else. Bread is on a breadboard, not sliced. So we get one house that says 'poor' because it's small, cluttered, and with the convenience foods, and the other says 'rich' because large, coordinated, and with the fiddly time consuming stuff. Not to mention use of color and lighting to make Davies blue cold and a bit drab and Frobisher yellow and bright and warm.
Would I consciously notice all this if I hadn't had the rest of the series to tell me to pay attention? Probably not.
But they've packed into one short sequence all the data we need to know this is happening to a wide variety of people everywhere AND given us quick backgrounds on everyone we're going to need to know and what groups they connect in.
Someone else observed there's color coding throughout. We get blue, green, red uniforms. We get enough attention to detail I don't doubt the observation.
This is well made stuff.