Sex Appeal
My (non-traditional) entree into loving SPN was loving Six Feet Under, which I loved so much I felt like I might never be able to watch television again, because everything paled in comparison and couldn't hold my interest. SPN and Six Feet Under are absolutely nothing alike in a lot of big and obvious ways, but they still manage to hold in common a lot of what I love about them. I'm still trying to formulate how to best express that, but I am about 15 episodes from a complete Six Feet Under rewatch and it is a precious thing. <3 And I'm happy to report that my favorite characters when I first fell in love with SFU are still my favorites now. But you know what I find ABSOLUTELY SEXY????? SCENES THAT ARE FRAMED LIKE THIS:
Which okay, that's clearly not from SFU, but my DVD Player app doesn't allow screenshots. Hence Bleach as stand-in.
I'm thinking about this composition now, though, because my SFU fave keeps getting framed in this way: In the background, framed by the two speaking figures in the foreground--a listener and observer, marginal and always outside the primary dynamic. In the first SFU scene where this happens you can watch all his facial reactions as the conversation unfolds even though he's out of focus and small in the frame, halfway across the room and uGHHHHhghGhghghhhh it's so good because it's just this beautiful image for one, but also because it's visually coding all of this delightful character/relationship information right onto the film and, again, ughhh!!! Sex appeal--that shot, right there. Love it.
It works pretty much the same way in Bleach (fave here pictured <3), and I love one of the panels that precedes this one, too, because:
THE SPEECH BUBBLE. IS JUST ON HIS HEAD. ALMOST COMPLETELY OBFUSCATING HIS IDENTITY unless you know who he is--and he's only existed for a few panels at this point, so narratively, you don't. And it's not just because they ran out of space to put the bubble and had no other choice. It's just like, this visual stamp: You are the background--you are not the primary dynamic. Which I love particularly here because he and his end up the primary collateral of this arc, which I feel like is made all the more painful by the fact that they are not actually important, never actually meet the main characters, and still get destroyed--even as all that drama hardly registers to the actual main party. GAH. <33 (NB: The other person with her head covered by speech bubble is a ninja; she's obfuscated for professional reasons. XD)
Which okay, that's clearly not from SFU, but my DVD Player app doesn't allow screenshots. Hence Bleach as stand-in.
I'm thinking about this composition now, though, because my SFU fave keeps getting framed in this way: In the background, framed by the two speaking figures in the foreground--a listener and observer, marginal and always outside the primary dynamic. In the first SFU scene where this happens you can watch all his facial reactions as the conversation unfolds even though he's out of focus and small in the frame, halfway across the room and uGHHHHhghGhghghhhh it's so good because it's just this beautiful image for one, but also because it's visually coding all of this delightful character/relationship information right onto the film and, again, ughhh!!! Sex appeal--that shot, right there. Love it.
It works pretty much the same way in Bleach (fave here pictured <3), and I love one of the panels that precedes this one, too, because:
THE SPEECH BUBBLE. IS JUST ON HIS HEAD. ALMOST COMPLETELY OBFUSCATING HIS IDENTITY unless you know who he is--and he's only existed for a few panels at this point, so narratively, you don't. And it's not just because they ran out of space to put the bubble and had no other choice. It's just like, this visual stamp: You are the background--you are not the primary dynamic. Which I love particularly here because he and his end up the primary collateral of this arc, which I feel like is made all the more painful by the fact that they are not actually important, never actually meet the main characters, and still get destroyed--even as all that drama hardly registers to the actual main party. GAH. <33 (NB: The other person with her head covered by speech bubble is a ninja; she's obfuscated for professional reasons. XD)