Sheri

its worth fighting for 🌷

Writer of word both truth and tale. Video producer, editor, artist, still human. Hire me?

Check #writeup for The Good Posts.
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Slowly making a visual novel called We Will Not See Heaven, demo is free. Sometimes I stream, or post adult things. Boys' love novel enthusiast. Take care, yeah?

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TECH CAN ONLY BE AS KIND TO US AS WE ARE TO ONE ANOTHER.


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what's an establishing shot? it's a shot that establishes a scene, duh

okay thats actually not a useful explanation, is it? rather than just establishing where a scene is set, establishing shots can give the audience context for other things passively, without needing characters to say it aloud

the time of day, the tone. maybe your establishing shot has low, quiet music when normally you'd use a jaunty score. that can tell the audience without words that the upcoming scene will be tense, serious, or just simply different

not to mention the use in a TV show of having establishing shots hang a little long to act as padding for commercial breaks. that gives a lot of shows a good few seconds to make a joke

or, if you're It's Always Sunny In Philadelphia, to specifically fake out the audience with an offset establishing shot. maybe there's a fancy film name for this trick, but the only degree i have is a first-degree burn on my thumbtip from a botched joint

if you're a fan of sunny, you'll know about the creators/casts' love for shots where they're "sitting across a desk" from someone

enjoy this compilation of those very scenes before FX gets all pissy and takes it down

these scenes are the show at its best a lot of the time. a handful of truly absurd people sitting across a desk from a relatively sane, yet very exasperated person who for some reason or another cant tell these people to simply fuck off

be it an arbitrator, a lawyer, a bank clerk, or indeed not knowing exactly who is being talked to. or if they're even talking to a person yet at all!

these scenes are such a trope in the show that they can use the expectation itself as a punchline. take for example, the premiere of season 7, Frank's Pretty Woman

after discovering how much weight mac has gained, dennis insists on proving to him he's not simply "cultivating mass" but is instead grossly unhealthy. unlike him, a man who subsists on maple syrup and sesame seeds. that is, of course, the joke. but there's another joke going on here

let's take a look at our establishing shot, coming in from the ad break

A screenshot from It's Always Sunny. A hospital during the daytime, with subtitles from Dennis reading: "Mac, these blood tests are going to show you..."

showing us the hospital they're at, then the next shot cuts right into dennis and mac talking about their various health problems

as the show is want to do, their discussion escalates from which of them is "more healthier" to mac insisting that the only way dennis can prove he's not drinking pennyroyal tea is if he can "move him"

A screenshot from It's Always Sunny. Mac and Dennis are sitting on a hospital bed in operation gowns. This is from Season 7, so this was when Mac weighed more than previous seasons. They both look exhausted.

"take a running start, take a running start!"

in this scene, neither of them are the straight man. they're both funny men, just on different sides of the same funny bit. this is something the show excels at in my opinion.

sentences like "we're not going to look 20 forever" to justify binge eating being followed up by dennis insisting that, actually, "no i AM going to look 20 forever"

(his reason being he's actually incredibly tense, at all times. and like, same)

after dennis fails to prove his strength to mac, suddenly a different, confused voice breaks into this funny man/funny man routine. the straight man nobody knew was here.

that's odd, isn't it? where did he come from? wait, they were attacking each other in front of a DOCTOR?!

A screenshot from It's Always Sunny. A doctor reads test results to Mac and Dennis. He says "Multiple vitamin deficiencies, anemia, low blood pressure..."

and there's the second establishing shot! after an entire whiteboy manzai we get the larger context of the scene established. they are not, in fact, getting health checkups. they have already gotten them, and have been too busy arguing with each other about who is more healthier to actually let the doctor tell them who is

and moving past that, the joke now becomes all the different concerning results he's reading are actually for dennis, not mac. but mac does, in fact, have diabetes

but what a joke, right! set up the expectation that these characters are moving the story along by doing the thing they said they would last scene, getting physicals. but they don't need to show the doctor performing tests or first meeting these clowns. sure, there are fun bits to do there, but isn't if funnier to be dropped in-media-res? defying the audience expectation for a punchline is a pillar of comedy, after all

now, consider for a moment. they break up the establishing shots like this, showing us the outer building, the closest shot/countershot scene we will have in this tiny little exam room. but the fact that it's even an exam room is just inferred by the scene playing out, given their outfits and the location, and the bed they're on if you think to look closer at it

wide shot (hospital), medium shot (exam room), and close shot (our main characters in their little corner) would be the traditional thing to do there

but, if they showed the full room, and the doctor is in there, the joke is ruined. but if the doctor isn't there, then the joke is also ruined. the whole "when did you walk in? this isn't what it looks like" bit is done to death, much funnier is "this is exactly what it looks like. doc, you try moving me!"

however, they still need to establish the scene. if the episode cut directly into the closest shot, with our actors, skipping the outer hospital shot, it would be jarring. you would either have to have your actors say out loud "now that we're in the exam room in the hospital" ala lethal weapon 7 or just trust the audience to remember what was established before the ad break.

what is learned from this?

the rules are there for the baseline. the expectation. the traditional establishing shot methods work because they're effective at getting the most people to understand your scene and its tone.

but comedy is in part about breaking expectations. the first shot of the hospital holds a little longer than usual, and has audio j-cut in from dennis' conversation. out of context, this would be a bit bad form. it feels cheap to go from "b-roll of hospital" to "obvious set"

but who cares if it feels cheap? who cares if its non-standard. it's fucking funny! the scene works better for it!

in order to break expectations, you need to establish those expectations just long enough. show the hospital just long enough, show the two-person conversation just long enough, to lull the viewer into assuming they're alone in the room

but what's funnier then the goofy conversation about health the characters are having? having a third person to tell them "you're both wrong, actually. what is happening?"

keeps the story moving, keeps the audience engaged, all while using non-traditional establishing shots. break the rules of filmmaking when its funny. and break the rules of comedy when filmmaking comes through

anyways. if a rule exists, its not a bad idea to ask why. maybe something funnier than tradition is on the other side.

disclaimer: i am by no means an expert or an anything on filmmaking. but i do think i'm good at comedy sometimes


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in reply to @Sheri's post:

great write-up! first thing i looked up on this website was it's always sunny in philadelphia so thanks 4 delivering hehe

edit: this is also one of my favorite scenes of the show, from one of my top 5 episodes of the show. so this was a REAL treat. also it's a mac & dennis scene

oh im not used to how notifs work on this site. but i've written a spec script myself too lmao, i was so excited abt season 16 that i took some of the details we knew beforehand [that long-distance relationships were going to be a thing in s16, mainly] and fucking RAN with it. it's on AO3 called "the fly that buzzed away". it's also an attempt to take the fly episode of breaking bad & do that but in always sunny.

always sunny is my #1 fav TV show ever and the gang are my favorite fictional characters EVER. i genuinely love them so much. also i have never cried so much to a movie or TV show. i had such a hard time crying to any other anime or show or movie ppl showed me that i thought smth was wrong with me. and then i found this TV show abt five broke-dick (quietly queer & loudly mentally ill) morons who run a shitty dive bar in south philly. and that's when the tears started FLOWING. i made this acct in my music alias but i've been quite active on tumblr with the IASIP fandom there