Wire 106

There was some interesting photography in episode 11, and I’m not sure what to make of some of it.

The opening scene picks up from the end of the last episode, at the scene of the shooting. The segment is shot with a handheld camera, wandering through the crime scene, looking around at the chaos. The way it’s done creates a sense of confusion, of being lost, in the viewing audience. I cut out too many frames when I made it into a gif, which made it too choppy, but still you get the sense of being all over the place without any focus.

As the story shifts back to the squadroom, what happened on the street is still in the air. As we look at Prez and Freamon, we also see the first aid kit in the background, as a reminder. A more overt reminder is the shot of Kima’s signature hat on the desk, right next to a box of bullets.

There are also a couple things that I don’t know what to make of. We see McNulty with this sort of glowing aura from his shirt. Is that to make us misty-eyed? Is it supposed to imply that he’s innocent of the guilt he’s feeling? Am I just reading too much into it?

The shot of Prez stood out out me for the green-ness of it. Green in his shirt, green on the walls, the green from the light giving everything a green cast so the image is almost monochrome. Maybe it doesn’t signify anything other than the attention the designers and photographers pay to color and lighting.

The shot of the commissioner’s press conference on the little black and white TV caught my attention. Coincidentally, it popped up on the WireScenes tumblr this morning too. We’ve been seeing surveillance shots throughout the season, and the way this is presented makes it look like one. The bureaucratic hierarchy deserves as much scrutiny as anything else. But maybe we’d end up like D’Angelo, brooding as the world goes by.

Episode 10 starts out with Bubs, apparently clean for the first time in a long time, sitting on a park bench enjoying the day. We hear sounds – the breeze through the trees, children playing, birds chirping – sounds of aspects of life that had probably escaped his attention while he was an addict. Compare that to the sounds when he’s on the street at night – constant sirens, traffic, trafficking (“Death Row! Death Row here!”) and this dull roar underneath everything, like a storm could be coming. He feels his demons calling him, in a walking nightmare.

@phb256 & @jimgroom… Just watched the part in #TheWire where Wallace asks what the crickets were. Powerful stuff. #ds106

— Lauren Brumfield (@Brumface) September 1, 2014

Lauren picked up on the crickets, another sound I wanted to bring up.

The scene says something about the differences in the lives people lead, which I think is what Lauren picked up on, but it’s also fascinating from a telling story with sound standpoint. You hear the crunch of the gravel under the tires, the motor, the parking brake, the doors opening and closing – you know what’s going on just by listening to it. And the crickets. I left a little bit of the following scene in there so you can hear the contrast.

There’s some nice symbolism in the imagery too. In the scene where D’Angelo is listening to Donette’s shopping demands, we see him staring at vertical blinds, like a prisoner behind bars. The shadows they make amplify the effect. This is something that’s common in film noir – shadows suggesting bars to show that a character feels trapped. And that’s what D is feeling. I like that sonic transition to the next scene. Donnete’s yelling answered by the voice on the wiretap, “Why you holler at me? I’ll get to you when I get to you.” We hear what D wants to say, although it comes from someone else in a different context.

Later we see D waiting to catch Shardeen outside Orlando’s, standing under neon letters hyping The Love Zone. But she’s done with him, and as she turns her back and goes in the club, a bird flies in and out of the shot. Like the song says, this bird has flown.

Nicholas did an audio summary which wasn’t something I expected, but why not do it that way? Going forward, it will probably take more than just audio, because we will also want to embed and connect the things we make as we go along.

Amy jumped into some of the Daily Creates, which was very cool. We will all be doing more of those in the weeks ahead. She recognizes that the show is not to everyone’s taste, but still finds compelling things about it. That touches on a key question: What makes for good storytelling? What makes it work? What makes it effective?

Danielle, among others, talked about the struggles with using the various social media tools. It can be intimidating, if you’re not used to working with such tools, and it can be challenging to figure out how to use them effectively. But it’s also kinda easy, once you dig into it and start using them. Maybe using them effectively isn’t so easy, but using them is.

Overall I think we’re off to a great start. A lot of people had great analyses of the episodes, and great insights. I encourage everyone to look a little closer, and think about how the story is being told, the various techniques being used, the little details and the effect they have. Jim and I come at it from a little different perspective, having seen the entire series already and having thought about it for a while, but each of your perspectives is just as valid

In this episode, Freamon repeats “what everyone knows and no one says” as Daniels put it

Herc and Carver followed the money out of the towers and confiscated it from Wee Bey’s vehicle. One of them made a joke about “dollars to donuts” in the squad room, which we’re reminded of when the Dunkin Donuts box comes out of the trunk at the end.

They were searching the trunk because they were suspected of pocketing some of the confiscated money. In this shot they’re being called into Daniels’ office, where they will be called out on it. The way the light reflects off of the chair emphasizes the idea that it’s the hot seat.

Here is a perspective shot, looking down from a roof to where a stash of drugs is kept. Does Bubs “see the bottom coming up at him,” as Waylon says? The shot plays a metaphorical role as well as a purely narative one, at the same time as it creates visual interest with the unusual angle.

It was kind of comical to see Bubs do his fishing trick, but things turned bad quick. While he gets away, he also gets to listen to an innocent bystander take the beating meant for him. Notice how the background noises affect the mood – not just the cussing and the blows from the bat, but also the siren and alarm, which really add a level of tension to it.

This shot of D’Angelo caught my eye. He’s not sitting on the couch anymore, but on a folding chair. Is this symbolic? The reason it caught my attention is the color contrast. The blue of the chair is basically the opposite of the orange of the couch. It’s subtle, but it seems to say D is not part of this; he doesn’t belong here.

I mentioned the frame within a frame idea last time, and found some more examples here: Freamon at the Elections office, framed by the window, which conveniently tells us where he is. Johnny in whatever that place is, framed by the doorway, darkness crowding in. McNulty and Freamon, similarly framed by darkness, but there’s a difference here. The light comes in from the corner, which opens up the composition, as if they have a way out where Johnny was trapped.

This last one I just like for the silhouette effect. We see little more than the outline, but it’s enough to tell us what it is. The whole series strives for a high level of realism, but at the same time maintains a strong artistic aesthetic.