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<\/a><\/p>\n\nDirected by Mike Rohl You guys. This post is aggressively insane. But I will paraphrase James Joyce who said, in re: “Finnegans Wake”: “It took me 17 years to write it. It should take you 17 years to read it.” So. It took me 3 days to write this. It will probably take you 3 days to read it.<\/i><\/p>\n I was just talking with my sister, a middle-school English teacher, about “setting”. She was trying to get her kids to understand “setting”, as well as “Plot” and “character”, the Triangle of Importance in literature. She told a funny story about showing the kids the opening 3 minutes of the movie adaptation of Cormac McCarthy’s book, The Road<\/i>. She had cleared it with the principal, she thought it was one of the best examples of establishing setting that she could think of. The 12-year-olds were not blown away by the setting, they were concerned that what they saw was real. Now, yes, they are kids, but my sister was like, “You guys. No. This is not real. This is a fictional setting. The world has not ended. Don’t you think you would have heard about it? The Rocky Mountains are still functioning properly.” (I can just hear my sister saying all of this. I loved “The Rocky Mountains are still functioning properly.”) Once she whipped them into shape with a lecture about the Reality of reality, they started to get the concept of “setting”, and how important it was to Story. <\/p>\n In the first three, four seasons of Supernatural<\/i>, one of the strengths of the series, outside of the two main actors, was its clear superiority in establishing setting. <\/p>\n \n<\/p>\n \nStory does not exist in a vacuum. The setting helps create the circumstances that allow the Story to operate. With the post-apocalyptic setting of The Road<\/i>, the father-son bond, narrated in tales since cave paintings probably, literally becomes life and death. The continuation of the human race is at stake. Without “setting,” we’d have just another sentimental family tale. <\/p>\n The same goes for Supernatural<\/i>. The sibling-relationship has also been done to death, and is prone to cliche. Because there was no standing-set in Supernatural<\/i> in the early seasons, and the roadhouse (the closest thing to stability) is about to go up in smoke, the series had to figure out a way to make each setting in every episode evocative, unique and visually interesting (those wall-dividers in the motels) as WELL as helping to tell the Story. What is so fascinating about Supernatural<\/i> is the diversity of settings they create, the artistry involved, week to week to week, in presenting entirely different mini-worlds. It helps that the series is filmed on various real locations, so the actors are out in the fresh air, rain on their hair, natural sunlight or rainy light on their faces. These real-to-life details will always help with establishing setting, especially in something relatively low-budget like Supernatural<\/i>. The location sometimes does half the work for them (true especially in “Folsom Prison Blues.”)<\/p>\n It’s easy to get swept away by the acting and the plot and the psychology. I am interested in those, of course, but I am also interested in Story Structure, and how film-making achieves that. In these re-caps I have always attempted to talk about the entirety of it, not just the scripts or the performances but the artistry of camerawork, lighting and production design.<\/p>\n That artistry is not so much in evidence now, unfortunately. <\/p>\n The visual side fell off in quality for 2 reasons: <\/p>\n #1. The move to digital, following Season 6. Seasons 1-3 were shot on film-stock, which is why they look as good as they do. Seasons 4-6 were shot with the legendary Red camera, a digital camera but 500 times more sensitive than most digital cameras. You have enormous flexibility with the Red. Season 4-6 look straight-up cinematic, even more so than the first 3 seasons, which were more low-budget-horror-film aesthetic. Serge Ladouceur was like a kid in a candy-store with the Red. It’s like getting to drive a Jaguar as opposed to a Ford pick-up truck. Although the Red is digital, it gives you more flexibility in post-production to create the Holy Grail of what is organic to film only: “grain.” Younger generations have no experience of “grain” and may watch movies from the pre-digital era and wonder why the screen looks so messy. They might make the mistake of thinking it looks bad, or that directors are better now than they were back then. Or, they’ll watch the Blu-Ray of, say, The French Connection<\/i>, and be pissed that the image isn’t crystal-sharp. Well, that’s film. People who don’t know about grain flood into tech forums to complain about how “bad” the movie looks on Blu-Ray. Thankfully, there are usually others there to “school” them: “No, that’s what it’s supposed to look like. That’s grain.” Film, unlike digital, is an actual object that needs to go through the development process, like any old roll of film needs to. (It can also be scratched and damaged.) You can control how much “grain” is onscreen through the film-development process, essentially like a dark room. That’s the difference between celluloid – made up of millions of actual particles – and digital – made up of millions of little pixels. Those who know about “grain” and value grain, are often pissed off when Blu-Ray companies make the decision to “clean up” a film’s images<\/a>, removing the grain. They think they’re improving it. You think the folks complaining about messy-looking Blu-Rays are incensed? You should hear the ones who value grain and don’t want it to be messed with. DON’T YOU DARE TO PRESUME TO ‘CLEAN UP’ THE FRENCH CONNECTION<\/i>, YOU NONARTISTIC NOBODY. IT’S FINE THE WAY IT IS. There’s a whole new burgeoning group of younger filmmakers, and older filmmakers who don’t like the gleam of digital, devoted to creating the illusion<\/em> of grain while still using a digital camera. An example of a modern movie shot on digital that had grain added to it in post-production is 300<\/i>. Grain gave depth\/texture to the mainly CGI-created images. The Red camera, although digital, is so sensitive that it gives the cinematographer control over the image in a way that a standard digital camera doesn’t. When a low-budget film like Cold Weather<\/i><\/a> uses the Red camera (a huge part of their budget will be taken up with paying for that camera) suddenly the low-budget film (or TV series) LOOKS expensive. Just watch the opening sequence of “Lazarus Rising,” especially the part in the abandoned gas station. That’s the kind of image the Red provides. It LOOKS expensive. With all the Beauty of the series previous to that point, nothing, but nothing, in Supernatural<\/i> ever looked as good as that opening scene in “Lazarus Rising”. Same with the scene later in the same episode between Bobby, Sam and Dean in the hotel room. That is one of the best-looking scenes the show ever did, before or since. And Castiel’s entrance, a high watermark in the series as a whole. The difference in “look” from the previous seasons is noticeable<\/i>. Season 7 started, and they stopped using the Red, and just went with regular-old standard digital, and it’s almost painful to see how ugly everything looks. The darkness vanishes. The screen is filled with oranges and greens and yellows. Jared Padalecki is a dark and moody-looking man, with sharp Cro-Magnon-ish angles to his bone structure that cast GREAT shadows, hiding his eyes. The Jared-shadows are better than the Ackles-shadows, Ackles’ face being softer and curvier. The Jared-shadows are lost once we hit Season 7. And Ackles’ fortunate DNA combo of pale sensuous-vulnerable coloring sprinkled in freckles and feathery-shadows-cast-by-long-eyelashes are also lost in Season 7, his vibrating-with-life skin hidden under orange-hued pancake makeup. Both men are still gorgeous, but they have been flattened out. Flattening those guys out is a CRIME against BEAUTY. A couple of favorite episodes come from those seasons, but one has to tolerate the ugliness. The series became darker again in Season 9 – or at least moodier, and Ackles’ face is no longer a flat orange. Some of the Season 9 episodes look washed-out and exhausted in interesting ways (“The Purge” comes to mind, with its bleak existential palette: everything determined by the mood of the final scene, a fave for me in the whole series). The darker scenes post Season 8 look better, although now there’s a lot of glamour<\/i> in the dark scenes, sometimes approaching the cheesy. (Dean and Cas’ scene off to the side while Crowley penetrates Sam with his column of red smoke so that he can then shout “Poughkeepsie”- because yeah, that makes sense – is a good example. I love that scene but the way it’s lit embarrassed me. It’s a Billy Squier music video from 1983.) They’re still having fun creating lighting effects but it’s not the gloomy black that made up those first three seasons. That unremitting black created a fatalistic atmosphere: Light will never triumph against that darkness. This is the Manichean thing I went on about at one point<\/a>. Even so-called benign locations like libraries became dark ominous spaces. Something like that takes a lot of care<\/i>. I do think Season 11 feels back on track, but all you have to do is compare to Season 1 and Season 2 to realize that we’ll never see the show that Black again.<\/p>\n #2 reason for drop-off in Quality in later seasons: The disappearance of Eric Kripke, and the rise of show-runners who didn’t maintain quality control, for whatever reason. Quality Control went out the window with Kripke, although Serge Ledouceur and certain directors (Robert Singer, especially) kept the torch burning, with flashes of that old visual style. (Why did The X-Files<\/i> maintain the same high quality through its 9 seasons? And, judging from the one episode I saw of the new series, continued on into the present? Because Chris Carter was – and still is – the creator and show runner. It’s HIS idea and he has PERSONAL stake in it, because it’s his reputation, his creation.) Without that personal stake of the creator, much of the distinctive look of Supernatural<\/i> vanished, and it has not returned. (Not that the people working on it don’t care about the quality of their work. Of course they do. But Eric Kripke would never have allowed the flattened orange\/bright-colored “palette” of Season 7 and 8. No way, Jose. Not in a million years.) <\/p>\n I don’t mean to focus on the negative, but issues of Beauty are important to me (which is why the critical dismissal of Angelina Jolie’s achingly gorgeous and personal By the Sea<\/i> made me so angry that I wrote not one essay<\/a> about the film, but two<\/a>.) Season 7 and 8 of Supernatural<\/i> were, thankfully, anomalies of Ugliness (the Purgatory sections, with its greens\/browns\/Hi-Def look, so visually pleasing I want to eat them with a spoon, being notable exceptions). Season 7 and 8 stand out. I would imagine there was a serious round-table on hiatus after Season 8 about getting back on track visually. The look of the opening of Season 9 was a course-correct in quality. <\/p>\n The final episodes of Season 2 are feats of detailed diversity. Flexibility is the mark of a true artist. The intricacy of Setting in those final episodes represents so much preparation, so many “vision boards” probably. Each episode references a vast library of American cinema, and yet the episodes are not homages, they are their own unique hybrid. And it’s not just the final episodes: Every episode of Season 2 is STEEPED in “setting” that help tell the story: “Crossroad Blues”<\/a>, “Playthings”<\/a>, “Nightshifter”<\/a>, and “Roadkill”<\/a> (setting there being an unsung masterpiece). “Hunted” deserves a shout-out<\/a>, for its exquisite visual referencing (if you get it, you get it, if you don’t, you still get the story, but it’s better if you GET it get it) of The Glass Menagerie<\/i> with the “blue roses” imagery. Diverse specific settings come one after the other after the other … none have anything in common with the other, and yet they all feel like the same series.<\/p>\n “Roadkill” launches us into the final phenomenal sequence of episodes. “Roadkill” sets up “Heart.” “Heart” would not be possible, would not provide the catharsis that it does without the meditation on grief and letting go that is “Roadkill.” Each one with its own setting. Each one with its own mood, theme, but they all pour into the whole, providing extra puzzle pieces, filling in blanks. It’s extraordinary. <\/p>\n
\nWritten by John Shiban<\/em><\/p>\nLet’s Talk About Setting!<\/h1>\n
A Digression Into the Look of the Series, One of My Favorite Topics<\/h1>\n
Back to Setting. You following?<\/h1>\n
The Trajectory of the End of Season 2<\/h1>\n
\n“Heart” is so heavy that we need a break, and so we are launched into the lunacy of “Hollywood Babylon,” the first meta-episode.
\n“Hollywood Babylon” is so hilarious that that mood continues somewhat in “Folsom Prison Blues,” although the setting is gritty-reality whereas the setting for “Hollywood Babylon” was pure artifice (artifice being actually real-er than reality). The “psychic kids\/Yellow-Eyed” thing is not present. It’s a break.
\nThat break is furthered in one of the best episodes in the history of the series and the first one directed by Eric Kripke, “What Is and What Should Never Be.” (I’ll have more to say on this, and the humorous incongruity of Kripke, with his overgrown nerd-boy “OMG I love blood and guts and inappropriate shit” monologues in commentary tracks, taking on the most emotional and SQUISHY episode in Supernatural<\/i> up to that point.) Kripke was working in new and unknown territory for him – and it was unknown territory for the actors too (“I feel like I’m down the rabbit hole, Eric,” Ackles said to Kripke throughout. Both lead actors expressed to him how surprisingly difficult it was to play the same characters without the underlying close bond), the production team, and the series as a whole. That sense of uncertainty – of not knowing where they were going, but with a devotion to truth and a sense of high risk and probably FEAR on the part of everyone helps make that episode what it is. The stakes are so high (and I’m not just talking about the characters.) “What Is and What Should Never Be” looks like nothing else in Supernatural<\/i> up to that point. The “setting” is so different that the production team had to adjust their process, too, finding it a huge challenge: “Oh, we have to make things look nice now, as opposed to like shit. Hmm, that’s hard.” “What Is and What Should Never Be” is not really a breather: it’s a descent into the Wonderland of the Past, and the hopelessness of the Present\/Future. It’s expressing in the clearest terms possible the DNA of the show (Dean’s in particular). That episode is enormously important in terms of the emotion of the series: maybe the most important episode of Season 2, second only to “In My Time of Dying,” (the reverb of that episode, the “To Be or Not To Be” aspect of it lasts to this day), and “Crossroad Blues,” which sets up the “selling your soul” thing, in continual operation for seasons, before taking a back seat. But whaddya know, IT’S BACK, BITCHES. “Houses of the Holy” is important, too, Story-wise, for its introduction of the concept of angels, softening the audience for what would arrive 2 seasons later. As well as aspects of faith, and that final scene in the motel room. For me, those are the big three of the season, the ones that have carried through the series the most to this day. “What Is and What Should Never Be” is also, frankly, a vehicle for Jensen Ackles. It’s a star-making episode, designed to highlight him as an actor.
\nAnd “All Hell Breaks Loose,” Parts 1 and 2, which loop us back to the Wild West atmosphere introduced explicitly in Episode 2, with the roadhouse. It’s a Breakfast Club scenario in frontier America. “What Is and What Should Never Be” has softened us so much that we’re at risk. Yellow-Eyes returns, monologues at Sam about the nursery. Dean sells his soul to a hottie at a crossroads. The whole thing ends with that cemetery scene that looks so bad it feels deliberate, like something out of a Roger Corman movie, you half expect Boris Karloff to come staggering out of the mist, arms outstretched. Dad returns, misty-eyed longing glances, and then the final moment, a repeat of the final moment of Season 1, Episode 1, but reversed. <\/p>\nPersonal Digression Involving “What Is and What Should Never Be” Which Is a Tangent But I Don’t Care, and Which I Should Probably Just Hold Off and Post During That Episode’s Re-Cap But Considering How Long It Takes Me To Get To These Things I’ll Just Share It Now. Forgive the Coyness of Tone. It Will Be Clear Why That Is Necessary.<\/h1>\n