Point of View in Bones

Continuing with my theme from the last post, I’m going to use another one of my favorite TV shows to illustrate the points that Douglass and Harnden make about point of view.

Bones is a show about forensic crime-solving by quirky geniuses that work in a made-up government facility called the “Jeffersonian” (not to be confused with it’s real-life counterpart, Smith). Usually, the show is shot from a very standard third person point of view, where the viewer is merely an observer to the different things going on. Often this helps to build suspense since it is, in fact, a mystery show.

However, sometimes producers like to change things up.

This video is a promo for Bones’ 150th episode. In this episode, the body of a murder victim is believed to contain a ghost (quite a departure from the show’s usual scientific outlook), and much of the footage of the episode is shot from the perspective of that ghost. As can be seen in the promo, this premise introduces some very odd shots, especially of actors directly at the camera when they are looking at the ghost. By doing this, the producers are trying to introduce the show from a first person point of view.

Usually, an episode like this would be entirely too risky for a primetime TV show. There’s danger of alienating the audience and of dropping viewers, thus endangering the future of the show. However, there has been a  trend on network television of bringing the audience more into the shows on significant episodes, such as the 100th, or in this case, 150th. The West Wing, long-running political drama, did a mock-documentary for their 100th episode, where Press Secretary CJ Craig discussed her role in the White House with a camera crew and through them, the audience.

The change in point of view and difference in perspective demonstrated in these special episodes provides a valuable example of the change for the viewer that Douglass and Harnden discuss. Their analysis explains how the first person perspective can be disorienting for the viewer and how showing a character’s thoughts from a non-observatory standpoint can be somewhat of a risk for interest in the show. The fact that producers so obviously take these guidelines into account when creating their shows and save special changes for special episodes indicates just how definitively they have been proven over many years in the TV and video industry.

Music and Montages

Lately, I’ve been watching a lot of Psych on Netflix. Is it ridiculous? Yes, but I’ve been following Dule Hill since he was on the West Wing and his improv with James Roday is incredibly entertaining.

Like most TV series, Psych has a catchy theme song accompanied by a montage of scenes from the show that come up along with the main actors’ credits. Here is the intro montage from Season 5:

Every now and then, the network will do something a bit different with the intro and change the music to fit with the theme of a specific episode. For example, one episode guest-starred Curt Smith from Tears for Fears, who did a special cover of the theme song.

When different intro music like this is used, the montage is left largely the same, but with additional footage added to fill the additional time. NBC’s copyrights don’t allow for a video of this montage to exist on youtube, but to get an idea, you can play both videos with the sound off on the first one.

In Osgood & Hinshaw’s The Aesthetics of Editing, they discuss the use of a montage as a way of establishing the material and of drawing in the audience. They also quote editor Jon Dilling, who explains how clips sometimes naturally align themselves with music without any action on the part of the editor, “For just about any cut of music, you can place pictures in a random order and eventually moments in the music will align themselves with moments in your footage.” However, Dilling goes on to say, editors cannot rely on random editing alone.

The different Psych theme songs provide an effective examination of these principles because of the change in music while maintaining the montage. The original montage is by no means perfectly aligned with the music- showing characterizations takes precedence- but there are moments where it aligns. However, these moments are also apparent in the Curt Smith cover of the theme, thus demonstrating the randomness principle that Dilling describes.