VLVL2 (10) Mute soliloquies, 195

[Dave Monroe]

Have been packing, no easy access to the film theory
stacks at my personal Merton College Library, but ...

Reverse Shot
AKA: Reverse Angle
A shot taken at a 120-180 degree angle from the
preceding shot. When used in dialogue scenes,
reverse-shot editing usually alternates between
over-the-shoulder shots that show each character
speaking. See also shot/reverse shot.

http://www.imdb.com/Glossary/R

Shot/Reverse Shot
A sequence of three shots: 1) a person's face; 2) what
that person is looking at; and 3) the person again,
giving the audience a chance to process the person's
reaction to what (or who) s/he is seeing. See also
reverse shot.

http://www.imdb.com/Glossary/S#shot_rev_shot

THE CONTINUITY SYSTEM: A highly standardized system of
editing, now virtually universal in commercial film
and television but originally associated with
Hollywood cinema, that matches spatial and temporal
relations from shot to shot in order to maintain
continuous and clear narrative action. Generally
speaking, the continuity system aims to present a
scene so that the editing is "invisible" (not
consciously noticed by the viewer) and the viewer is
never distracted by awkward jumps between shots or by
any confusion about the spatial lay-out of the scene.
Classical editing achieves a "smooth" and "seamless"
style of NARRATION, both because of its
conventionality (it is "invisible" in part because we
are so used to it) and because it employs a number of
powerful techniques designed to maximize a sense of
spatial and temporal continuity.

A key element of the continuity system is the 180
DEGREE RULE, which states that the camera must stay on
only one side of the actions and objects in a scene.
An invisible line, known as the 180 DEGREE LINE or
AXIS OF ACTION, runs through the space of the scene.
The camera can shoot from any position within one side
of that line, but it may never cross it. This
convention ensures that the shot will have consistent
spatial relations and screen directions. [...] With
the 180 DEGREE RULE, the viewer rarely experiences
even a momentary sense of spatial disorientation. 

In theory, the camera may move anywhere on one side of
the axis of action. In practise, however, the
continuity system tends to follows a conventional
pattern of camera placement and editing. For example,
in a classic instance of two people facing each other
in a conversation, a sequence would begin with an
ESTABLISHING SHOT, a shot presenting a more or less
complete view of the setting, showing the spatial
relations among the key figures. The establishing shot
gives the spectator an overview so that subsequent
shots dissecting the space at a closer range are much
less likely to be spatially ambiguous or disorienting.
Periodically, the director will provide a
RE-ESTABLISHING SHOT, to refresh the viewer's sense of
the scene's overall geography.

After the establishing shot, the camera typically
moves incrementally closer to the action. One might
see a LONG SHOT of the characters in conversation,
followed by a MEDIUM SHOT. Any shot focusing on two
people is referred to as a TWO SHOT.

As the scene progresses to moments of emotional or
dramatic intensity, the camera typically presents
closer shots of the individual characters -- MEDIUM
CLOSE-UPS and CLOSE-UPS. These shots usually alternate
between the two speakers, with the camera placed at
more or less opposite ends of the axis of action
between them. This pattern of alternating shots is
called the SHOT/REVERSE SHOT structure. 
There are three common variations of the SHOT/REVERSE
SHOT: 

1) In a simple SHOT/REVERSE SHOT, the camera simply
alternates between shots that show one person at a
time (usually the person talking).

2) An OVER-THE-SHOULDER TWO SHOT is also commonly used
in conversation sequences. The camera is placed behind
the shoulder of one of the people in the conversation.
We see both characters -- one more or less frontally
and the other from behind (usually we see just part of
the head and torso). 

3) A somewhat less common approach to the SHOT/REVERSE
SHOT is to use a POINT-OF-VIEW SHOT or POV. The camera
is placed where a character's eyes would be (either
exactly or approximately).(either exactly or
approximately). In a conversation sequence, a POV
would generally show a more frontal, head-on
perspective of the other character. [...]
A key aim of the CONTINUITY SYSTEM is to ensure that
no edit calls attention to itself or strikes the
viewer as spatially confusing, inconsistent or
awkward. The 180 DEGREE RULE and the conventionality
of the editing formula described above do a great deal
to achieve this end.... 

http://cla.calpoly.edu/~smarx/courses/continuitysys.html

What constitutes the logic of shot/reverse shot in
cinema? In opposition to David Bordwell's cognitivist
conclusion that such a figure mimics the movements of
natural, human perception, Perez advances the
criterion of aesthetic, expressive appropriateness.
Shot/reverse shot is an artifice, a construction as
evident as any other in the language of film; and yet
it is not - as per the structuralist-linguistic
premise - merely "arbitrary". An appealing or
involving shot-reverse shot exchange must be telling
in the way that it maps the internal dramatic or
thematic logic of a scene....

http://www.latrobe.edu.au/screeningthepast/shorts/reviews/rev1199/ambr8c6.htm

In short, Pynchon here not only deploys yet another
characteristically Pynchonian cinematic trope, and not
only one of particular interest in film theory, but
one with particular resonances with postmodernism in
general and those Pynchonian texts in particular ...

--- Paul Nightingale <isread at btopenworld.com> wrote:
> 
> (195.17-19) "And here came Frenesi Gates's reverse
> shot ... Frenesi's eyes, even on the ageing ECO
> stock, took over the frame, a defiance of blue
> unfadable."
> 
> Apart from anything else, this begs the question,
> why a reverse shot?

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