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jmflowers · 14 days

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Would you want to do a recap of Stefania's amazing episode? I'd love to hear your perspective from a technical standpoint!

We’re doing it my sweet, enabling anon! Apologies for how long it has taken for me to truly organize myself and my thoughts with this.

There's gonna be two versions of this, because my jot noted, unhinged version is much more on brand for tumblr fandom space. But I only really realized that after writing out 3500 words of thoughtful film-school style analysis.

Below the cut, please find that version. And I'll post the fangirl edition that breaks down my thoughts scene-by-scene later.

The goal of Station 19’s 7x04 ‘Trouble Man’ was, put simply, to just fucking break everyone. Each one of the characters on screen needed to, or at least appear to, reach rock bottom by the time the credits rolled. Which is, honestly, why I love that they chose Stefania Spampinato as the director for this one. If you’ve seen any of Stefania’s directing work (you can view Zita Sempri here), you know that her strength (and interest) lies in emotional storytelling. I think, because Peter Paige and Stefania have clearly had a mentorship/friendship relationship, that he recognized this episode would be the type of story she would and could excel with.

(This differs greatly from what they chose for Danielle Savre last season, whom we know describes herself as organized and a Type A sort of person. They played to her strengths, as well, and gave her a challenge with an episode that would require a lot of technical organization and strong leadership for such a large on-location scene with so much additional equipment.)

As fans, we all lucked out with Stefania’s episode because it didn’t harbour the additional technical challenges that Danielle’s did and so the showrunners didn’t decide to lighten Stefania’s load by writing her out of most of the episode. (I’d wager, too, that all of her scenes being strictly with Danielle and their rapport with each other also supported that case.) I’m honestly so proud and happy for her (and Danielle) that she was able to have the best of both and experience the feeling of directing herself on screen, alongside an acting partner that she trusts and has worked with for so long.

So, the story is set up as a version of the 7-Point Plot structure (or maybe a Save the Cat, if you’re fancy) and we begin with Andy at what we will later discover is her rock bottom moment. Because we already know the formula of first images in the show is a lot of quick cuts, Stefania made a really excellent choice here in how she shot this specific moment to keep on brand. What she could’ve done is a bunch of different angles of Andy and hoped that when they got to the editing room, there was enough there to avoid the dreaded jumpcut – or enough to lean into a purposeful jumpcut.

[A jumpcut is when a final edit showcases two shots back-to-back that are not precisely the same but are similar enough to cause a jarring effect for viewers. For example, a shot of a person’s face head-on, followed immediately by another shot of that person’s face at the same level with both of their eyes still visible. To make that not jarring, you would want the next shot to be from a lot lower or higher, or directly from the side or behind. Jumpcuts can be used effectively to show the passage of time, for example, such as in Vic’s hospital room scenes or in the bunk room after Andy’s assault, but they need to be proven purposeful by happening at least three times or more in a row.]

Instead, this moment was shot several times with a dolly around Andy. As the momentum of the start of the episode builds, so does the speed with which the shots cut between each other. This was such a cool, smart way to create tension right off the bat and I think it worked really effectively as a hook for the episode.

Truthfully, I think this choice was the biggest faux pas of the episode. Hear me out; this doesn’t match the Station 19 font. It doesn’t lend to the theme that’s already been set on the show regarding text on screen. There are no other episodes in this season (thus far) that have text on screen as part of the storytelling… it was just all off for me.

In my ideal world, this would’ve been exactly the same text style as the show’s logo (perhaps even underlined in the red) and they would’ve pulled something a la Alias, where the scene appears through the text. (Or just stuck it over a shot without the black, like they did with the rest of the time updates???)

This will just forever feel like it was tossed in during editing as a placeholder and then accidentally left there. Maybe they didn’t have enough money for someone to come in and do text editing? I don’t know. I need to stop thinking about it eventually or I’ll drive myself crazy.

But moving on! There were a lot of fascinating and technically challenging moments right from the beginning of this episode. I love that Stefania chose to visibly have the trucks returning to the barn (something she spoke about here) because it isn’t something we’ve really seen before, as it would be challenging to shoot. I’d love to know how they balanced how much ND filter would be needed to block out the light coming in through those open doors without losing visibility on the trucks and the characters. This would’ve been a full team effort to set up this sequence, especially considering it’s (nearly) a oner from this moment until 30 seconds later, when Vic tells Theo she doesn’t care that he kissed Kate. (There is a tiny cut while Beckett is walking across with his axe that they hid really well in their editing, but is still technically a jumpcut.)

[A oner or one-shot is a term to describe a scene filmed in a single shot. They are very, very difficult and time-consuming to do as everything must be synchronized and rehearsed and one little mistake can send you all the way back to the very beginning of the scene. The first one I ever remember seeing was Miley Cyrus’ music video for Start All Over in 2007. Director Mike Flanagan has killed it with two incredible/epically long ones in The Haunting of Hill House episode 6 and Midnight Mass episode 2. There’s also a great one in season 19, episode 12 of Grey’s Anatomy, which was directed by Kevin McKidd, and which Stefania herself was in. If you wanna know more about oners, hit me up as I have a plethora of links and behind-the-scenes information regarding how they’re done because I think they are sooooooo cool.]

I just gotta say, I laughed out loud at this moment. Solid editing aligned the whip of Travis’ head with the end of the backing music that was hilarious and so on brand for the show. Something like that wouldn’t have been planned on set, most likely, and would’ve occurred instead in the editing suite. But I so dig that the choice was made because it’s perfect. Kudos to Stefania if she had any involvement with it other than saying ‘keep it’. (I’m presuming the editor, Eli Nilsen, is who I have to thank for it.)

Also, the movement of this scene was gold, which is entirely up to Stefania’s direction. I loved the switch of Travis from the chair to the couch beside Vic. There was so much great coverage, the pans from outside the room were beautiful; all-in-all I thought it was a really excellently executed scene, from a purely technical standpoint.

In Stefania’s directing interview with Shondaland, she spoke about starting with more wide shots at the beginning of this episode and gradually getting closer and closer. Which I love, of course, as an artistic choice. What I found most consistently, however, was a subversion of the TV formula of establishing shot to character shot.

To break that down, most shows setup new scenes with a wide, establishing shot of the new location (think Friends, where you see the outside of their apartment building before any scene with the characters in their apartments – this is very sitcom) before going to the characters.

A lot of the scenes in this episode, though, start with a closeup of the characters before moving to a wider shot of where they are. The scene with Maya and the drill, for instance: we start on that drill and the window frame before we pull back to see its her, that she’s in the nursery, that there are boxes stacked up, that Carina is trying to change Liam’s diaper, etc, etc. I think that choice lends a lot to the emotionality of the episode and is really intelligent editing, but also really intelligent coverage of each section of the story on set.

Specifically, my notes said: “It keeps you pulled into where the character is at mentally, emotionally, versus where they are physically.”

As we move into Maya and Carina’s house, I have so much to say about colour. This shot is a great spot to dive into all the tiny little details. I will say, I don’t know if Stefania would’ve had as much say regarding colour and set design or dressing on a singular episode as she would if she were directing a film. But! Whoever made choices for this was so, so on.

Just… look at this for a moment. Carina goes with this house. Everything in this shot blends cohesively. The yellow of the counter and backsplash is balanced with the yellow clothes in the basket atop the dryer. The blue of Carina’s jeans pulls the blue stripe from the dish towels hanging on the stove. The pink of her shirt goes with her shoes and the pink flowers on the wallpaper around the window. Everything belongs here. Even the stripes of Carina’s shirt are reminiscent of the Carina we first met in Grey’s Anatomy six years ago.

For me, this lends so much to the dynamic occurring between Maya and Carina in all these scenes. While Carina fits visually, Maya still appears just slightly off – the red of her sweater doesn’t quite match anything, her jeans are darker. As she talks in the kitchen with Carina, she’s cast more into shadow than Carina is.

My inner film theory geek was rejoicing at all of these choices, simply because they’re a prime example of the importance of all departments involved in film and television production. Big ups and shoutouts to the production designer (Sandy Getzler) and art department on this episode (Carissa E. Mitchell, Jorge Rodriguez, Alisha Rothman, and Kennedy Taylor) and the costume department (Meesh Daranyi, Veronica Teong, and Cleo Trifonidis).

There’s a lot of really, really strong framing choices in this episode. I could (and might) rant for a bit about all that. But this scene struck me, both from a writing standpoint and the execution.

Choosing to do this call with voiceovers not only saves so much money and time, it also builds a ton on the emotionality of this moment for all of these characters. I love that Stefania brought in a bit of that constant moving energy we know and recognize from Grey’s Anatomy here, too.

I screenshot this specific frame because we have this moment where we see so much of what we know of Chief Ross – her power, her importance, how put-together she is. And then the shot pans up to her face, as we’re listening to these awful things happening on the other end of the radio and it’s her breaking point. This scene is her rock bottom – her inciting incident where she has to, ultimately, decide to act or react. I’m hopeful, as a viewer, that this is telling of her story for the rest of the season being a battle with the mayor for funding.

Anyways, I love Stefania for this framing. I love the panning. I love the movement. I love the cuts and all the angles. I love that she chose the lenses she did, cause girl clearly loves a short depth of field. Just, she knows what she’s doing and I am here for it.

Let it be said that the pan shot of Andy and Beckett in the front seat of the truck, which is the start of this scene, is probably my favourite shot of the episode. It made my breath catch the first time I saw it. Toss in the exquisite, gut-wrenching coverage of the bloody boot print and the pan over Herrera written on Andy’s turnouts and it’s all chef’s kiss. Directing Queen Stefania is coming for the jugulars with the emotionality of the episode by this point.

Especially considering, this boot print is not important to the story at all – this is entirely stylistic. There is one shot, however, where she covered the Jaws of Life being placed in the truck after a call and that was very important to the story.

I wrote a lot about this shot, so I’m going to talk about it, too. I think it was a cool choice to start this scene with a head-on closeup of Theo. From a technical standpoint, a shot like this is challenging to do because you want to see more of the bathroom behind him, to help establish the location, but the lens needed to make that possible distorts faces a bit when it’s too close.

As a viewer, I found that here and when you notice it, it’s a little off-putting. Especially considering everything else in the show is shot true to reality. (One other great example of a time when shot angle/framing/lens didn’t align correctly for my eyes is in season 3, when Maya and Carina are on vacation together and they kiss before going to the pool.)

I will say, the unnervingness of this distort might have been intentional. Throwing viewers off-kilter is a great way to build emotionality and unease. It just sticks out here, because it doesn’t really occur anywhere else. (She used the same framing later in the episode for Vic, too. I think it was less unsettling there because Vic was moving, whereas Theo was just looking at himself.)

Gold star at the end of this scene for the continuity department – a department of one, Sharon Cingle on script supervision – for making sure the shower curtain was left open that little crack to make the closeup pan of Ben make sense. How many times can I say I loved a shot?

My first note for this scene says: “Can’t say Stefania doesn’t love an ECU and a rack focus… beautiful establishing for this scene from the hands to Beckett’s feet.”

[A rack focus is when the focus of a shot visibly shifts from one point in the frame to another, typically from closer to further away or vice versa. It is more obvious when done with a short depth-of-field, which means a smaller amount of space that is in focus at a time – such as in the shot above.]

This episode was a lot of fun for me because it felt like Stefania was playing with parts of the set we haven’t scene before. The communal bunk room, for starters. A different angle of the station, where you could see the balconies outside and houses behind the building. And this moment – with the sink and the back of the barn. I can’t even imagine how tricky it must’ve been to maneuver and set up shots in such a tight space.

But she did it, of course. We’ve got this gloriously tight angle of Beckett’s face, where we could watch the tears roll down his cheek. And that pinprick of light is visible in his pupil, which you want present when lighting human faces for on screen.

And I mean, the levels here are so interesting. There’s rule of thirds happening in these shots. There’s balance of characters in the framing. Most importantly, there’s something unspoken happening with the swap of power. This is Beckett’s breaking point in the episode – he’s literally sitting at rock bottom, the lowest he can get in the station. With Sullivan, who was once his lesser, above and looking down to him. That’s powerful body language – you’ll find a lot of people feel a need to stand when they’re asserting their authority in a situation, trying to gain the higher ground. (It’s almost like this thing burned into our DNA from years of building castles on hills and shit.)

But this is a turning point in the episode for Sullivan, too. He once tried to help Beckett and was refuted and now he’s being faced with a choice to either extend the offer again or turn away from the problem. I like that his decision is echoed in helping Beckett up off the floor. Kudos to Stefania for staging it this way.

Now’s probably a great time to dive into Stefania’s framing choices, cause she did some crazy beautiful stuff. My notes say: “Queen of the two-shot!” here. It’s fascinating to me how she used reflections in this episode – the first couple times we see Andy get out of the engine, we see a flash of her face in the side mirrors before we actually see her face-on. She also played with the mirror in the bathroom with Vic and Kate’s confrontation.

[A two-shot is when two characters are visible in the same frame.]

But, at least for me, the two shots and reflections work because she consistently picked lenses with a shorter depth of field. The rack focuses between characters make these shots so much more visually interesting. There were so many of them that I nabbed in my screenshotting that spoke to me or got me excited or were examples of a really good eye.

Exhibit a, b, c:

And while we’re talking about two- (and three-) shots, let’s discuss foreground. Because I was so struck by a few shots, specifically because of the choices of things Stefania kept in the shot in front of the characters.

From screenshots already above: the wall outside the kitchen in Maya and Carina’s house and the engine with Beckett’s feet behind it. Please see exhibit a, b, c, d for more that struck me:

I don’t know how to explain this really technically, my dudes, but it’s so visually pleasing. It’s so interesting. It kept my eyes so invested in what was going on. I love when directors give us a chance to really explore the set design and feel really immersed in the location with characters. There were so many times this episode where Stefania chose a framing through a window – from inside Maya and Carina’s house while they were outside, through the blinds into the gym and Andy’s office and the conference room, into the engine and the ladder truck through the windshield. I can’t sing enough praises about that.

Let’s wrap this up with Andy. There are two scenes in this episode where she’s having important, serious conversations with men that she holds authority over. And Jaina is short, especially when next to Boris and Carlos. A different director might have chosen to frame these scenes in a way that made Andy appear smaller than these men – but not Stefania.

There’s a really conscious effort here to keep Andy’s authority visually present – the shots pull in closer on her and the guys’ heads are cut off. She doesn’t look shadowed by them and their height because of this framing. It makes it very, very clear that this is her story and she is the most important character in the room.

And honestly, I think that’s a great example of this show – and Stefania’s direction – not being a male gaze interpretation. There is no passivity to the way she has shot the women in this episode. They are not presented as weak or small or not in control, even when the emotionality of a scene is overwhelming. Andy, Ross, Vic… they are very human in this episode, even when they’re crying. For me, that’s what makes the entirety of the work here so strong.

I am endlessly proud of her and this episode. One of the best of the show for me.

You go, Stefania Spampinato.

#janelle's asks #film and television production #film school analysis coming in hot #thank you for this anon... I had fun #station 19 #director stefania spampinato #station 19 spoilers #station 19 season 7 episode 4 #episode analysis

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