THE LONELINESS OF COVID CINEMATOGRAPHY: PART 1
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The Loneliness of COVID Cinematography: Part 1 By Patrick McAuliffe
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he last year and a half has taken much from us; more specifically, our governments have taken much from us. One trivial aspect of COVID hysteria that won’t leave my addled mind alone since it became apparent to me is how TV shows and movies are shot and edited in 2021. Pre-filmed movie footage and the ability of animated media to be produced remotely helped the entertainment industry peter along through the remainder of 2020, but as the pandemic wore on and more sectors of society reopened, it became increasingly obvious that COVID restrictions and conventions played some part, big or small, in how that movie or TV show was produced. Live-action Marvel shows on Disney+ utilized social distancing in a sneaky way, while “Afterllife of the Party” with Victoria Justice on Netflix was able to follow a similar, subtle pattern. One close examination of the restrictions behind the scenes can cause a change in the way a given piece of art is experienced, evoking feelings of emptiness, loneliness, or isolation. Entertainment was the one escape from the lockdowns and lack of interpersonal connection over the past year and a half, but our media sources continue to remind us of that loneliness. Disney+ launched a few months before COVID became a serious international issue, and has since become a 100 million-subscriber cash cow for The Mouse. Beyond perusing the vault of terrible live-action 90s movies and paying $30 to the Xinjiang Tourist Department for early access to “Mulan”, many people subscribe to see the live-action MCU TV shows and keep up with some of the side cast of characters in the franchise. COVID social distancing restrictions’ impact on the cinematography of the shows first became apparent to me in “Loki”, although elements of distancing became clear in both “WandaVision” and “The Falcon and the Winter Soldier”. “Loki” follows the Norse trickster god’s misadventures following the events of
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“Avengers: Endgame”, in which Loki steals the Tesseract and teleports away from the Battle of New York in 2012, creating a divergent timeline and causing a full run-in with the Time Variance Authority, or TVA. The TVA is an extra-dimensional police force, purging universes that don’t follow a prescribed path for the MCU’s timeline, and Loki is conscripted by the TVA when a female Variant of his, named Sylvie, goes rogue. Owen Wilson and Tom Hiddleston’s chemistry is a delight to watch, but what struck me as odd was the number of situations in which the sets seem devoid of life. Much of Loki’s character development is done in a solitary room, watching himself change and die in his future timeline (past MCU movies), or in a time cell, where the only other person is Lady Sif slapping and kicking him in the genitals for all eternity. Mobius and Loki’s lonely interactions are done from across tables and desks in near-vacant cafeterias, offices, or prison cells. Hunter B-15 learns of her true past with Sylvie in an empty parking lot of a futuristic superstore, and earlier in the show, Loki battles mind-controlled puppets of Sylvie in the same evacuated superstore. In Loki and Sylvie’s final confrontation with He Who Remains, his vast, forlorn study takes up more space than his eccentric personality and the monologuing from across his desk. The Void beyond time, so aptly named, is a CGI wasteland as empty as the mountains in Lord of the Rings’ long, panning traveling shots. Where are the rest of the workers at the TVA, a sleepless hive of time enforcers? Where are He Who Remains’ staff and castle servants, tending to his needs for all eternity beyond time? Where are all of the people anywhere?
“WandaVision” moves slightly more towards “normal” cinematography, but the locales within the story and the themes they choose for the different eras of TV sitcoms betray the inopportune time of their filming. In this MCU show, a distraught Wanda steals Vision’s dissected body from the weapons R&D agency counterpart to S.H.I.E.L.D., fittingly named S.W.O.R.D. (looking at you, Pokémon fans), and retreats to a small town in New Jersey where she and Vision were planning to settle one day to raise a family. She resurrects him with her magic and creates a force field around the town, allowing her to live out the perfect life she always imagined before Thanos’ arrival on Earth. She
“No, I haven’t seen it; I’m never paying The Mouse for Premier Access to movies. I’m just waiting until October 6th when the plebians get to stream it.” soon butts heads with S.W.O.R.D. as they investigate the “missing” town; they soon realize that the citizens of the town are mind slaves, forced by Wanda’s magic to act out parts in her own little sitcom that moves through the eras of TV, from the 1950s all the way to a “Modern Family”-style docutainment show of today. Most of these styles allow for distanced actors: in 50s and 60s shows, husband and wife (and other cast members) can flirt and make jokes from across the living room, kitchen, or bedroom; in the “canned laughter” era of the 70s and 80s, the actors’ blocking allows for much of the same, albeit in color; from the 90s and beyond, clever camera angles can portray intimate moments with enough distance so as not to spread communicable viruses. Much like in “Loki”, the streets of
Vol. XXXIV, Issue III
