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The use of Timing and Lighting in season 2 is pre-occupying me at the moment.
There is an issue about TIMING running throughout the Season, getting the Timing right or getting it wrong.It happens in sessions and also in Pauls life,like when he gets it wrong with Kate,wanting to get back together.There are interruptions going on all the time too, especially with phonecalls and people walking into the room without knocking in week 5.It culminates in Paul taking his fathers watch at the right time!
Sometimes the therapy sessions themselves are approriate/inappropriate interventions at certain times in our lives. Sometimes they get it right,sometimes not.
The LIGHTING is also very special this season. They have created a glowing,luminous effect on Paul/Ginas fleshtones,like they are being lit from within. This mostly happens in the room and is helped by the contrast in the dark colours they wear and the diffused lighting elsewhere. The effect is beautiful,stunning.
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(8 of 8)
Re: Timing and Lighting in In Treatment,Season 2
Aug 30, 2009 10:10 AM
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well , In Treatment does seem to be about Balance more than anything else so that might be a good direction for a Season 3....to see how they balance out as professionals in their newly developing personal lives.Maybe its about their own relationships then.How would this "new man" be with Women now? How would Gina be with Men?Would she go for someone emotional like Paul this time?The question of balance.
Wasnt that hilarious when they gave Oliver that HUGE balancing wave machine to play with instead of the little one we usually see in the background!!So witty.It was a little out of balance ,even for them, wasnt it!(I love the way that toy seems to be a reminder of measuring psychic balance the way the clock/watches are a reminder of measuring Time, so one regulates us inside and the other regulates us outside.)
So if In Treatment is about our Western culture and its need to restore balance,then what we are being shown is a culture and lifestyle that has lost its equilibrium and is spiralling out of control....much as the climate we inhabit has lost its equilibrium!We are shown people living in extremes and polarities...all that imagery about flying and aspirations,ambitions and achievement, the competitive consumer lifestyle and how that affacts us personally. ( Sophy, Alex, Walter,Mia ,April etc). These are all the casualties of that system.They have taken things to an extreme where nothing else matters until something shakes them out of it, to seek a new direction and orientation.
Its the same with Psychotherapy. This is a discipline that has aligned itself to science, as a pseudo-science when actually its dealing with human temperament.It struggles to be scientific,neutral, emphasizing methodology and dogma, avoiding anything personal or subjective in the therapist.Thats an extreme.That lectern was so oppressive in season 1 it nearly knocked Paul out.Thank god its in the corner in season 2!
Gina and Paul are mavericks in that profession,defying that extreme. She was right not to recommend him to the Institute. it would have destroyed him.
Gina is spiritual.Her room has mythological /symbolic artifacts all over the place from all over the ancient world and its described as a "sanctuary". Paul says she practices therapy as a "religion" in season 1.She has this sense of mystery, of the unknown about her that Paul and others find "fascinating".He describes her as "buddha". And psychology has spent alot of time untangling itself from its mythological roots.
Meanwhile Paul is physical,emotional.He is constantly yelling in sessions,volatile.He looks "for something to love in a patient"in order to work.He wants to care,get personally involved and by the end of season 2 he is comfortable doing that.Week 7 shows him making personal disclosures and being personal in his sessions. Its this ability to be physical and emotional that wakes up Gina too.Without that row she would never be wearing blue and going out again.
So neither of them remains the neutral,objective professional. They create a balance and find a place for the spiritual or personal. They learn to balance their humanity instead of excluding it.And their connection, their personal relationship frees them both to move on.Having revisited the father/mother image in his psyche in the sanctuary of Ginas room,he can now move on because that part of him is finished,integrated.And having been shaken out of her trancelike detachment by Paul, by realising her emotions,that she can still feel, she can move on.
Maybe when you go so deep into the psyche with another,like Gina and Paul, like Paul and his patients,you cant enter into their lives. Its like those old fairy stories when the traveller in another world is told not to eat the food of that world lest they get stuck in it and cant come back,get lost forever. Maybe thats what the taboo is really about between patient and therapist, that if you travel vertically with someone you cant travel horizontally. It doesnt work. They are different worlds.
But that doesnt mean you cant be personal.You just have to know when the timing is right!
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Edited by Paxson2 at 08/30/2009 7:17 AM PDT
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Edited by Paxson2 at 08/30/2009 7:34 AM PDT
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(7 of 8)
Re: Timing and Lighting in In Treatment,Season 2
Aug 30, 2009 3:16 AM
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I thought Paul's crisis of confidence was one of the most realistic and on-the-mark elements of the entire second season. He's an intelligent, attractive, middle-years man who has had to uproot himself entirely from his usual life, and start again more or less from scratch. He is lonesome and insecure, maybe even a little scared, about his future.
And he is still trying to help keep people's entire lives together - even more difficult after his perceived failures with Alex and even Laura. Not easy.
Oh and Paxon - I agree wholeheartedly with what Lady Leslie says.
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(6 of 8)
Re: Timing and Lighting in In Treatment,Season 2
Aug 30, 2009 1:02 AM
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Hey Paxson....what did you think about Paul reporting back to Gina all the activities he tried in those patient sessions AFTER he provoked Gina into her outburst of anger toward him? Who would have thought that Paul would have a crisis of confidence? AND, who would have thought that Paul's efforts were so "in the moment" as they say, and less about therapy techniques in that final week?
Your "personal into the professional" discussion is so on the mark, Paxson. We need a season three just to try and satisfy the hunger to know how Paul and even Gina play out such a dichotomy. Thanks for sharing, Paxson.
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(5 of 8)
Re: Timing and Lighting in In Treatment,Season 2
Aug 29, 2009 5:54 AM
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Its been such a pleasure watching this beautiful drama unfold over its two seasons. Thats an entertainment you dont get very often on television, so thankyou to all involved.
Now that ive watched the final two week sessions of season 2 I am in real awe of the attention to detail in dialogue and on the set,visually....the way the Timing and lighting matter so much right up to the end , like when Gina says "our time is up" and i want to scream back "No!".
And the flying/aspiring imagery that ends in Aprils leather pilot hat. Stroke of genius that makes me gasp!
This whole running theme about the professional/the personal. Gina and Paul are such mavericks in their profession.
In week 6 its not just the week of the personal breakthrough or disclosure, but also the week of the breakthrough of the Personal IN the Professional.This is the root pre-occupation of a series that is questioning the validity of the therapeutic method.
In week 6 Paul breaks the code, becomes personal in each session,gives something of himself personally, and in his own session this is the one time we see Gina cross the boundary. He makes her react personally and come alive out of the chair and out of her detachment.She loses control and lives, maybe proving him right and her wrong to herself....because the next time we see her she is really changed into blue, ready to go out. Their personal outburst was the catalyst, not the therpautic method that confined them!
So in week 7 we see that they have all broken out of "the room" and are looking outwards. Paul and gina discuss this in their session.....which is why i think dramatically they are moving towards something else, but what?
Oh and the outside world so encapsulated in the mobile phone is now inside,in the sessions,sitting on the table.Gina allowed it!Her method has changed and his has been affirmed.She relaxes and he gains confidence.They have deeply affected each other, whether they meet again or not.
Beautiful.
Human touch, that connection, will always outweigh any human method.
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Edited by Paxson2 at 08/29/2009 2:59 AM PDT
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Edited by Paxson2 at 08/29/2009 3:09 AM PDT
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Edited by Paxson2 at 08/29/2009 3:14 AM PDT
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Edited by Paxson2 at 08/29/2009 3:22 AM PDT
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(4 of 8)
Re: Timing and Lighting in In Treatment,Season 2
Aug 2, 2009 7:56 AM
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Giggle.
Yes,being alive sometimes means being out of control. In Season 1 Paul was too controlling.
Those windows out are very interesting, as you describe them. Outside is black and white, with props that seem very staged, not Real.Yet Inside, in this heightened room of heightened consciousness it is Real. Of course we know the opposite to be true, or do we!?
We have the Inside and the Outside being kept in balance.The clock measures this Outside and the wave/executive toy measures our Inside. Back and forth it goes, tick-tock.
The Room is the heigtened consciousness of the therapists/patients psyche. Those lighting effects emphasize that.
That room is a dangerous vertical journey.No wonder Mia says to Paul " dont go overboard". Its very dangerous to get out of the boat, as Kurtz says in Conrads "Heart of darkness" or as DHLawrence says in his poem "Ship of Death".If Gina and paul stay sitting in their chairs on their magic carpets they will have a safe vertical journey! Sailing boats and water.
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Edited by Paxson2 at 08/02/2009 5:01 AM PDT
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Edited by Paxson2 at 08/02/2009 5:03 AM PDT
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(3 of 8)
Re: Timing and Lighting in In Treatment,Season 2
Aug 1, 2009 4:09 PM
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Hey Paxson2!
I would love to talk with you about the Timing and Lighting in 'Season 2' but, God damn it, I haven't seen it so far.
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Edited by Daniela1 at 01/08/2009 10:09 PM CET
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(2 of 8)
Re: Timing and Lighting in In Treatment,Season 2
Aug 1, 2009 4:04 AM
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Brilliant post! I was screen-capping an episode from season two yesterday and it gave me the chance to look at lighting, and camera angles, and all sorts of peripheral things that I admit I am normally too focussed .. er, elsewhere ... to notice so much.
Whilst I am pretty sure that the whole show is shot on a closed set in NYC, they do a stunning job of recreating the different times of day and different weather conditions (just as they did for season one, which was shot in California.)
I felt that the production team managed to convey with great accuracy the fact that Paul had moved a few hundred miles north, and was living in a much more built-up area. Just with a few lamps, painted backdrops, water effects and a bit of a tree that someone had found whilst walking their dog, glued to the outside of one of his 'windows.'
I love your observation about timing - and this, too, is a metaphor for what is happening to Paul. His timing is really badly OFF in some cases, not least of all with the ill-fated Tammy Kent Barbie Doll debacle. Er .. 25 years too late Paul. The usual framework upon which he hung his life - house, wife, children - and the routines that those would have imposed upon him, are all GONE. There is a great deal more chaos in his life - Walter barging in early, Oliver knocking hat stands over, April showing up an hour early, Mia stomping in and trying to have breakfast with him.
The fact that Paul keeps it all together is a wonder really. But in some ways I think this might have been part of what was MISSING from his life before the end of his marriage - the element of unpredictability, which can be incredibly stimulating, not only stressful - was missing.
He was bored before. But not now, oh no!
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"Hello? Mr. Byrne? Oh jolly good, glad I caught you - look here dear fellow, it's about the underwear you owe me - "
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(1 of 8)
Timing and Lighting in In Treatment,Season 2
Aug 1, 2009 3:49 AM
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The use of Timing and Lighting in season 2 is pre-occupying me at the moment.
There is an issue about TIMING running throughout the Season, getting the Timing right or getting it wrong.It happens in sessions and also in Pauls life,like when he gets it wrong with Kate,wanting to get back together.There are interruptions going on all the time too, especially with phonecalls and people walking into the room without knocking in week 5.It culminates in Paul taking his fathers watch at the right time!
Sometimes the therapy sessions themselves are approriate/inappropriate interventions at certain times in our lives. Sometimes they get it right,sometimes not.
The LIGHTING is also very special this season. They have created a glowing,luminous effect on Paul/Ginas fleshtones,like they are being lit from within. This mostly happens in the room and is helped by the contrast in the dark colours they wear and the diffused lighting elsewhere. The effect is beautiful,stunning.
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