Hi! Do you happen to know at which scenes in T6T and TLD the characters look directly at the camera? I’ve heard it happens four times, but I’ve only found two of them. Thanks!

marcespot:

inevitably-johnlocked:

anxiowl:

inevitably-johnlocked:

Hi Lovely!

Certainly! Here’s Sherlock in T6T at 14:58:

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John in T6T at 1:10:04:

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And there’s this one in TLD at 36:12, which is REALLY quick and if you blink you miss it!

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And Culverton in TLD at 1:15:16 (this one I’m a bit “meh” about because I don’t think this was an “unintentional” fourth wall break):

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And if you want to be pedantic, Sherlock literally breaks down 4 walls in TFP at 1:12:55

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And people have said that this one of Jim in TFP at 38:25 is also fourth-wall breaking, but I don’t consider it this because he’s talking to Mycroft; the camera is where Myc’s shoulder is:

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It’s not fourth wall breaking, to me, if the character is talking to another character. Sherlock does it often enough in the series when we are “the deduction wall”, as in when we are watching from the POV of the wall or the monitor. These ones are more noticeable because these are the ACTORS – NOT THE CHARACTERS – LOOKING AT THE CAMERA. 

The John one is the most blatant one, I think, because it’s ALL MARTIN, and it’s  the LONGEST ONE; HE LITERALLY ACKNOWLEDGES THE CAMERA AND TAKES A SIP OF WINE:

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So yeah, gang, please add others if you see them. Remember: they have to NOT be part of the “script” of sorts. Just the actors breaking character and staring at the camera.

Did nobody notice this one? When they are around the grenade in TFP at 17:50, and John quotes Oscar Wilde, he’s looking directly at us:

That’s the only moment Martin looks at the camera in that whole scene. After he finishes quoting him, he immediately looks away, at the floor.

Here is the same shot but he’s looking at both Mycroft and Sherlock:

faithchan added: When Sherlock asks Mrs. Hudson to say “Norbury” to him if he gets overconfident, he looks right at the camera. Yes, it’s positioned right over her shoulder, but even on my initial watching of the episode, it STRUCK me. Same with Moriarty talking “to” Mycroft in TFP. And when you think about human eye focus, if you’re talking TO someone, you don’t usually FOCUS your eyes on a point OVER THEIR SHOULDER. Sometimes we DON’T focus, look into a middle ground or off into the distance… but looking AT THE CAMERA is a deliberate act, and it stands out because actors DO NOT DO IT UNLESS THEY ARE BREAKING THE 4TH WALL.

supervised-escapism added: The third one, Ben is like “Look what I have to endure here” – with tongue in cheek 😎

And the ultimate, it really looks like Martin is raising his glass to the camera, right before he looks to Amanda 😀

madzither added: I’m struggling with the Culverton Smith one – I think the actor has slightly wayward eyes that don’t look like they’re focusing on the same thing. So that one I’m not so sure about but yea, Benedict and Martin (especially!) definitely are breaking it.

shadow3214 added: There is that shot in TLD when John walks away from viewing Mary’s DVD , and Mrs. H tells everyone to get out, that we get a close up of John and his eyes are almost in focus with the camera. It’s not quite there but almost fourth wall..it would have been too obvious had he looked directly at us…but damn it’s like he wants us to see his pain.

consultingeastwind added: Another reason S4 is Fake AF

Jiminy Creeper would not slouch in practically every screen time he has – at too limited time at that – like some alley drunkard loser with ugly posture and uglier fitting suit who doesn’t know the value of a Westwood or deludes himself with the title Mr. Sex.

The real Jim would have been at least halfway polished and far less cartoonish.


Thanks everyone for your additions!! ❤

Neat as always, @inevitably-johnlocked​! Here’s some cool 4th-wall-breaking in TFP for you guys. One of these is NOT like the others:

I’ve got a good one, but first I need to clarify this: the girl in distress representing John is the only one looking exclusively at us. There’s no other character in that plane she’s meant to be looking at. The rest of them–who, unlike the girl, present themselves through screens for other characters to see so we also get to see them– are the villains. Yes, Eurus too, during the time John dreams of her as the evil figue. Because once she is ‘understood and redeemed’ though, Sherlock no longer sees her in a screen, but in person.

You can tell they asked the lil’ actor to look into the camera from the moment she says “please, help me” until the rest of the take. Looking directly at us is an integral part of the story. Now, in light of the topic around which John’s dream revolves, I interpret that John’s asking for OUR help.

Calling us to action. By making eye-contact with the heteronormative audience, they are forced to look back at him too (bi-visibility) and decide if they are going to help or not. This is a social problem and the character is

involving us. There’s no escape from the

“Am I invisible, can you actually see me?” question. They’re practically begging people to change perspective for once so John Watson can finally break free from the chains of queerphobia and be happy. How do ya’ like them apples?

Oh, and speaking of happiness. Here’s John drawing a smile on our faces.

Yeah, don’t think about the “smiling is sadness” line (thanks @gelierzucker!) or the fact the smiley is John, or that Eurus deduces the Governor (John’s mirror) is sad and actually wants to cry… like John did in TLD. I think y’all get the point.

Are. Those. PEARLS???

whimsicalethnographies:

rowanthestrange:

aspieshamansherlock:

the-7-percent-solution:

tjlcisthenewsexy:

shylockgnomes:

rowanthestrange:

Even better string of pearls is a type of storytelling…

http://game-studies.wikia.com/wiki/String_of_Pearls

WHAAAAAAT!! “a pre-scripted, linear story interrupted by periods of player freedom” so basically an ARG.

(x)

Help.

Oh noOoOoOoOo it’s EMP going back as far as The Empty Hearse… going back to the literal “Lost Special” under Sumatra Road

OK but. Do you notice how many women are wearing pearls in S4??? Mary. Vivian. Lady Smallwood. I noticed but didn’t understand WHY I noticed…until now? Subliminal Derrening indeed.

And Mary’s wearing pearl earrings in the DVD.

Mycroft is wearing what appears to be the Black Pearl in TFP.

Vivian is wearing pearls and a brooch of the Queen’s head. Deduction time…

Oh I’m gonna vomit

I don’t know anything anymore

Sherlock: Moriarty is definitely dead and i know exactly what he’s going to do next
Narrator Voice: he did, in fact, not know what moriarty was about to do next. neither did the writers who hadn’t planned anything in advance and pulled crazy edgelord’s shutter island spin-off out of their asses as they went along

teapotsubtext:

graceebooks:

galaxyjim:

kinklock:

real-sextronaut:

kinklock:

seeing a post claiming moriarty would be a feminist like…..this is somehow more outlandish to me than usual moriarty stanning, you really gonna sit there and tell me that someone who would make a woman call herself “this stupid bitch” while she had a bomb strapped to her has the makings of a feminist, not to mention blowing an old blind lady up , but like alright, yall do you i guess ,

Okay, but he’s a terrorist,,
he’s gonna be strapping bombs to people??

i am genuinely fascinated by what you are trying to imply here

…….Are you fucking saying psychopath murders can’t be feminists holy shit.

of course psychopath murderers can’t be feminists what the fuck is wrong with you

HISTORICAL DOCUMENTS.

finalproblem:

So if you, say, had a Sherlock theory…

One about how the clown robbers in The Sign of Three had ties to Jim Moriarty and used London’s abandoned underground Mail Rail system to haul off their gold without getting caught…

And then in Series 4 clowns kept popping up…

And Jim came back for the sake of shoving in a lot of train references…

And the big final shot was John and Sherlock running out of a building named Rathbone Place…

Which is, of course, a nod to Holmes actor Basil Rathbone as well as the name of a real street in London…

But which, as the name of a large building, has only existed in recent memory as the Rathbone Place post office that was one of the few stops on the Mail Rail network…

And if the writers introduced a metaphor about demons being under roads that would be a really good and fairly literal way to describe bad guys traveling around in London’s Mail Rail tunnels…

But would be a weird-ass phrase to even come up with while writing the episode if you’re only using it to refer to someone held underground, yes, but very specifically not under any roads and especially not ones Sherlock has ever walked…

Would you be 100% satisfied that there’s really, really nothing else from earlier episodes that the writers ever plan to come back and address?


(This is, of course, a rhetorical question. So save your “yes, I would” replies. I’m obviously not done talking about this. 😉)

finalproblem:

When they have Jim make so many train references that you actually forget to include the part where he’s just saying “choo choo” over and over for several seconds in your post.


So, uh… As long as we’re here again–fun fact! The thing about Moriarty’s brother being a station master is straight out of canon:

“It shows him to be a very wealthy man. How did he acquire wealth? He is unmarried. His younger brother is a station master in the west of England. His chair is worth seven hundred a year.”

–Sherlock Holmes, The Valley of Fear

Whether Professor Moriarty’s station master brother is the same as his colonel brother, and whether both/all two/three brothers have the same name remains a point of debate.