From: David Tetzlaff (email suppressed)
Date: Mon Jan 12 2009 - 16:21:15 PST
Physical passing of people walking became a common transition device
in 'ensemble' television dramas set in institutional contexts,
starting with 'Hill Street Blues' and continuing through 'St.
Elsewhere' and 'ER'. Multiple, parallel plot lines connect and switch
without edits: the camera follows two characters walking down the
hall, one drops a narratively unimportant clipboard off at a desk,
the camera stays with the clipboard, another character picks it up,
the camera follows him into another room where he interrupts a
superior to ask a seemingly innocuous question. He leaves and the
camera stays with the superior, who we realize in the midst of some
crisis or other...
I would say that this is generally a trope of the random-ness and
'shit-happens' unpredictability of the urban experience of what the
Ehrenreichs refer to as the 'PMC' (professional-managerial class),
but certainly could be used in other thematics...
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