Transformative Text is taking over TAMUT with a different staff or faculty member every week bringing forth any form of text that has shaped their own perspective. Dr. Drew Morton, Professor of Mass Communication looked beyond just a book and delivered a new approach and brought in the 1998 film “Out of Sight.” Morton says, “this is one of the first movies where I started thinking less about plot and more about narrative.” He broke down the structural makeup of the film.

            Dr. Morton compared the film layout of “Out of Sight” to other movies he is fascinated by like “Reservoir Dogs” and “Pulp Fiction” all written by Quentin Tarantino. He elaborates on how the use of flashbacks delivered a unique understanding about the characters in the film and why the power narration stood out.

First, looking into the narrative side of the film, during the lecture Morton showed a scene where conversation made everything a thousand times better. Picture a beautiful cop (Jennifer Lopez) and charming jailbird (George Clooney) stuck in the trunk of a car together. With tension of discomfort high, there is also a sense of sexual desire on the rise. Morton says, “they kind of have this icy relationship at first where she’s kind of teasing him but then they start to get more warmer.” Their conversations began to sound like they’ve known each other for years and the scene does a great job giving that feeling from cop and criminal to the love connection.

Dr. Morton continued to break down the film’s layout with one of the best scenes! We see a Jennifer Lopez and George Clooney character sitting down enjoying each other’s company over a drink. At this point they know they need each other like a car needs gas. The soft music, snow falling in the background, and abstract lighting all created this mood of sexiness with an old “Hollywood approach.” But it was done to the point of not overdoing it for the audience. As the time come to hit it off the director takes a different turn using subtle flashbacks. Throughout the flashback there are freeze frame moments where “the filmmaker uses that as a marker to constantly tell you this is not in the correct order but at a different moments in time,” Dr. Morton says. The director takes each physical touch and eye contact given as a moment to cut back and forth from the past to present.

So now it has to be understood that the timeline is caught up at this point. Morton explains it as a “Double Indemnity” where the resolution is exposed in the end and everything else is a flashback but in this film half is a flashback and the end is unknown! “Then you kind of care a lot more about these characters coming into that moment,” Dr. Morton said. But since the conversation between the two was so smooth in the scene and the amount of confidence they gave led up to in Dr. Morton words “the sexiest scene I’ve ever seen in a movie,” and yet it doesn’t hardly show anything!