OMG! The beginning of Broken is a RED HERRING!

OMG! I am rolling on the floor in laughter!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! The writers PRANKED US! No joking…for real!!! The real Neal Cassady was part of the Merry Pranksters and the writers PRANKED all of us!!! We’ve been Hooked…we’ve been Tagged (your IT)…and OMG we’ve all kissed the Blarney Stone! How does it feel to be one of the ones who flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest!

Do you guys rememberthe picture of the fish hanging on Gold's wall in the Once facebook game and the huge fish that were backstage at the debate? That type of fish is a RED HERRING and we bit the hook (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_herring) ! This has got to be the funniest thing I’ve experienced in a long time. You know ALL those promo shots they released of them all lifting their mugs and laughing…I’m pretty sure they are all telling us CHEERS!

To read about the original Merry Pranksters click on the link below.
http://www.sirbacon.org/4membersonly/kesey.htm

I figured out the prank when I was writing the post below. I’ll go ahead and leave the post as it was originally written. But the short version is that the first few minutes of Broken are a Red Herring…they are not about Neal Cassidy going around Manhattan…rather they are about Neal Cassidy, who is most likely a film student and the first few minutes of Broken are a type of Sight and Sound Filming project. Yes, if you look carefully you can see the reflection of the handheld camera man/student/crew. Watch the shadows…listen to the sound effects…check the continuity…uh huh…this has all the hallmarks of an undergraduate film project. And if you have time, go back and watch the second episode of season one, “The Thing You Love the Most” and watch Emma and Henry as they walk through Storybrooke, continuity, oh my, double speak, oh my…yep, they’ve been planning this prank for a long time. By the way…the original Pranksters liked to call it MadHattan…and these new Pranksters…well, we followed them right down that rabbit hole. 😀

my original post:
I don’t think the beginning of Broken is about Neal Cassidy at all…at least not how we have been thinking about him. Rather, I think Neal was part of a filmmaking project and everything we saw up to the point where the bird delivered the post card was part of a project assignment. Yes…it looks like Neal is a film student and he was making a short visual film.

The first part of Broken (Neal’s part) was most likely an assignment for a class like NYU’s Sight and Sound Filmmaking class! I think the entire beginning of Broken is not… Neal going around the city…but rather, Neal being filmed by fellow students for this project! I know this is out there but hang in there with me…I think by the end you might agree.

You know how we have all been tracing his path all over the city and he jumps around from one point to the next…and none of them really fit with each other…he is all over the place. Well that is the continuity part of the project. And then there are the sound effects. From the very beginning of the first shot of the horse at Central Park, there are sound effects that don’t match up with anything (especially noticable if you listen to this part through headphones). And there are visual problems. There is thunder but there is not any lightening etc. The subway continuity is virtually non existent. Then there are shadow problems. In his apartment, when we see a shot of him by the door, there are strong shadows behind him…yet when he is by the window there are shadows in front of him. The people who make Once Upon a Time are so good…there is no way all of this is accidental…the continuity errors…reflected shots…etc…they are all purposeful. The whole thing seems to indicate that Neal is in an undergraduate film class and this is a film project!

Want more proof? There are clues sprinkled everywhere.

First of all you can see the reflection of the people working with him on the project. In the real NYU Sight and Sound Filmmaking class they work in teams of four. When the N train passes Neal you can see the reflection of the person filming him and then again, inside the subway car you can see the reflection of the person filming him and a total of three people in the reflection.

[attachment=0:2cm6qo9l]neal subway reflection.png[/attachment:2cm6qo9l]
[attachment=1:2cm6qo9l]neal train reflection.png[/attachment:2cm6qo9l]

Second…This whole thing is foreshadowed in the second episode of Season One’s, “The Thing you Love the Most.” Somewhere I read an article about someone tracing the route that Emma and Henry take when they are walking through the town talking about Operation Cobra (the scene where Henry throws the apple behind him). Their path made no sense…there are major continuity errors through the entire thing. This is the same clip where you can see the clock tower in the reflection of the store windows…but there is not a clock on top of the clock tower. http://ouatv1.blogspot.com/2011/12/continuity-error-goofs.html This was all purposeful! How funny…what a trick has been played on us. 😀

Another thing that is very interesting. When Henry and Emma are walking they pass in front of a couple of green boxes that are on a store shelf. These are polecams…cameras that are mounted on traffic poles. When Neal walked out of central park he walked right by a pole cam. We also had a hint way back when David woke up and disappeared from the hospital. Remember when they were in the security room and they were looking at the security footage. They realized that they were looking at the wrong film because there were not any of the banners that Mary Margaret’s class had made for the hospital patients. Get it…they noticed a continuity error in the security film. These guys are so clever!

Here is a description of the real New York University, Sound & Light Filmmaking class:

Sight & Sound: Filmmaking
FMTV-UT.0043 Studio 6 Credits

Course Level: Fundamental

Course is not repeatable.
Prerequisite: Sophomore status.

Students should not schedule any other course on the same days as Sight & Sound Filmmaking, FMTV-UT 43.

Sophomore-level students are required to take this course as a prerequisite for any upper-level film production courses.

Every student will conceive, produce, direct and edit five short projects (3 silent and 2 with sound) using digital filmmaking technology. Working in crews of four, students will be exposed to a variety of specific assignments in visual storytelling that feature a broad spectrum of technical, aesthetic, craft and logistical problems to be solved. Collaborating with other students through rotating crew positions will be a central focus of all production work. Lectures, labs, critiques, technical seminars, screenings and written production books will be an important component of this class. All student work is screened and discussed in class

I watched other (real) NYU Sight and Sound short visual film projects. Here are a few…
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mo8IsI6mrCE
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h_yCYj23Jho

So now, the question for me is…was the bird with the postcard for real…or was it part of Neal’s film. Let’s assume that the bird with the postcard is not part of Neal’s script and has unexpectedly arrived on Neal’s window sill as he is acting in this project. The look on his face when he very first sees the bird (before he sees the post card) is priceless. It’s like, what in the heck are you doing here?

I remember hearing the writers emphasize the question…What is Neal doing in New York? I knew then that there must be a way to figure out what specifically he was doing. Now, I think I get it….he is a film student or at the very least participating in a filming project.

There have been other clues as well…lots of talk about seeing reflections…classic camera shots reproduced such as the Dolly Zoom Camera Effect. ( http://ouat.roneyzone.com/ouat-dolly-zoom-camera-effect/ ) Lots of reflection camera shots (art work at Jefferson’s house, office when Sidney and Emma are looking over Regina’s files…shot of Regina looking in the mirror and holding up the Once Upon a Time book) These are film making tools and the reflection shots were pointing us to the clue of the filmers reflections at the subway…yes…they got us! Things were not as they seemed! OUT spells out! Wow….the writers of this show are wizards and we all played right into their hands. 😀