Aziraphale's "Bait" Aesthetics in the Bastille Scene Opening Shot
I'm very late to this since it's season 1, but I'd like to talk a bit about the set-up of the Bastille scene and what it tells us, especially in the S2 context of "saving me makes him so happy."
Check out the composition of the opening shot:
In this image, we can see Aziraphale in a cell, where almost the entire area is shrouded in darkness. And he's sitting on this little stool, with a literal spotlight on him filtering in from the window.
You know how hard it is to see into the dark when you have a spotlight on you? If you've ever been on stage, yeah, it's a challenge. That chain on his wrists is long enough that he could move if he wanted. But no, he chose this exact spot to sit, even if it's terribly inconvenient, and he probably can't see shit.
You know how in an adventure movie, where there's a guy stealing some treasure from a tomb, and how there's always some golden object on a pedestal, illuminated with some mysterious light filtering in from above?
Or how in a monster movie the people trying to hunt down the monster inevitably convince someone to stand around and act like bait?
Aziraphale literally sets up this whole scene to look like bait. Not only does he just want to be rescued, he also wants maximum aesthetics for it.
Like he's just waiting for some creature to pop out of the darkness to snatch him up (he is- that's exactly the point). He doesn't need to see into the rest of the room well because he knows exactly what lurks in the darkness and he wants to look as enticing as possible.
God the whole thing is just so unnecessarily and delightfully DRAMATIC.
Snape from that one scene in Deathly Hallows 2 having main character energy as he 100% thinks to himself "God fucking dammit, Dumbledore you tricky dead bastard."
In case someone may find it useful, or just simply interesting, here's the map I made after studying Spock's quarters (TOS) for my comic.
I made some slight changes to fit my vision and it's a fact that stuff moved around and changed from one episode to another but most of it is what you see watching the show.
I simplified a little bit the amount of decor because Spock is so extra and dramatic and I love him for that but my god does he have decorations all over xD Trying to make my work a little easier when drawing the comic.
Maybe I'll make a future post pointing out the changes and references in the map if you guys are interested.