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Vanessa Jauregui
WR 39B
Dr. Lynda Haas
May 21, 2014
Modern-Day Holmes
The Victorian era saw the start of the Industrial Revolution, which brought about a rise in
city population as well as many inventions. Among these many inventions was the printing press,
which lead to cheaper books. What this meant was that the middle class was now avidly able to
read books. Books like the mystery novellas by Conan Doyle. Doyles novellas were widely
popular within the Victorian era because of a number of reasons. One of the most prominent was
because of his character Watson, which later became a mystery genre convention. Among these
conventions, Doyles Watson as narrator was the one that led to the success of his short novels.
Doyle employed an average, middle class Victorian gentleman as the narrator of his mystery
stories that served as a sidekick to the genius Sherlock Holmes detective. Because of this, the
middle class was able to see what John Watson saw, which made the stories more relatable. As
T.J. Binyon, the author of Murder Will Out puts it, The creation of Watson was, in fact, a
stroke of genius. However outr the events he describes, the fact that they are mediated through
his prosaic, stolid personality gives them a reality and a plausibility which they would otherwise
lack (p 9-10). In other words, having Watson as narrator is key to making the Doyles short
stories more realistic and plausible to the middle class Victorian audience. Another scholar, the
authors of Theory and Practice of Classic Detective Fiction, Jerome and Ruth Delamater, talk
about the plot being a duplicitous plot because the story is first narrated as it appears to the
bewildered bystanders who observe the crime and are to some extent threatened by it but who
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cannot arrive at its solution (p 1). What he means by this is that, having Watson as narrator
allows for the mystery that is so crucial in the detective genre to be kept a mystery by telling the
story as it appears and allowing the readers to be, as the Delamaters put it, bewildered. As time
goes by, the mystery genre has evolved from the Victorian era Conan Doyle version to a more
modern, twenty first century approach. This is shown through modern shows such as BBCS
Sherlock.
To begin with, the BBC series Sherlock, no longer uses Watson as narrator. Instead, the
television series uses the camera as a narrator. In one episode titled "The Reichenbach Fall,"
shows how the camera replaces Watson as narrator. There is a scene in which Sherlock is
standing on top of a building while talking to John Watson, who stands bellow him, on the
phone. Holmes says his goodbyes to Watson and proceeds to jump off of the building to his
death. Throughout this scene, the camera did the narrating for us. The scene begins with
Sherlock Holmes walking up to the ledge of a building. The camera keeps focus on his shoes
then uses raking focus bring attention to the street bellow him where Watson is getting out of a
car. Next, we see Holmes face. The camera is focused on it, while the background is blurred out,
a method we call shallow focus. The camera then shows us Watson walking away while he
speaks frantically into the phone. All the while the dramatic music is playing. Then we once
again have raking focus, where Watsons background now becomes clear and he becomes blurry.
This is covered in an upward angle, forcing the audience to look up and see the tiny figure of
Sherlock Holmes. The scene continues on, using raking focus and shallow focus to move
between John Watson and Holmes. Then as Watson spots Holmes, a tracking shot is employed to
go around Watson. The camera keeps focusing on Watson while using pans and tilts to move the
scene up and down and from side to side. There are more shallow and raking focuses going from
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the two characters still and some more tracking shots on Watson. This continues until Sherlock
Holmes ends the conversation and prepares to jump off the building. For this scene the camera
frames Holmes right in the middle of the shot and uses a zoom shot as it moves closer to him.
Thus, Sherlock Holmes jumps. Throughout this scene, the camera was doing the narrating
instead of the classical Watson as narrator convention. The camera serves as, not only a narrator,
but also as a point of view. All of the angles and movements of the camera force the viewers to
see characters and situations a certain way. In this scene, the camera starts off with the focus on
Holmes shoes before focusing in on the street below him. By doing this the camera forces us to
see how high up Holmes is standing and lets us feel the danger he is in. The scene then proceeds
to shift from Sherlock Holmes to John Watson to keep the audience trained on the speaker. The
scene becomes all the more dramatic when Watson finally spots Holmes up on the rooftop. The
camera focuses on Watsons background, revealing the slim figure of Sherlock Holmes standing
atop a building. By having the camera angle faced up the viewer is forced to look up as well,
either in admiration or fear. The camera then uses raking focus to go around Watson. This
creates a dizzying effect that must parallel the way Watsons mind must be reeling. There is
more shifting from character to character until Sherlock prepares himself to jump. The camera
then shifts from right to left and up to down which gives the shot a shaky effect that leaves the
viewer feeling just that, shaky. Then the shot moves on to Sherlock jumping where he is the
center of it; thus, making sure that the viewers have their eyes trained on Holmes actions. And
then he jumps. At the end of the episode, however, we find that Holmes is still alive as he looks
at Watson standing in front of the grave Sherlock was supposed to have been buried in. By this
we can see that we, as the viewers, are still left out of the loop as Watson is, since we see some
of what he sees. Thus, although the camera is not the classic Watson narrator, it still makes the
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mystery genre possible since it does not reveal everything.
Although BBCs Sherlock series no longer uses Watson as narrator, it does not mean that
the camera does not condition us to think from a certain perspective. In the first episode of the
series, A Study in Pink, we can see the way John Watson reacts to Sherlock Holmes upon first
meeting. The episode starts off by showing Watsons nightmares and follows him throughout his
day, from meeting his therapist to bumping into an acquaintance. The scene I will be discussing
is the one in which he finally meets Sherlock Holmes. Watson is taken into a laboratory where he
encounters Sherlock. He is asked a bunch of questions, leaving Watson baffled by how he knows
all of this information. Then, after stating all sorts of information about Watson, Holmes takes
off. Lets now analyze the camera angles as a narrator. The scene begins with a medium long
shot, or a shot in which the characters are depicted from the waist up, in which Holmes is
standing next to Watson. He has just borrowed his phone and is standing closer to the camera. As
he is using the phone, Holmes begins to ask him peculiar questions about which war he was in.
all the while the cameras are shifting from one character to the other. This continues until Molly
walks in and hands Holmes a coffee. He takes in and moves back to his desk as the camera
travels with him. The strange questions continue and the camera shifts between the two men.
When Watson starts to get suspicious the camera drifts towards him in a zoom shot. Once again
the shots keep moving between the two characters as Holmes is getting ready to leave. As he
approaches Watson, the camera moves with him. Sherlock is making arrangements to meet up
later and the camera focuses on his face and blurs out Watsons, which is a shallow focus. As he
leaves, the camera follows Holmes part of the way out but then circles to Watson in a tracking
shot. Watson agitatedly asks if that is all. The camera then moves to Holmes, who moves away
from the door, in a tracking shot. They continue to talk and the camera moves back and forth
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between the two once again. The camera stops with Watson when he comments that they do not
know each other in a medium shot from the waist up. The camera then shifts to Holmes and
moves in slowly in a zoom shot. Holmes then begins to talk about all that he knows about
Watson. While he speaks the camera shifts back to Watson in a medium shot once again, paying
close attention to his face. Sherlock then concludes his observations makes to leave out the door.
The camera follows him until he stops and turns back to Watson with a time and place for their
meeting at which the camera uses a dramatic zoom shot to get a close up of Sherlock Holmes
face. Throughout this entire scene, the camera works as the narrator. At the beginning, by having
a medium shot with Holmes being close at the beginning of the scene, the camera brings
attention to Sherlock, rather than Watson. the camera continues to shift from character to
character during the exchange to draw attention to them both. Once Holmes starts to move, the
camera follows him, clearly keeping us enthralled in Holmes. As Sherlock continues to ask
questions and Watson gets suspicious the camera focuses on Watson so we can get a feel for how
alarmed he feels. Then when Holmes is getting ready to leave again, the camera brings our
attention to him. The camera effects keeps us enthralled with Holmes until if focuses on Watson
who has an agitated look about him, making sure we can sense Watsons frustration. Then
Holmes starts to list his deductions and the camera once again focuses on him, allowing us to see
how different Holmes is. This continues until Holmes exits. Although the camera is our narrator,
Watson also has some influence in how we see Sherlock Holmes upon our first encounter. By the
time we get to meet Sherlock Holmes, we have been with Watson since the beginning of the
episode and are, therefore, more likely to think his way. Since we, as the audience, met him first
we trust him more than the new characters. Thus, our first impression of Holmes was one of
confusion, frustration, and maybe a little bit of wonderment for his seemingly omnipotent
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powers.
To conclude, the Conan Doyle convention of Watson as narrator helped make the
mystery genre and Holmes novellas successful in the Victorian era. This convention of Watson
as narrator, however, has evolved over time to fit the twenty first century viewer. Since we are
now taking in the mystery genre though visual media, the Watson as narrator genre has been
passed down to the camera. The camera shows us what it wants us to see, and therefore, narrates
for us as Watson did for the Holmes novellas in the Victorian era.

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Works Cited
Binyon, T.J. "Murder Will Out": The Detective in Fiction. Oxford: Oxford University Press,
1989. Print.
Sherlock. Dir. Arthur Conan Doyle. Perf. Benedict Cumberbatch. BBC Worldwide ;, 2012. Film.
Sherlock Holmes. Dir. Guy Ritchie. Perf. Robert Downey Jr., Jude Law, Rachel McAdams.
Warner Home Video, 2010. Film.