#deciphersh

I edited the pic of the score for ep. 4.1 David Arnold tweeted a bit.

(1) I’m very curious about the potentital title of the piece. I don’t know, if they use the titles that will appear on the final soundtrack at this stage. And I don’t know, how title and subtitle work together. Can anybody decipher anything?

(2) On the right should be the names of the composers as we’ve seen them here. 

(3) It would be interesting to know, what instruments are used. Can anybody tell from the length of the instrument’s names?

As I’m still on (semi) hiatus, I only have a few hours to look at the script, but here is a short analysis, just looking at the structure. (You may find some helpful links from our TAB deciphering session here and here.)

Here is an example from TBB of how the layout of a script works:

Scene titles are numbered at the beginning and end of a line, written in capitals.

Scene desciptions start at the same position as the scene title.

Character names are always written in capitals.

For the dialogue the character names and the actual dialogue lines are indented at different positions.(from left and right!)

There’s a double spacing at the end of a paragraph.

Scene A

So, starting at the top a the page.  (I can’t decipher the scene numbers, so I’m going with letters instead).

As the lines are indented from the right (at least for the bottom part over two lines, single spaced, that’s certain), this is dialogue. The character names are barely visual, the first one looks like ...RY.

Scene B

Scene title at the beginning in capitals. The only sign I can read clearly is a fullstop near the end. so my guess would be: [...] . DAY. At the end of the line should be the scene number.

It follows the scene description. I think it’s three paragraphs, with two lines single spaced in the middle. Also the last sentences with the “eyes” at the end - or “ayez” as I saw some people speculating - is still part of the scene description. (So French is very unlikely). If you compare it with scene A, you can see, that the line would have to be more indented from the right for it to be dialogue.

The actual dialogue consists of five parts. I can’t make out, how many different character names there are. But what is said are only a few words. And I can’t think of very many situations where you exchange so few words. 

(It might be a short question at the beginning, then people answering. Or maybe people are giving each other directions.)

Scene C (and D)

Again we start with the scene title (and number on the right). This time it looks more like  MORNING or something like that. 

This is a scene without dialogue, so we only have the scene description here. (And the CUT TO: in the last line).

As the whole crypt sequence still doesn’t make a lot of sense to me, I need more data. So what does the telegram say that makes Holmes run off to the church?

I switched the picture and edited a bit to make it more readable. I think there are five lines in hand writing. (The rest should be the telegram template)  Not sure about how many letters in the words are and where the words start and end.

(1) ______/ ______/______/

(2) _____/ __/ ______/ __/ at (?) __ [fold]

(3) __/  _____/ ____/ __/ the (?)[fold] _ _________/ __

(4) is (?)  _ _ _ _/  Church of

(5) Do not fail (?)

Deciphering experts what do you think?

(Original in this post) 

From the read-through script page we know, that John is the narrator in this episode (or at least of the first scenes). And there was this great idea of John becoming a fiction writer and reading out loud his first attempts to Sherlock.

So the episode maybe starts with a war scene.

~~~~~

Scene 1

Battlefield. Behind the front we see doctors bandaging wounded people.

The suffering intensifies. The doctors try to save people but many die, while the ear-piercing noises of the war surround them.

The noises accumulate into one shot, which hits Watson. On Watson's face, eyes surprised and full of terror at the time. Night falls. Silence.

Scene 2

Watson leaves a train at one of London's railway stations. He struggles with a case in one hand and a cane in the other. He looks lost.

Scene 3

Watson on a different day. Again with case and cane. Piccadilly Circus.

JOHN: I was standing at the Criterion Bar, when some one tapped me on the shoulder, and turning round I recognized young Stamford.

Watson and Stamford start talking, but we cannot hear what they are saying.

Scene 4

Watson and Stamford walk down a hospital floor of Barts. They enter a laboratory and there is Sherlock Holmes, agitated with some test tubes. He looks up and at John...

HOLMES: You have been in Afghanistan, I perceive.

WATSON: How on earth did you know that?

The conversation between Holmes and Watson continues, but we cannot hear what they are saying.

JOHN (voice-over): Sherlock Holmes seemed delighted at the idea of sharing his rooms with me.

hard cut to:

Scene 5

221B Baker Street. Living room. Present.

John sits in his chair, bounded papers in his hands. Sherlock is absorbed with the crime wall over the sofa.

SHERLOCK: Dull.

Sherlock keeps starring at the crime wall.

SHERLOCK: Retelling your blog posts in a different time setting won't make them more interesting. 

JOHN: It wasn't me who wrote this!

Sherlock turns around. Looking confused.

SHERLOCK: What?? - Is Anderson gone totally mad now?

JOHN: No - it's ...

SHERLOCK: Please don't tell me Mycroft's writing his memoirs!

JOHN: Just look at it!

John hands the script to Sherlock. He reads the front page. Looks up at John. They share a meaning full look. Close-up on the front page. It says...

... written by James Moriarty

Opening Titles start playing.

~~~~~

Because I love both the ideas of John as the narrator and of Moriarty as the narrator, I'd love to see them combined! :) Solving the Moriarty(/Mary) puzzle by reading the story Moriarty wrote about John and Sherlock. I'm sure Sherlock soon would ask John to continue reading...

(original here)

I didn't get much, of course, but thanks to miadifferent I could fill som of the blanks in.

Now, 'owner' fits really well with the letters, but it could be something like 'case' or 'cover', I don't know at all.

'Sight' could also be 'night' or something similar.

After experimenting with Courier New in MS Word to recreate the layout of our script page, I discovered and understood, that the commonly used typeface Courier Final Draft (for the TBB script p.ex.) is just the optimized typeface of the screenwriting software "Final Draft"... yeah, sometimes it takes a while... BUT you can download a free 30-day-trial version (here). And so did I. ;-) [If you're interested in my final draft file for the script page to experiment with it, just send me your email address!]

As the software has default settings for scene heading, action, dialogue, parenthetical, transition etc. it's pretty cool to see how many of our assumptions are confirmed by the default setting. But of course some questions are still unanswered.

For this part the software confirmed the (V. O.). The software doesn't allow to leave a line blank. And a parenthetical line will be placed exactly where you can see it above. (Which is identitcal to our spot on the read-through page).

Now to further important information: The software doesn't use hyphenation as default. And Courier is a monospaced font which means we could theoratically draw a grid over the page and cover each letter and each space in a square.

So to recreate the layout of the second part I had to add two strokes in the third line. And there would have been enough space for four letters at the end of the third line (or one space and three letters). I assume here it's just the result of a typo (like three spaces between it and had). But this becomes more relevant to fill the gaps in the third part.

There has to be a four-letter word in the first line in the part that is covered. Perhaps something like soon?

But it gets trickier in line 2 and 3. In STUD the quote goes

I was dispatched [...] with my health irretrievably ruined, but with permission from a paternal government to spend the next nine months in attempting to improve it.

I had neither kith nor kin in England, and was therefore as free as air - or as free as an income of eleven shillings and sixpence a day will permit a man to be. Under such circumstances, I naturally gravitated to London [...].

As it looks as if the word after ruined and starts with a w I tried something like ...and was as free as air/a free man. But no combination I chose worked.

The missing phrase has to consist of at least 12 strockes (spaces included). You can start with a three-letter word in line 2, but as soon as you have a four-letter word the software will put the word in line 3 (no hyphenation), which means you're already in the 12 strockes.

Any ideas?

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