‘Pretty Little Liars’: A microhistory of film and TV texting

When television & movies entered the 21st Century, a new filmmaking issue began to arise: mobile phones were suddenly in everyone’s pockets. Now there was a new concept where everyone was instantaneously connected.

For filmmakers, cutting to a phone screen and back was not visually appealing. An ugly, glaring screen breaks the immersion of the viewer – especially in tense scenes – and disrupts the natural flow of editing. Often, the name of the person calling or the text message itself would need to be increased in order to remain readable.

In recent years, a simple solution has emerged. Shows like House of Cards & Sherlock have adopted a new format that looks to become universal. Instead of a distracting cut to a phone shot, the text words appear cleanly on the screen. Any number of stylistic choices can embellish this technique, but Sherlock’s simple white text is perhaps the definitive solution. However, it wasn’t always this easy.

Pretty Little Liars

As one of the first drama shows that tried to utilize texting in a big way, this slick & sexy teen thriller was eventually bloated with all sorts of troubling contrivances and plot convolutions, and its approach to the frequent texting didn’t help.

The show’s amateur teenage sleuths were frequently harassed by troubling texts from the mysterious Mr. A, but most of its potential for suspense was squandered by quick cuts between a bright screen and its actresses – a misstep that should have taken a leaf out of Sherlock’s book.