Paul and Phil Hartnoll's signature headlamp glasses remain a great visual gimmick, even if the average age of the sold-out Glasgow crowd suggests they'd just as likely strap them on to pinpoint a leak in the immersion heater as go raving.
Though Boyle's direction of "Steve Jobs" is largely invisible, he offers a neat little visual gimmick to reinforce Sorkin's tendentious view of Jobs — and of technology.
Granted, he has the great advantage of appearing with the show's most inspired visual gimmick: a set of red-eyed, dinosaur-headed creatures called Raptors, the embodiment of Fastow's debt-consuming substructures in a phantom company.
A far sillier, if just as arresting, visual gimmick came courtesy of another UK duo, Altern-8 namely Altern-8 namelye stheys of early-90s raves wearing biohazard suits and yellow gas masks.
Higher-priced 3-D tickets took another tumble, at least in the United States and Canada, as more consumers decided the visual gimmick was not worth paying a $2 to $5 premium per ticket.
And its answer to the conundrum of how to make a mark in a city mobbed with restaurants and bars is the high concept of mingling Thai cuisine and a nautical theme with just about any other visual gimmick it can muster.
Perhaps the most charming visual gimmick has been the Empire State Building's real-time display of CNN's projections in "Romney red" and "Obama blue".
The visual gimmick may be the most interesting thing about the film, which otherwise has the studied archness of an over-reaching play (the script is by Gabrielle Zevin).
Still, the archive footage capturing the astonishingly technical raps of Ellay Khule or the melodic abstractions of Myka Nyne is gripping, and justifies this film's only visual gimmick: During certain performances, the lyrics burst onto the screen in big block letters, in time with the song, as if even the typographer can't quite believe what's being said, and how.
