Comment
Comment by agalunar
Sure! Using "had been" rather than "(has) been" indicates that something may no longer be the case, e.g. "she's been well (and still is)" versus "she had been well (but is not necessarily still well)". So in my example
suggests that, at that point in the security footage, she might still be being watched. If the detective had said
it would additionally imply that, at that point in the security footage, she was no longer being watched (but had been). So let me rework the story a bit:
(Also, I think I falsely portrayed the universality of such a construction. Although I think some native English speakers would accept it as grammatical, many might not!)