Television Drama

What is Television Drama?
A series on televisions thats content is scripted and normally fictional. This excludes, for example, sports, news, reality and game. Usually has recurring actors and often a running story line. Typically explores real life situations in a fixed setting such as a street or village.
What are the key conventions of a television drama?
Real life situations, story lines we can relate to, normally "goodies and baddies", character relationships, appropriate mise en scene and a fixed setting.
Television dramas:
Hollyoaks
Skins
Coronation street
Neighbours
Eastenders
Home and Away
CSI
Without a trace
The Bill
The IT Crowd
Peep Show
Two ways in which CSI and Hollyoaks are similar:
They both have staring characters that continue through episodes, they also both have set scenes(Hollyoaks in Hollyoaks and CSI either in Miami or something or in the crime labs)
Two ways in which CSI and Hollyoaks are different:
CSI is more educational and has situations you wouldn't usually yourself come across, whereas hollyoaks has more down to earth situations(generally) such as relationships. CSI generally has a much darker miss en scene and stronger plot lines, the plot lines are also usually contained in one episode, whereas in Hollyoaks the same story can be going on for weeks.

Discuss the ways mood is represented in the clip:
Mise en scene
The mood is tense and theres a lot of emotions, perhaps sadness and anger. There's lots of clips of people standing very far apart from the father in particular, when the father is talking to the son he is kept in the doorway, also when he is talking to the mother he is again in the doorway, this shows segregation form the rest of the family.The shaky hands shows anger, the darkness of the rooms makes the whole scene looks smaller and even more miserable. The facial expression from the mum and dad is particular is very "rabbit in head lights" they are both keeping their eyes very wide and they're not blinking, this, for the woman especially, is to fight back the tears, you can see the "glaze" of tears in her eyes. The father finds it very hard to make eye contact with the woman however she is staring him straight in the eyes in a very confrontational way. When he tells her about "everything" he did she had to avert her eyes in a very "disgusted" way. When the father is talking to luke, luke can't bear to look at his father, this just confirms the segregation element of the scene. The make-up is very subtle, the woman is not wearing a lot and is looking pale and washed out. The urn-natural lighting in the house creates shadows that make it a lot more intense. The outfits all of the characters are wearing are very "typical and normal" theres nothing particularly special about them, the only thing we could pick up on is the dull colours used, this helps to create the negative mood. There are no props used in the setting, non that are particularly significant.
Sounds
The contrast of the screaming and shouting at the beginning of the scene when the father is chasing the son up the stairs helps to create the tension as the loudness/quietness contrast is very sudden.The phone ringing breaks the very tense situation, however it also creates it as well. The lack of music in the scenes make the awkward silences a lot worse. The lack of sounds in the scene helps the audience to concentrate on the dialogue, also we can hear the breathing of the characters which creates a very tense atmosphere.
Camera Work
The use of shot reverse shot is very important in this scene, there is a lot of conversation between he mother and father, in order to see both reactions they use the shot reverse shot technique. Typically they zoom in on the mans face when he is talking to see his intense expressions, however when the woman is talking there is a slightly longer shot and you can she the upper half of the man in silhouette form. This camera work lasts the majority of the scene. As it comes to the end of the talk between mother and father the shots are getting closer and closer to the faces. Upstairs however when the father is talking to luke they use mainly long shots, this help create the distance between them, although there are occasional shots of Lukes face really to help express his emotions. The closing scene when the father is looking at the mother they use the longest shot, this helps show distance again of the father and his family.
Editing
The shots are quite choppy, there's no active shot transitions in the scene, the clips are all relatively similar in terms of the way they are set out, they use the rule of thirds in all shots. There are no dramatic effects in the scene, in fact there are no effects, it is quite a natural which affirms the fact it's a television drama as all elements of the clip is "normal", even the angles of the camera are from the other characters perspective, the camera is slightly under he man and the camera is slightly above the woman.

The different levels of textual analysis
Basic
-A basic understand of what has happened in the scene
-Knowledge of the 4 elements you need to examine
Proficient
-A general break up of the elements in the scene
-A detailed description of the 4 elements and what they are doing to the scene
Excellent
-A detailed examination of the 4 elements, what they're doing to the scene and what they could be creating mood etc.
-Elaborate, specific, technical language and detailed answers, references and ideas of our own.

Discuss ways in which mood is represented in the clip
There are many elements in the scene which help to represent mood. Mise en scene is always a clear choice to examine when looking at a media piece. The miss en scene helps to not only create mood but to also change it at key points. In this scene there are many issues that are emphasised due to the miss en scene,however it's not just the mise en scene but a combination of sounds, camera work and editing that create the overall piece. Theres an obvious tense situation when we first look at the scene, beginning with the loud shouting between the Luke and his father, it's a very cluttered scene; there's a mixture of shouts from both people, a jumble of limbs as they clamber up the stairs and also they very "unnatural" lighting in the hall way. This is general can be seen to be expressing an angry emotion, the scene then develops and the emotions become more complex.
The contrast of loud shouting to extreme silence helps to create a very tense situation, the positioning of the characters is also very key, there is the mother and the girl on one side of the room and the father quite obviously distant on the other side of the room. The unnatural lighting of the living room is helping illuminate the mother and also to make a more sinister shadow to her. The camera is slightly looking down on the mother as if we were looking at her from the fathers point of view. The body language of the girl is quite relaxed which is very different to that of the mothers who is standing up right and staring straight forwards. The "two sides" of characters helps to show separation between the two, this is almost foreshadowing the conversation that is to come, a very "sided" argument. The tense mood is broken by a very high pitched telephone ring, this almost makes the audience feel a little more relaxed, however it's short lived as the rudeness of the father on the phone and the bringing back on the silence just makes the atmosphere even more awkward and tense than before.The lack of music in the scene emphasises how awkward the moments actually are.
The movement of the camera to focus on the hand of the mother elaborates the importance, we see her hand shaking quite violently, this is clear expression of anger and perhaps even of sadness. The awkward mood created i personally feel is almost of sadness, however looking at the father i think it is almost a feeling of guilt.
The use of shot reverse shot is very important in this scene, there is a lot of conversation between he mother and father, in order to see both reactions they use the shot reverse shot technique. Typically they zoom in on the mans face when he is talking to see his intense expressions, however when the woman is talking there is a slightly longer shot and you can she the upper half of the man in silhouette form. This camera work lasts the majority of the scene. I feel it helps us to see "both sides of the argument", the mood is tense enough but the facial expression e are able to see help to clarify how both characters are actually feeling( in the womanise case mainly anger and disgust but in the mans case sadness and guilt). The combination of the two characters creates a very complicated mood.
The shots are quite choppy, there's no active shot transitions in the scene, the clips are all relatively similar in terms of the way they are set out, they use the rule of thirds in all shots. The choppy shots create a very cluttered, indecisive mood between the couple.
The darkness of the rooms makes the whole scene looks smaller and even more miserable. The facial expression from the mum and dad is particular is very "rabbit in head lights" they are both keeping their eyes very wide and they're not blinking, this, for the woman especially, is to fight back the tears, you can see the "glaze" of tears in her eyes. The father finds it very hard to make eye contact with the woman however she is staring him straight in the eyes in a very confrontational way. When he tells her about "everything" he did she had to avert her eyes in a very "disgusted" way.
The general mise en scene of all scenes is very plain and normal, the dark colours represent the dark situation and the tone of voice and lack of sound effects create the tension. The lack of sounds in the scene helps the audience to concentrate on the dialogue, also we can hear the breathing of the characters which creates a very tense atmosphere.
When the setting changes from the living room to Lukes bedroom the mood also changes again,When the father is talking to luke, luke can't bear to look at his father, this just confirms the segregation element of the scene.when the father is talking to luke they use mainly long shots, this help create the distance between them, although there are occasional shots of Lukes face really to help express his emotions. The closing scene when the father is looking at the mother they use the longest shot, this helps show distance again of the father and his family.There are no dramatic effects in the scene, in fact there are no effects, it is quite a natural which affirms the fact it's a television drama as all elements of the clip is "normal", even the angles of the camera are from the other characters perspective, the camera is slightly under he man and the camera is slightly above the woman.