Intro to TV Drama Unit

Unit G322: Key Media Concepts (TV Drama)

Textual Analysis And Representation

Introduction To TV Drama

Aims/Objectives

1.Introduce students to the concepts of TV drama.

2.Explain the exam format.

What We Will Be Studying

The purpose of Section A of the Unit G322: Key Media Concepts paper is
to assess your media textual analysis skills and your understanding of
the concept of representation using a short unseen moving image
extract (AO1, AO2).

The examination is two hours (including 30 minutes for viewing and

making notes on the moving image extract) and you are required to
answer two compulsory questions. The unit is marked out of a total of
100, with each question marked out of 50.

There are two sections to this paper but in these lessons we will be
focusing on Section A. The two sections of the paper are:

Section A: Textual Analysis and Representation (50 marks)

Section B: Institutions and Audiences (50 marks)
Section A: Textual Analysis and Representation

In the exam you will watch an extract from an unseen TV Drama, which
will be approximately four to five minutes long. The extract will be taken
from a contemporary British one-off or series or serial drama
programme. You will then need to demonstrate textual analysis of all of
the following technical areas of moving image language and conventions
in relation to the unseen extract:

Camera Angle, Shot, Movement and Composition

Mise-en-Scène
Editing
Sound

The focus of study for Section A is the use of technical aspects of the
moving image medium to create meaning for an audience, focusing on
the creation of representations of specific social types, groups, events or
places within the extract.

Genre
Genre is a French word for ‘Type’. ‘Genre’ is a critical tool that helps us
study media texts, producers, and audience responses to texts by
dividing them into categories based on common elements.

Generic Characteristics
The aim of genre is to classify media texts based on shared
characteristics. These characteristics, which are known as generic
characteristics or generic elements, are the ingredients that make up a
particular genre. These elements fall into the following categories:

1.Typical Mise-en-scène/Visual style (iconography, props, set design,

lighting, temporal and geographic location, costume, shot types, camera
angles, special effects).

2.Typical types of Narrative (story, plots, historical setting, set pieces).

3.Themes (the underlying messages, ideas, concepts the story deals

with).
4.Generic Types/Stock Characters, i.e. typical character types (do typical
male/female roles exist, archetypes?).

TV Drama Sub-genres
A ‘sub-genre’ is where genres are subdivided into even more specific
categories. TV Drama sub-genres include:

Teen Dramas: These depend entirely on the target audience

empathising with a range of authentic characters and age-specific
situations and anxieties, e.g. Skins.

Soap Operas: These never end, convey a sense of real time and depend
entirely on audiences accepting them as ’socially realist’, e.g. Coronation
Street.

Costume Dramas: these are often intertexually linked to ‘classic’ novels

or plays and offer a set of pleasers that are very different to dramas set
in our own world contexts and times, e.g. Sharpe.

Medical/Hospital Dramas: These interplay our vicarious pleasure at

witnessing trauma and suffering on the part of patients and relatives
with a set of staff narratives that deploy sop opera conventions, e.g.
Holby City.

Police/Crime Dramas: These work in the same way as

medical/hospital dramas but we can substitute the health context for
representation of criminals and victims, e.g. The Bill.

Docu-dramas: these are set apart from the other by their attempts to
dramatise significant real events, which usually have human interest,
celebrity focus or political significance, e.g. Hamburg Cell.
task
Narrative Structure
The term ‘Narrative‘ refers to both a text’s story line and the techniques
used to tell the story.

Enigma
The word ‘Enigma’ means ‘a problem to be solved’ and dramas are all
about solving problems.

According to Cook (1985), the standard narrative structure of a drama

should have “Linearity of cause and effect within an overall trajectory of
enigma resolution”.

This sounds very complicated but basically it means that stories should
have a beginning, a middle and an end (linearity), in which something
happens (cause and effect), causing a series of problems (enigmas)
which to be solved (resolution).

Tzvetan Todorov
In ‘The Grammar of Narrative’, Tzvetan Todorov1► developed a theory of
narrative structure, which explains how stories work; basically they have
a beginning, middle and end (usually, but not necessarily in that order).

1.Equilibrium
2.Disruption
3.Disequalibrium
4.Resolution
5.New Equilibrium

Stage 1: Equilibrium
Equilibrium means balance, so the first part of a story establishes what
is normal for the world the story takes place in. It introduces the
audience to the main characters, creates a believable sense of a time
and place for the story to take place in and sets up the story.

Stage 2: Disruption
In order to create drama, this equilibrium needs to be disrupted by an
outside force, often creating an enigma. This disruption has to be fought
against in order to return to a state of normality (equilibrium).

Stage 3: Disequilbirim
The protagonist(s) recognise that a disruption has occurred and must
work to overcome the disruption, solve the enigma and return to a state
of normality. Goals are set in order to achieve a return to equilibrium.

Stage 4: Resolution
It is only possible to re-create equilibrium through action directed
against the disruption so obstacles are overcome in order to achieve a
return to equilibrium. The disruption is resolved, the damage is repaired,
the enigma is solved or the enemy is defeated.

Stage 5: Establishment Of A New Equilibrium

Everything cannot return to normal however. In the process of working
to overcome the disruption the protagonist(s) has/have changed, grown
and developed as a character(s). A new state of normality is established
but things can never be quite the way they were. Often the change is for
the better.
Stock Character Types
Different genres all have specific stock character types but all narratives
feature standard character types that are needed to tell a story.

Vladimir Propp
Vladimir Propp► in his 1928 book The Morphology Of The Folktale2
studied the narrative structure of Russian Folk Tales. Propp concluded
that regardless of the individual differences in terms of plot, characters
and settings, such narratives would share common structural features.
These features included the functions of particular character types and
these character types can be adapted to study any narrative, not just
those of fairy tales. Propp’s key character types are:

1.The Villain: the hero’s antagonist who causes a disruption.

2.The Donor: Someone who provides the hero with an essential object.

3.The Helper: Someone who helps the hero.

4.The Princess: The prize for the hero (not necessarily a person and may
be an object).

5.Her Father: The person who rewards the hero.

6.The Dispatcher: May set the hero a task.

7.The Hero: the protagonist who fights against the disruption.

8.The False Hero: a deceptive character.

Verisimilitude And Diegesis

TV Dramas need to create a sense of taking place is a believable,
realistic world. The sense of the fictional place and time the narrative
takes place in is referred to as the narrative’s diegesis.

The diegetic world the narrative takes place in also needs to appear
realistic or believable. The believability of the diegesis is referred to as
its verisimilitude (literally – the quality of appearing to be true or real).
For a story to engage us it must appear real to us as we watch it (the
diegetic effect).

The story must therefore have verisimilitude – following the rules of

continuity, temporal (time) and spatial (space) coherence etc.

Creating a believable environment in which the action can take place, is

especially important in historical dramas, such as the ◄BBC/HBO Co-
production Rome (2005), or science fiction dramas such as Dr. Who
where a believable world must be created entirely from scratch.
Action Codes
According to Tilley (1991) ‘Action Codes’ are a short hand way of
advancing a narrative. Action codes are part of the ‘Continuity Editing
System’ and are used to signal to the audience that something is about
to happen, helping the audience to predict what is going to happen next.
According to Tilley, for example, the packing of a suitcase ‘signals’
confrontation, panic or escape in a Thriller.

Action Codes are, therefore, a device by which a resolution is produced

through the action – fight scene, gun battle, car chase etc. You can see
what is going to happen (the resolution) by visual codes presented.
Narratives can be shown and developed through the action (often on the
part of the protagonist).

Useful websites

www.bbc.co.uk/drama
www.bbc.co.uk/casualty
www.bbc.co.uk/holbycit
bbc.co.uk/doctorwho
bbc.co.uk/spooks
bbc.co.uk/iplayer
channel4.com/entertainment/drama
channel4.com/4od
itv.com/drama
dubplatedrama.tv
What the Exam Spec says (You NEED to know this)

Section A: Textual Analysis and Representation

Candidates should be prepared to analyse and discuss the following:

technical aspects of the
language and conventions of the moving image medium, in relation to
the unseen moving image
extract, as appropriate to the genre and extract specified, in order to
discuss the sequence’s
representation of individuals, groups, events or places:

Camera Shots, Angle, Movement and Composition

• Shots: establishing shot, master shot, close-up, mid-shot, long shot,
wide shot, two-shot, aerial
shot, point of view shot, over the shoulder shot, and variations of these.
• Angle: high angle, low angle, canted angle.
• Movement: pan, tilt, track, dolly, crane, steadicam, hand-held, zoom,
reverse zoom.
• Composition: framing, rule of thirds, depth of field – deep and shallow
focus, focus pulls.

Editing
Includes transition of image and sound – continuity and non-continuity
systems.
• Cutting: shot/reverse shot, eyeline match, graphic match, action
match, jump cut, crosscutting,
parallel editing, cutaway; insert.
• Other transitions, dissolve, fade-in, fade-out, wipe, superimposition,
long take, short take, slow
motion, ellipsis and expansion of time, post-production, visual effects.

Sound
• Diegetic and non-diegetic sound; synchronous/asynchronous sound;
sound effects; sound
motif, sound bridge, dialogue, voiceover, mode of address/direct
address, sound mixing, sound
perspective.
• Soundtrack: score, incidental music, themes and stings, ambient
sound.

Mise-en-Scène
• Production design: location, studio, set design, costume and make-up,
properties.
• Lighting; colour design.

It is acknowledged that not every one of the above technical areas will
feature in equal measure in
any given extract. Therefore examiners are instructed to bear this in
mind when marking the
candidates’ answers and will not expect each aspect will be covered in
the same degree of detail,
but as appropriate to the extract provided and to the discussion of
representation.
Candidates should be prepared to discuss, in response to the
question, how these technical
elements create specific representations of individuals, groups,
events or places and help to
articulate specific messages and values that have social
significance. Particular areas of
representation that may be chosen are:

• Gender
• Age
• Ethnicity
• Sexuality
• Class and status
• Physical ability/disability
• Regional identity