4. TODOROV’S THEORY OF EQUILIBRIUM
• Equilibrium: extreme long shots, setting environment
• Disequilibrium:
• New equilibrium:
5. REPRESENTATION
(EPISODE 1: OPENING SEQUENCE)
• Representation of older men: Teacher, intelligent (omnipotent & omniscient),
white, middle class.
• Attenborough is made to appear like a God-like figure, whether he, himself wrote
the script he is the trusted source of knowledge that the audience are supposed
to trust, like a grandparent.
6. MARKETING AND PROMOTION
• Trailers & teasers released a month before first episode.
• The BBC have a “back to school” vibe where all the programmes that are deemed
to be big are aired at the same time.
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-pdlqV4fo68
• The BBC YouTube has also released series of clips from the first episode before
airing the show, for example the scene where the bird is eaten by a fish
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ANxlmqF0wj8
7. • The series has had a lot of attention from all big newspaper companies including
the Guardian, Telegraph, Times, Radio Times
• The series has even had an affect on the government, UK Environment Secretary
Michael Gove announced a 25 year plan to improve the environment. It has been
said that the programme had “haunted” Gove
• This way of bandwagoning is used as tactic, since Attenborough is so highly
admired
• https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2017/dec/19/michael-gove-haunted-
by-plastic-pollution-seen-in-blue-planet-ii
• The programme has been nominated as the best programme in 2017 by TV
critics.
8.
9. DISTRIBUTION
• The programme is available on BBC iPlayer, YouTube and is due to be released on
DVD
• It has also been announced to be added on the Netflix & distributed in the USA
10. INDUSTRY REGULATION
• The official regulator of the TV industry are OfCom
• They take care of any official complaints towards programmes, including Watershed
etc
• Other platforms where the majority of non-official complaints are made is Twitter and
other social media platforms
• One of the main complaints to the programme is the scenario revolving the plastic
yellow ducks that were purposely dumped in the sea back in 1992 by the BBC. Which
viewers and critics stated was a contradiction because the programme made a point
about reserving the ocean
11. GLOBAL APPEAL
• Non-UK audiences can access BBC content via the internet, apparently that the
appeal for the show was so high in China that it apparently slowed the internet
down
• Mainly European countries have shown a key interest in the programme, even
America, who are known to highly respect the BBC will launch it.
• Global access is vital to the BBC because it’s main aims is to educate and
influence it’s audiences. It is a publicly owned company therefore it must be
diverse and as impartial as possible.
12. AUDIENCE PROFILING/ TARGETING
• Main trailer:
• Codes that offer promises of quality: Dramatic music, high quality footage/
editing, produced by BBC, voiceover of Attenborough, the fact that it’s a sequel.
• Codes that offer promises of genre: Variation of species of ocean life, BBC Logo,
Attenborough’s voiceover, sequel to Blue Planet.
• Codes that offer promises of narrative: The changes between species featured
and the variation of location (coral reef, deep down, surface of the waves)
13. AUDIENCE POSITIONING/ RESPONSES
(EPISODE 2: INTO THE DEEP)
• The application of extra sections that include the way in which some scenes are
filmed add reality to the documentary. Instead of not knowing how a sequence is
made, the audience are shown the complexity of getting the footage.
• If anything, it creates more trust on the audience’s behalf because it shows that
there is no sham in hiding the lengthy process of making the episode.
• It is likely that the producers are choosing to move their audience from the
preferred rading position to a negotiated position. Before that footage, the
audience probably never considered how it was made, now they understand how
much time, money & effort it took, they’re more likely to think about it and
maybe appreciate it.
