1. TEXTUAL ANALYSIS OF TV DRAMA.
WHAT IS ANALYSIS?
A detailed examination of the elements or structure of something, typically as a basis for
discussion or interpretation.
All analysis gets beyond mere description and into examination and explanation.
To analyse something is to ask what that something means.
Analysis in Practical work:
In practical coursework the following questions help you to analyse your own work:
What you did? Give specific examples
Why you did it and the response you were hoping it would provoke for the audience.
Analysis in Exam Units:
In television drama, when analysing you could ask the following sub-questions:
How it was constructed using the individual micro-elements?
Which details seem significant, why?
What is the significance of a particular detail, what does it mean?
Why those micro-elements were used in that way, refer to specific examples?
What impressions does it create regarding the representational area?
How might the audience interpret it?
Tips to becoming better at analysis:
1. Suspend judgement - Seek to understand it before thinking about how you feel about it,
whether you like it or not.
2. Define significant parts and how they are related – look at each technical microelement
separately but also consider how they work together to form a larger impression of
characters, setting and genre. Be detailed and specific in your analysis, avoid generalisations.
3. But do consider how these parts work together as a whole to help you understand the
meaning? You should consider what the producer was trying to suggest about the
representational area.
4. Consider what the producer is implying by the technical decisions they have made. The term
implication is used to refer to something that the material suggests. For example, why did
they choose to put a shot of a fist fight in a pub cut against a shot of a woman arriving on a
plane? It could imply or suggest that these two characters are very different and the choice
to intercut footage of them both doing very different activities and looking very different
illustrates that point.
5. Practise makes perfect! It is a high level skill and you won’t necessarily be brilliant at it
overnight. We will be looking at lots of examples of analysis to help your understanding and
development.