first lesson on TV Drama

1. Television doesn't make
programmes, it creates
audiences
(Jean-Luc Goddard)
INTRODUCTION TO TV DRAMA

2. Exam - G322 Key Concepts in Media

Your exam will be in two sections

Section A - Textual Analysis 50 marks

Section B - Institution and Audiences 50 marks

The exam will be 2 hours long with 30 minutes for viewing and taking notes.

The clip you view will be unseen

3. Section A

You will complete a textual analysis of a TV Drama clip

Exploring a variety of technical aspects of the language and conventions
of the moving image.

This will be linked to a discussion of representation within the sequence:

Camera angle,Shot, Movement and Composition

Mise-en-scene

Editing

Sound

4. Section B

One compulsory question based on a case study of a specific media
industry

You will need to know contemporary institutional processes of
production, distribution, marketing and exchange/exhibition at a
local, national or international level as well as British audiences' reception
and consumption.

There will be some emphasis on your own experience of being an
audience member.

5. TV Drama Schedule

On each card write down TV Drama's you know

Then put them into categories and label them

How have you decided to group them and why?

6. TV Drama Sub Genre
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.

7. Representation

Identify groups that are represented

8. EEE! What's happening?

15. Pictionary

16. Homework - Chinese Whispers

Watch any TV Drama

Make notes on 3 minutes of it

What is the genre of your chosen drama and how does the:

mise-en-scene

location/setting

camera angles, shot, movement

sound

editing


tell you this, we should be able to even guess what the TV Drama is.
You will tell another student this information and they will share with the class. This is saving
you from doing a 500 word essay!!