What are the key features of certain sub genre dramas ?

What are the key features of certain sub genre dramas ?

Crime Drama

Location

Crime drama' are often set in an urban setting within these settings scene can generally take place within police stations, law courts and crime scenes.

General Plots

Often plots revolve around a crime or a mystery the protagonist has to revolve these crimes tend to differ depending on the type of crime drama for instance a one off crime drama normally focuses on crimes that would create the most anxiety among a viewing audience for example serial killings or murder. Whereas a long running tv drama will have various sub plots over time that builds on character development for example the crime drama "The Bill featured many subplots that focused on the private lives on the police officers.

Key elements and themes

• A mystery that creates tension throughout the viewing type and hooks viewers in ( the mystery is generally established in the first opening scenes i.e  a person covered completely by the darkness murders someone).
• A resolution to said mystery.
• Questions of morality.
• The binary opposition of Good vs evil.
• Struggle in the police department.
• Corruption and betrayal.

Character stock types  

• The troubled detective- this character tends to be a brilliant mind however suffers from a flaw that is sometimes the centre of a plot and the growth of their character e.g the character Monk and his OCD or the character Sherlock and his arrogance and anti- social traits.
• The sidekick - this tends to fill the role of the detectives short comings and serves as a sort of child to the detective e.g. Watson's relationship with Sherlock Holmes in the crime drama Sherlock.
• The crooked cop - this  character tends to be a policeman who uses more unconventional ways of dealing with crime - Detective Gene Hunt in life on mars.
•  The victim -the person who is affected by the crime; these characters serve as a mechanism for the plot to continue and may have a small role in the interaction of characters.
• The criminal -the person who has committed the crime and serves as the main antagonist for the narrative.

Medical Drama

General plots 

Plots based around staff who work in a medical institution and their personal life and relationships. However many character who don't work in the medical field can also be the subject of a plot for example the medical drama causality features many plots that revolve around patients dealing with life threatening disease and implications this may have on their loved ones around them.(This saturday's synopsis of causality is a good example of themes that are conventional to medical drama's)


Themes

• Plots that centre around the medical staff's interaction with each other - two doctors struggling as a couple is very common.
•  Loss - the implications of losing a loved one in the hospital
• Pregnancy - this tends to be a theme revolving around a woman on the verge of giving birth in an awkward location and tension is created here as we see the character hurry her to the hospital
• Terminal illness' or operations- this refers to illness' such as cancer or organ transplant which if not treated right could lead to death. The drama is created here as we see characters worry about losing their loved ones or the implications of living with cancer.
• Drug addiction - the effects it has on family, friends and on us.
• Plots that revolve around the emergency department (Casualty, ER, Holby city, Casualty 1900's) 

 

Fantasy

General plots 
Fantasy drama revolve around characters dealing with supernatural situations. This dramas tend to be set in different time periods such as the medieval like world of game of thrones or depict the present day with some supernatural differences for example the drama being human is set in the modern day however in the being human mythos werewolves, vampires and ghosts are real.

 Conventions

• Mythical creatures that capture the audiences imagination- These creatures tend to be creature from well known texts such as unicorns and dragons and thus allow audiences to easily recognise and identify them.
•  Superhumans or super powers - This theme tends to feature in more modern dramas due to the sudden rise of popularity of comic book figures and themes. An example of shows that feature these themes are the us drama heroes and the UK drama misfits. This serves as escapism for viewers; giving them hope that they can one day achieve said powers featured in these shows and once they do thay can sort out their problems using these powers.
• Magic - This feature is generally used to immerse viewers in the setting and shares a similar purpose with the theme of super powers.
• Good vs evil - a key concept that allows the narritve to continue and engages viewers to see how good will ultimately triumph over evil.

  

Soap

General plots
 Soap opera narratives tend to be open ended and can cross over each other and lead into further developments. An  episode of a soap opera will generally switch between several different story lines that can occur within the same time frame these stories can link and affect one another or may run entirely independent of each other. Each episode may feature some of the show's current storylines but not always all of them. Generally around the Christmas season the years plotlines resolve with new one being conceived as an aftermath of what took place place earlier for example someone dying on Christmas day and in the new year the shows cast must deal with the fallout.

Conventions 

•  Open endings- also known as cliff hangers; aimed at retaining audiences
•  Multiple Plots and Characters - Storyline which are usually interwoven. Scenes and events move
  continuously between different characters and plots.
• Simplified and stereotypical characters - audiences can easliy identify who is who and their role.
• Domestic and social locations - House, pubs, shops and motels can offer a wide variety of situations in which character can interact in. 
•  Stories which allow moral judgement - This allows the viewer to comment on whether what the characters themselves do is right i.e. teen pregnancy and is it right to abort an unplanned child.
•  Strong Female Characters - women shown as relatively powerful either in domestic or
  professional settings e.g. Peggy Mitchel in the soap Eastenders.
• The constant illusion of real time.
• The dominance of digetic sounds .
• Stories that focus on current socail issues e.g coronation streets current storyline on the domestic abuse of men.
• The dominance of two shots and over - the shoulder shots of conversations.
• Highly symbolic costumes and set designs i.e audiences can identify peoples social status can class via the costume they wear - a man wear a suit could connote he is of wealth.    

Youth

General plot 
Youth drama often focus on problems and situations that revolve around teenagers and the youth. This range from dealing with school to gangs, sex, drug addiction and domestic issues.

Conventions

• Social issues of concern - these tend to be issues that generally affect teenagers and allow character to be much more relatable  to their viewing audience. Some social issues include teen pregnancy, crime, relationships and fitting in school.
• Domestic issues and their impact on the youth - This refers to issues such as domestic violence or divorce in the family and how they can impact teenagers. These stories can also serve as aid for teens; showing them that these situations are not uncommon.
• School setting - the school tends to serve as a setting for teen characters to interact, this is also where most of the drama is created.
• Stereotypes of teenagers - These make the character to be easily identified and allow audiences to relate to them easier.

 

Issue Based
General plot
Issue based dramas cover a wide range of topics and contraversial issues that may affect its viewership.

Themes and conventions 

• Debates on ethics and morality
• Political issues - these explore current politcal issues and sometimes political issues of the past.
• Youth issues -these tend to crossover with issues seen in youth dramas. These issues include drug addiction, relationships and teen pregnancy. However in issue based dramas these issues are treated with more care and can sometimes be less sensationalised.
•  Gender representation - the role of men and women in relationships and society. These generally depict inequality and male dominance.
• Social class divisions
• Stereotypes - this helps depict a general idea of certain demographics; these stereotypes can depict certain social groups well but others not so great. 
  

The film industry

The film industry

Production

What is the role of the producer ? What different elements does it contain? What are the four 'blocks' that Nick Powell talks about?

Producer- The person who oversees the entire film production; this includes the development of the initial idea raising money for the film, making the film and then distributing it.

This role also includes protecting the directors artisitc vision throughout and to make sure everything is possible logistically.

The idea

What makes a good script? What must it include?

What makes a good script is a good story told well to the screen.

A script must include a big idea about it; what  about it makes it significant to the writer or to audiences?

The package

What does the package involve and who is it aimed at?

What is 'script development'?

The package refers to the logistics of creating a film i.e

• Who will be in the film
• Who will direct the film
• Whats the estimated budget of the film.

The package will be aimed at potential investors and financiers to the film as well as the producer.

Script development is the act of creating, developing and editing a script. up to 12-15 re drafts is common to a script.

Attracting investment

• Who can UK film producers go to for finance?
• How many partners is typical within a film
• what is a co-production deal? Where might a UK film producer find it?
• What is the negative side of having a single investor?
• How does a UK film producer decide on the best deal for each film?

Uk film producers can see  places such as channel 4, BBC film and regional film productions for finance.

Around 3-10 partners is typical for a film.

A co-production deal is a deal in which the UK producer finds a producer from abroad to help them with there production.

The negative side for having a single investor is the said single investor can have complete control of the film.

Planning

• What's the role of the producer in planning the shooting schedule?
• Who is the directors right hand?

The role of the producer when planning the shooting schedule is to work out which scenes will be hardest to shoot.

The directors right hand is known as the cinematographer.

 

Budget 

•  What is the significance of the budget?
• How is the budget broken down?
• What are 'above' and 'below-the-line' costs?

The budget is significant to a film as it determines how much your film is going to cost in an open market.

The Budget is broken down via analysis of script - cost of actors, scenes, special effects.

Above the line cost - the creative package i.e. script, rights to the novel, creative team

Below the line cost - people who put together the shoot (cameramen).

Audience

• What question should an executive producer ask for every film?
• Why is audience so important?

Executive producers always ask the producer who will be their potential audience for their film .
Audience is important because they determine whether the pitched film will be made.

Marketing

• Why is marketing considered a hidden cost?
• What is the importance of genre in marketing?
• What is the 'Need to see' and how does it work?
• What are the significant differences between Hollywood and the UK film industry?

Marketing is considered a hidden cost as not every company thinks about it when they are formulating the budget for their film.

The importance of genre in marketing is that say if you are marketing a film that falls in the horror genre there are certain times in the year in which your film will be noticed the most and therefore make the most money for example you would release a horror film during the Halloween season, in which audiences are the mood to be scared and not really the Christmas season in which audiences are more likely to want to get into a festive mood.

The term need to see in film refers to the idea that audiences would watch a film due to names attached to it such as directors like Spielberg. Not only this but positive reviews can increase 'the need to see factor' of a film.

The difference between the Hollywood and UK film industry is that Hollywood thinks about how the are going to sell their films before it's green lit whereas the UK film industry ignores this factor after the film has been made.

What is a distributor's job?
To bring a film into the film marketplace.
Distributors acquire film by visiting film festivals and buying the rights to said film.

Marketing -where do distributors start when marketing films?
First the distributor must find the usp- the hook to market the film, genre is also important as it helps to find the right potential audience.

Target audience -Who are the most frequent cinema audience?
15-24
Students
Families

Release date- Why is it so important? Why are school holidays so popular?
Release date is important as it determines how big your audience will be i.e by releasing your film during the summer you gain a mass audience in contrast to releasing it in January in which you audience will be very niche .

School  holidays  are popular since families will be off work and will have time to take their children to the cinema producers gain a mass audience.

Film research - Why does it happen? What does it involve?
Why does it happen - to find out if a film will work financially.
It involves, test screenings and questionnaires.

Marketing budget

•  How is the budget decided upon?
• Once its estimated, what tends to be the percentage spent on marketing?

The budget is decided on by an estimate on how well the film product would do on its own in the box office.
25-30% of the budget tends to be spent on marketing.


Advertising/publicity- what three sections does this involve?
Advertising
Cost of producing the adverts
Media promotion

The Marketing campaign

• Why do distributors find it so difficult to get their message to stand out?
• What remains the most important marketing tool for a film?
• Why is synergy important?

The reason why distributors find it difficult is because of the mass competition out there.
The most important marketing tool for a film is the trailer.
Synergy is important because a film and its asserts such as its type can be easily generalised and recgonisable if done well.

The poster

• Why is poster art important? Why do they tease? What should a good poster reveal?

Poster art is important as they are the first impression of the film audiences will have.
A poster teases by depict the characters on the poster in a way which convinces audiences to watch the film.
A good film poster must reveal the the release date of the film.

The trailer

• Why is the trailer important?
• What three different types of trailer do you have?
• Why would the perfect trailer not have a voiceover?
• How is a TV trailer different?

 The trailer is important as it is the first exposure of what audiences are going to buy into when they see the film.

3 different types of trailer:
Teaser
Main
Short trailer

The perfect trailer has no voice over because the visual should carry the narrative of the trailer.

A TV spot trailer generally has more scenes in it because the film has already been finished however these trailers tend to be shorter in length.

Multimedia

•  What two basic uses can distributors make of the internet?

Creating official websites for their film.
Viral marketing - creating content that could be easily shared from one another.

PR

• How can you get free publicity for a film

  By creating editorial space on the internet, newspapers,  TV,  magazines and radio

Tracking
When are tracking figures first released? What are they tracking?
Why is word of mouth king?
How do distributors create buzz?
Why is the opening weekend's three day figure so important?

Tracking figures are released six weeks before the films release,they track how many people are aware of the film and if they are going to watch it.

Word of mouth is considered king as it determines the films reputation (bad reviews of a film equals to the possiblity of people not watching it although this isn't true in some cases).

Distributors create buzz for a film by hosting advanced screenings with the hope of gainig good word of mouth.

The opening weekend is important as it signifies if your film is going to do well or not. Your film in that cinema has to be on top of the list during the opening weekend, if its not, its not likely that it will do well in the future and may be pulled from cinema screens.

Thriller Evaluation Additions - RE POST FROM THRILLER EVALUTION POST

THIS IS A RE POST FROM MY THRILLER EVALUTION EDIT POST 

Below are edits to our thriller evaluation based on targets set for us.

 Target 1
 Explore how new media services outside of YouTube could help promote and improve (audience feedback) your product. Explain how awareness can be raised using all social media platforms.

According to the website http://video-share-review.toptenreviews.com/ sites such as Break,Metacafe, and Dailymotion would pose as the best alternatives to promoting our film in terms of achieving an audience by uploading our film to these sites free of charge. Furthermore these sites can help us achieve audience feedback since these sites allow comments from our audience. I have chosen theses sites from this website because of the fact that they are listed in the top 3 other than youtube (however i have excluded google videos entry into the list since google video has been shut down). The website goes into detail about the pros and cons for each website for instance the cons of Break.com are that it "lacks a large community, and a diverse viewer demographic." Because of this factor perhaps promoting our film and expecting feedback on this service would not be appropriate however there is still an audience and uploads are free so we would be missing out. In addition if we want detailed audience feedback we could produce a survey on questioning them about thier thoughts and feeling of our film on surveymonkey.com. we could then attach a hyperlink at the description section of our uploaded film and then direct our audiences to this hyperlink. For example we could do this via annotations on youtube. To raise awareness of our film we could target many film based forums such as total film and sfx to raise awareness by creating a post with the appropriate tags which hyperlinks to our uploaded film. We can also raise awareness by targeting media based forums as well such as the escapistmagazine.com and repeating similar steps to the film forums. I have chosen film and media based forums in particular because of the audience these platforms are directed at are a similar audience to ones we want to attract. Using  popular social media platforms such as facebook we could create a facebook page on our film which raises awareness of our film through teaser trailers i.e little clips of our film and also teaser graphics and logos which link to our film. After doing some research on facebook the cost of advertising would depend on the budget available to us and how much awareness we want to gain. Furthermore an alternative to this would be to get our post concerning our film promoted on facebook. This would mean that our post will be seen by a mass audience depending on our payment. After creating this page on facebook and gaining awareness through these promoted posts linking to said page the next step would be to post hyperlinks to our films facebook page on alternative social networking sites such as Twitter, Reddit. As well as targeting film social sites targeted at the "film lover " for example filmburner.com and openfilm.com a film social media website which also allows indie film makers to upload their films to the site, so perhaps we ccould upload teaser trailer to the site to gain more publicity as well as a link to our films facebook page.

Due to some technical difficulties with blogger anything written in orange is supposed to be written in red which means this content has been added after the initial post upload. Furthermore anything in grey is a hyperlink.

Target 2
 Explain how your product was altered in response to audience feedback.

New altered transition

When we first showcased our product to an audience feedback that was received were mainly concerns about sound, more specifically the vigilantes monologue; this feedback altered our final product we handed in. When we showed our rough cut to our audience our film featured the vigilantes monologue running throughout. The monologue was very soft and ghost like however audiences said that it was too soft and they couldn't understand him. Moreover  some felt that the monologue took away from the visuals and they ended up concentrating more on understanding him rather than watching the film and getting engaged in our narrative. In response we altered the length of the vigilantes monologue as well as re-recording some of the voices to make them more understandable. Another feedback that we recieved that change the outlook of our film subtly was the transitions between each of the animated title cards in the beginning. We were told that the transition were too sharp for such a soft and slow animation, so to resolve we decided to add a soft fade in between titles instead of a sharp cut as seen on the right.


   Target 3
Summarise ideas for the first two questions in a very concise format.

In what ways does our media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products ?

• We challenged modern day thriller convention mixing them with the more classic thriller conventions of film noir
• We looked at old films such as Out of the past for guidance for these conventions, more specifically sound; this film had some influence on the outlook of our chosen soundtrack.
• We drew from other media texts such as La confidential for influence e.g. La confidential features multiple protagonists a feature we implemented in our initially to show our narrative from different perspectives.

• The vigilantes costume   



The vigilante on the left, Rorschach in the middle, stock detective on the left

• For the vigilante we wanted to blend the thriller stock characters, the psycho and the detective into one character thus challenging genre conventions. To do this we had to conform to some genre conventions of the detective more specifically the classic noir detective with the inclusion of the trilby hat and trench coat. To make him look like a psycho we made his mask in particular look very cheap and gritty to connote this psycho character type. Not only this but we made sure that the hat and trench coat for this character weren't the typical detective trench coat hat, for instance the vigilante wears a tropical trilby hat. Through this we wanted to show how he wants to be the detective character type but he isnt quite thus developing both thriller character types of the detective and psycho by merging both looks together to create a new character type for our film. In addition the vigilantes mask also shows how he is this blend of this psycho detective character by completely covering his face thus taking away his humanity but with the hat and trench coat still allowing him to appear like a man. One character used as an influence for our costume was the character Rorschach in the thriller film watchmen a character who has similar theme to our character the rough psychotic detective.

• The detectives costume
• The detective was more conventional to the detective thriller stock type with the clean suit and tie.



The detective in our film.

•  Our media product used both the verfremdungeffekt and the helmet and nickel to present our characters to our audience more specifically the vigilante and how we could present him as a protagonist with antagonist qualities through costume by dressing him black and white, white representing the good qualities and black representing the possible evil in him.
• Finally we used many media texts outside of film such as video games like the max payne series with its kinetic graphic novel like type and La noire with its film noir like tone.

 How does your media product represent particular social groups?

•  The Region
• Our film was set in La an urban setting with several suburban areas however we live in a rural area. To represent the rural region we live in as a suburban area we used specific camera shot which gave of the illusion of such an area as seen on the right. In the shot we captured a close up shot of a shot row of houses to give off the effect of a long housing block.
• The hero - vigilante
•  We gave him a gritty and sketchy mask to portray him as a ghost like character as well as making him look like a flawed hero with the roughness of the mask. Not only this but he is also represented a strong character through deep and dark voice.
• The hero - the police/detective
• In our film the police more specifically the detective are represented as being weak as evidence by their small role in our intro as well as the fact that the detective has no speech all he does is move around slowly. This was linking with the idea of is vigilantism being favored over the police in response to the governments reform into public vigilantism.
• The victim 
• The victim of our film was a woman which is conventional in film however our film was based on a historical event in which the murder victim was a woman. On the other hand our film has fallen in the trap of women being represented in film as a narrative mechanism. A reason for why the protaginst does what he does.
•  The villian
•  we represented the villain of our media product by presenting the city itself as a villain with our high camera angles and dark shadows which depict the environment as a dark and intimidating place as seen below.