Monday 19 January 2015

Understand the Features of Single Camera Production

James Minns                         Unit 22: Single Camera Techniques                                 

01163523           Task 1: understand the features of single camera production


Understand the features of single camera production

For this area of the blog, I will explain and demonstrate my understanding of some of the key features that make a single camera production.  To do this, I will pick two single camera productions that have been viewed on the television for audiences to watch.  The two programmes I will be demonstrating on are The Walking Dead and Sherlock. 


Formats

First off, there are 3 different formats to a single camera production.  These 3 formats are as follows:

·         Series
·         Serial
·         Single Drama

When in a television production, the series format are about different stories on each episode.  For example of a series format is Midsomer Murders where each episode is about a different murder case.  


“Midsomer Murders” – Main protagonists. DCI Tom Barnaby (right) & DS Gavin Troy (left). 1

A serial format in a television production is about the same story throughout the episodes.  An example of this is Breaking Bad where each episode is following on the story from the previous episode. 


“Breaking Bad” – Main protagonists. Jesse Pinkman (left) & Walter White (right)2

A single drama format on the television is a one off event or programme that doesn't have more than 1 episode.  It can be classed as a short film.  An example of this is Channel 4’s Cyberbully staring Maisie Williams from Game of Thrones.  It tells the story of a young girl being targeted at by a cyber-stalker. 



 “Breaking Bad” – Main protagonists. Jesse Pinkman (left) & Walter White (right)2

Genre

For each programme and their formats, they will have a main genre, and sub-genres.  For example, in Breaking Bad (pictured above), the main genres for it are crime and thriller as the storyline tells the audience about a dying man and his schemes to get rich quick.  Breaking Bad’s sub-genres are such as comedy, drama, and action. 



SHERLOCK (2010 – current)

The television programme Sherlock is showed on BBC 1 and tells the story about the mysterious Sherlock Holmes and his partner John Watson. 

Each episode is about a different crime and how Sherlock and John can solve the crime, usually within a limited time.  It shows how he perceives the “boring” world and how the world perceives him and his strange nature.

Formats & Genre

Sherlock is a series formatted programme.  It shows each episode a new case however, they are all usually connected somehow, but the majority of each episode is about individual people and cases and locations. 

Its main genres are: crime, drama, and mystery and it also hold sub-genres such as comedy aspects in his wittiness, and also adventure as it shows him travelling to locations attempting to get to the bottom of each case. 


BBC’s “Sherlock”.  Main protagonists Sherlock Holmes (left) and John Watson (right).4


Narrative structure

Each episode of Sherlock is different and also the narrative changes during each episode, however the actual narrative structure remains the same, especially about how the story is moved forward and from what the audience can expect from the storyline and the characters adaptation to each scenario.

Each narrative structure regarding the storyline is roughly the same throughout each episode.  The story starts off with an introduction to Sherlock, mainly by doing something abnormal, then he is introduced to a new case by his friend John Watson, and then they research about the case and find the culprit.  However, there are elements of Sherlock being a serial programme as each case is linked to a sub-plot.

A narrative structure that Sherlock holds is that it is an anti-realist programme.  It is based in London, and although some places in London are rough and a bit of crime goes on there, same as in any city, there are not always murders that happen and are as common and frequent as Sherlock brings it out to be.  It also shows the police station giving full access to confidential and sensitive information to a civilian (Sherlock).  This makes it anti-realistic as police wouldn’t do that in real life.  And although life is a dramatic thing, it certainly isn’t as dramatic as Sherlock brings it out to be. 

BBC’s Sherlock is a mixture between open and closed narrative structure.  The 1st episode of season 1 shows John and his life before he met Sherlock.  It explains what his life was like before, so that the audience can relate and feel more personal to him.  However, when he meets Sherlock, Sherlock isn’t really explained to give him more of the mysterious feel so the audience love him, but they still aren’t sure about him.  Throughout each episode, it doesn’t introduce each character again and their connections with each other, therefore the programme assumes that the audience knows who they are and what they do and what they do to the plot.  Therefore, this gives Sherlock a mixture between being an open storyline and a closed one. 

Technical

For the technical part of the blog, I will explain about how the director moves the story forward to capture the attention of the audience.  For this analysis on Sherlock, I will pick the introduction to Episode 2 “The Blind Banker” in Season 1.

The scene starts off with a hand picking out tea leaves and sprinkling a handful into a brown ceramic tea pot.  The hand we see appears to be of a female complexion therefore we, the audience, can assume that the person making tea is a woman.  The woman then pours hot water from a kettle into the tea pot.  Her actions are rather slow and calm.  There is non-diagetic music playing in the background, of an Asian theme.  This gives the impression that the woman may be of an Asian ethnicity.  We know this without even seeing her face.  The camera angles used only show her hands, so this gives an element of mystery.  Mystery is a genre of Sherlock so already, this supports that.  This is all within the first 10 seconds of the episode. 

After 10 seconds, we see a face of a young girl watching the woman as she pours the water into the tea pot.  The woman starts talking.  She is speaking British English, but has an Asian accent.  Again, this supports the impression that the woman is Asian, but we still don’t know what she looks like.  The woman starts to explain about how a teapot is kept in perfect condition after it being 400 years old.  The camera is following the teapots and the other ceramic pottery whilst she is explaining this to the young girl.  The young girl is concentrating and watching the pottery and the woman explains the process to her.  The camera then goes from the woman’s hand and follows her arm up to her face.  Here we see the face of the woman that has been talking about these pottery pieces.  The camera comes out to give an establishing shot, a location shot.  We can see that she is sitting down in the middle of a room, surrounded by watchers.  The mise-en-scene in this shot is very accurate and we can see that there are glass cases and pictures and ornaments on the walls.  From this, we can see that they are all in a museum and can therefore conclude that the Asian woman works there.  

In the next scene, same location, there has been a slight passage in time.  We see the Asian woman brushes the pottery delicately as a man, hands in pockets, walks up behind her.  They are both employees and we can see this by their I.D cards on their clothing.  An overhead tannoy speaker plays “this museum will be closing in 10 minutes”.  This gives us solid support in the mise-en-scene saying that they are in a museum, although we haven’t been told this until just now. 

After the two employees are talking, the woman walks into the back areas of the museum to put some things away before finishing her shift.  She is all alone and she knows this, but she isn’t worries, therefore we can assume that this is normal, and that she is usually the last person to leave.  This tells us a lot about this character, and that she takes pride in her work and she enjoys it.  Suddenly, she hears a noise.  She jumps slightly; she asks aloud “is there security?”  She is scared.  From this, we can gather that this isn’t normal.  A non-diagetic sharp noise is played giving the audience an eerie feel.  Again, another non-diagetic sound as violins play sharp, short, horrible noises.  Immediately, the audience doesn’t feel comfortable anymore.  As we know this to be a Sherlock programme, we can gather that she maybe the victim on this new case, but we can’t be sure.  She walks slowly towards the exit and looks around the corner.  “Hello?” she asks, her voice breaking slightly.  She is feeling the uncomfortableness.  She turns to see a white sheet that is covering what appears to be a statue.  The camera shows this from a far, as to not give too much detail away, so what the object is is a mystery.  This makes the audience feel as if they are in the same room with the character and they are just as scared as she is.  She walks towards the statue slowly and quietly.  She stops in front of it and pulls back the sheet.  Her face goes pale and her eyes widen.  She is stunned and petrified, but the audience only sees her facial reaction, and not what she is petrified about.  The main introduction credits role to Sherlock’s theme.  This 3 minute introduction tells us about the basics of the new case and what Sherlock must solve.  By not seeing the object, it gives the element of mystery again, which is what Sherlock is all about.  This moves the story forward. 

The editing throughout this 3 minute scene alters between the time passages.  For example, during the beginning of this scene, the editing was very slow allowing plenty of time between each shot.  This resembles calmness and peace and the music along with it makes the audience relaxed.  Then, it all changes pace on the next scene as the editing and camera angles alter from close-ups and medium close-ups to long-shots and extra long-shots.  This makes the audience feel distanced from the character on screen, so we feel as although she is important, she may not survive in the next few minutes.


THE WALKING DEAD (2010 – current)

The television programmes The Walking Dead (TWD) is shown in the UK on Channel 5 and tells the story of a group of survivors from Atlanta, US, during the zombie apocalypse.

Each episode shows their struggle for survival, as well as their struggle to live together and stick together through a difficult time of the zombie apocalypse. 

Formats & Genre

The Walking Dead is a serial programme that shows each episode as a follow up on the previous.  It shows a continuous storyline from the beginning to the end – although there isn’t an end as of yet. 

Its main genres are: drama, horror and thriller as it shows in detail the deaths of some of the main and supporting characters.  Also, the detail on the zombies and the dead are minute, giving it a certificate rating of 18.  The show also has a few sub-genres such as suspense but it doesn’t affect the show too much, but it is what an audience member could expect from a show about zombie killing and survival.


“The Walking Dead” main cast5

Narrative structure

Each episode of The Walking Dead carries on from the previous so it keeps on the same storyline and in each episode, the storyline is developed further, and more characters are introduced and they are developed. 

At the beginning of each episode, it will give a small reminder about what happened the previous episode.  It will explain the situation and how the characters got into that situation.  The characters will spend the episode trying to figure out a solution to a problem, whilst also surviving a zombie apocalypse and other dangerous humans. 

The Walking Dead is an anti-realistic programme as it is about a zombie apocalypse in the modern world.  Scientifically, a zombie apocalypse is impossible so it’ll never happen, but it is a depiction of an apocalypse if it were to ever happen. 

The programme is also mixed between being linear and non-linear, as there are some episodes that run from point A to point B (beginning to end) and there are some episodes that start from the end and use the rest of the episode to explain the beginning.

From the beginning of The Walking Dead seasons, it starts off with Rick Grimes shooting a zombie in the head.  The main titles then start and then the next scene is “months earlier” where Rick Grimes is involved in a shooting before the zombie apocalypse starts, so it explains how Rick got to that stage, where he is a survivor.  This means that The Walking Dead is an open narrative storyline.  It shows each character, and explains how they got to the stage at the beginning of the seasons and then it uses the rest of the episodes and seasons for character and storyline development. 

Technical

For the technical part of the blog, I will explain how the director moves the story forward at the beginning of an episode, to capture the attention of the audience.  For this analysis, I will use the introduction scene to Episode 8 of Season 2 “Nebraska”.  This introduction scene is very powerful in its message to the audience.  It tells us briefly that losing family and friends in the zombie apocalypse is hard and that some people have different ways of coping with it.  The scene starts off with the main character, Rick Grimes, holding a revolver.  He is aiming down the sites and pointing it at the camera to give the impression that he is aiming at the audience.    

He then lowers his gun and we hear a woman in the background sobbing hopelessly.  The camera then shows a dead body on the ground, gunshot through the head; a zombified little girl.  From these two camera angles, within 6 seconds of the programme, it tells us that the main character, Grimes, had shot a zombie little girl in the head.  The audience doesn’t know just yet who is crying, but if we watched the end of the previous episode, we know that the woman crying is the little girls’ mother.  This is why this programme is a serial one, as each episode follows from the last, and in order to make sense of each episode, you need to start from the very beginning and watch throughout. 

Rick looks around, horrified and stunned at what he just did.  He knows that he needed to kill the little girl, but he is horrified that he did because he knew her once, and that he did it in front of everyone, including the girls’ mother.  Rick turns to his own wife and son, lying on the floor, in shock.  Daryl turns to comfort the mother, and tells her not to look.  He attempts to drag her away, but she flips out and pushes him back.  In this small scene, the camera turns out to show the rest of the group, all standing still, not talking and just watching the events fold out.  During this establishing shot, this is when we see the zombie massacre in front of an open barn.  Carol, the mother, runs off back to the house, and then we hear another girl sobbing.  She is being held by her comforting brother.  The way the camera is looking at the other girl, Beth, shows that her group is different from the others, as the others all had guns and are dressed in ripped and dirty clothes, whereas this group are dressed in nice shirts and trousers without any weapons.  This may show that they are oblivious to the zombie encounters, and that this it the first time that they have seen something like this.  Beth then runs up towards the massacre and picks out a zombie lying on the ground.  By her running towards a big group of them, and just picking out one, it shows that she was looking for a specific dead person, so they must have held a relation.  The zombie on the ground that she goes to is an older woman so may get the impression that this was her own mother.  As Beth bends down, the zombie wakes and attacks her, but the rest of the group pull her back and kick the zombie in the head until it’s head implodes.  The camera picks up on all the detail of the zombie’s head imploding and shows the blood and gore as it goes everywhere.  This shows the level of detail the director is going to go to get that “realistic” zombie apocalypse feel and to show the horrors in what you’re dealing with.  The girl continues sobbing and the group walk back up to the house.  The two main characters, Rick and Shane, end up having a heated argument on the way back up there, and they are shouting at each other about morals.  Again, with any serial programmes, it is important to start from the beginning and to sometimes watch the end of the previous episode so you know where you’re following on from.   




References:

1Midsomer Murders to premiere Thursday, June 12 at 7:00pm, KERA.org,
Date accessed: 16.01.2015

2TV at the ALAMO| Breaking Bad, 
Date accessed: 16.01.2015

3Cyberbully| Channel 4
Date accessed: 16.01.2015

4SHERLOCK Returns And A Sherlock Text Alert Ringtone Too
Date accessed: 16.01.2015

5Die Hard Star Cast as the New Rick Grimes in Walking Dead Companion Series
Date accessed: 17.01.2015