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
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
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
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
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