Sarbjeet Virdi- Commentary
Introduction
This term in Media we have been studying TV Crime Drama. We have analysed different dramas, we looked at the drama ‘Out of Control’. The drama is produced by BBC. The drama is about crime based on three characters, Sam, Dean and Danny. They all get lead into the wrong directions of life. The drama shows us life in jail and the different types of crimes. The BBC produced this drama to show life on streets and to influence young teenagers to not commit crime and violence with or without weapons.
We also looked at another TV Crime Drama extract call ‘The Wire’. In this clip we saw men playing chess. There were two men who did not know how to play the game, and were playing checkers with chess pieces. Another one of the friends then explained how to play the game using their everyday lives as an example. He explained how there every day crime relates to the chess pieces and the way they move on the chess board.
Another extract we looked at is ‘NYPD Blue’. It is an American television police drama set in New York. Each episode covers the lives of the cops and how they deal with crime. We looked at the first season, watching two episodes. There were two main cops called, John Kelly and Andy Sipowicz. We looked at the two characters and information about themselves and information about them in the Series. They were both police partners and they both helped each other out in bad times they had together. Like when Andy got shot, John was very eager to try and the killer and has belief he could find him.
There are different TV conventions all three TV dramas share. The convection is everything that makes up the genre, and the things you usually find. Both ‘Out of Control’ and ‘The Wire’ dramas show how crime relates to each of the characters daily lives. They both show how the characters are led into crime from peer pressure and to look good in front of people.
BBC and the Cracking Crime Day
The BBC on Out of control produces the drama to:
-Promote education and learning
-Stimulate creativity and cultural excellence
-Represent the UK, its nations, religions and communities
-Bring the UK to the world and the world to the UKThe BBC tries to entertain us by showing us how different slang is used by teenagers and how we could get influenced by other people to commit crime and violence in our everyday lives. The main reason of the BBC producing the drama ‘Out of Control’ is to try and stop crime in our everyday lives, for people who get influenced by others. The BBC tries to educate people about different crimes.
The BBC mandate In the mandate, the BBC must display one of the following:
-High quality
-Originality
-Innovation
-To be challenging and to be engaging
Realism vs. Hollywood (Television vs. Film)
A number of factors contribute to an understanding of realism. These factors apply equally to any fictional genre, from a dramatised documentary to the most outstand science fiction. Our assessment of realism may consequently differ radically from text to text, but the same questions can be raised.
Realism can therefore be seen as the 6 points of realism:
- The plausibility of story events (could be events being presented happenin the real world)
- The believability in characters' motivations (Is this how people, or ourselves would behave in a similar situation?)
- The relationship of the story to the plot (Is the plot intrusive? Does the plot rely too much on coincidence or other overt contrivances?)
- The logic of story and plot events (Does it follow that if 'x' happens then 'y' would follow?)
- The presentation of filmic space (Even in the most extreme fantasy or science fictional scenario, Can we suspend our disbelief sufficiently to accept it is how it would be?)
- The verisimilitude- how convincing are the surface details? (Does the gun look and fire like a real gun would?) Crime differs on TV than in films. Some extracts we looked at show this. Firstly I will compare Out of Control to NYPD Blue. Out of Control shows violence in England, and how people really act on the streets by the way they act and speak. It focuses on Gang Crime and they make it seem realistic by showing stealing that goes on in Britain, and bullying that goes on in prisons. The Drama picks out the aspects of Out of Control; they show how the way people dress gives them their own unique personality. For example the character Sam in Out of Control wears tracksuit bottoms with a hooded jumper and a baseball cap. He uses a lot of slang and this gives him his character which is different to other characters in Hollywood dramas. NYPD Blue shows a different aspect to the way characters act and behave. In NYPD Blue we see a difference in the way their characters act to the way characters act in Out of Control. There is gun crime in NYPD Blue but it is not played by characters that are teenagers and hang around on streets doing crime. It is a police drama about cops solving problems in their town. There are two main characters, Andy Sipowitz and John Kelly. Andy had an enemy who shot him, John who is a very good friend with Andy because they work together, is eager to solve the problem because he is very disturbed by the fact his friend has got shot. Because NYPD Blue is also set in America and Out of Control is set in England there are a lot of differences to the way each drama is.
Television Drama- Out of Control Out of Control was the main drama we looked at, we looked at the different character, screen shots, the realism and the mise en scene. Firstly I will tell you a summary of the main characters in Out of Control and how they act to the way they live. Firstly I will start with Dean, a teenager who lives with his mother and sister in an estate. He get good guidance from his mother, she tries to encourage him to be something in life and to stay off the streets. But one of his friends Charlie-Boy influences him into doing bad crime. An example is when Charlie-Boy stole a car and asked Dean to go with him. First of all Dean refused, but Charlie-Boy persuaded him to go and ride in the car he stole. Charlie-Boy got away with it, but running away. Dean tried to run away but got caught, he was then locked up. In jail he met a boy called Sam who was bullying Dean. He bullied Dean so much he made him commit suicide in Dean’s cell. Dean wanted to act well and impress his mother but because of peer pressure he got influences into doing bad crimes. The next character I will look at is Deans Mother Sandra. Sandra is very protective towards Dean and wants the best for him when he grows up. She does not want him hanging around in the streets with his bad friends who influence Dean into doing bad things. When Dean got locked up she was eager to find out the reason for this and was very angry by the way the Police officers were handling the situation. She rang Dean a lot when he was in jail, and felt really sorry for him because he often cried to her on the phone. When she found out he was dead, she was very angry and very distraught because she really loved Dean and believed in him. In my script In Control (the next episode) I have seen how angry and sad Sandra acted to Deans death, I have got her trying to find out more about Deans death. She believes he was getting bullied and she also finds out he does get bullied. She wants revenge on this person bullying Dean, who was Sam because she truly believes in Dean. One of the main characters of the whole drama is Sam. Sam try’s to act as if he is a gangster on streets by, undertaking crime. In the very first scene we see Sam mugging a persons phone, there are also scenes of Sam mugging a shop. Sam has a different personality by the way he dresses and talks. He wears tracksuit bottoms, a hooded jumper and wears a baseball cap. He also uses a lot of slang whoever he talks to. Sam influences people into doing bad things, like he influences Danny commit crime. He is very controlling and always wants to be top. Sam doesn’t have any parents, so he does not have any guidance into what is right or wrong. Sam is a very insecure person but tries to cover it up by the way he acts. When Sam gets locked up in prison he meets Dean. Sam is constantly bullying Dean which he finally used so much peer pressure, Dean ended up committing suicide. Another character I am going to describe is Danny; he is a teenager who lives with his mother and sister. Like Dean, Danny’s mother wants the best for him and wants him to do well in life. Danny gets influenced by Sam to commit crime, a few crimes he has done is when he helps Sam rob a phone, and helps Sam rob a shop. Danny finds a girlfriend and has a baby with her. The problem is, Danny is going too locked up in jail. Whilst he is in jail he acts well so he can get out of jail earlier and start a new family with his girlfriend and his new baby. Danny does not want to commit any crime anymore because he wants to turn over a new leaf with his family. This was a summary of the main characters in Out of Control; Out of Control is a faction drama. A faction drama is making a story out of a real life situation. Now I will move onto the mise en scene, this is a French word for everything that is in the scene. The drama had a lot of different camera angles, in the first scene the camera angle showed was an ECU (extreme close ups) of Sam and Danny about to rob a phone. There are CU (close up) shots which show more of the surroundings around the person. There are MS (medium shots) which you can see much more of the object. For example, if we use a person you would be able to see much more of its body in a MS. There a LS (long shots) which show everything in the shot? There are ELS (extreme long shots) where you can see a lot of the surroundings and there are high angle and low angle shots. A lot of these shots are used in Out of Control. Out of Control is also a very realistic in the way they show how life really is in England and what real things happen in the world. Out of control use a lot of conventions in the genre shown which make Out of Control very realistic.
The Script
When we started our script we got a Success Criteria which would help us make our scripts better. There are 7 main points to the criteria: - Use street language - only appropriate language - Make street language understandable - Tension (build up tension) - Twists and turns- Not obvious what is going to happen next - Cross- cutting (cut from interior scene to exterior, at an important moment) this adds suspense to the audience left waiting to see what will happen next, or what is happening in the scene. - Stage Directions- Adds interest and focus to the dialogue - Realism- Believable, plausible, logical, as if it could happen As we were starting to write our scripts, we made a timeline to help us plan out our script from the beginning to the end. We also wrote a list of the characters and any new characters, and the roles they play, we also wrote when they were going to appear into the scene. The main differences which I changed about my script were something which was included in nearly every drama I have seen. It is not starting without any dialogue, non- diagetic sound. I also included different camera angle shots. There are CU (close up) shots which show more of the surroundings around the person. There are MS (medium shots) which you can see much more of the object. For example, if we use a person you would be able to see much more of its body in a MS. There a LS (long shots) which show everything in the shot? There are ELS (extreme long shots) where you can see a lot of the surroundings and there are high angle and low angle shots. High angle shots show someone being superior to another man and low angle shots show someone being big and powerful. We also use the EXT and INT to describe where the person is in the surroundings, EXT (exterior) shows a person outside and INT (interior) shows a person inside a building. We got given a copy of the ‘Mummy III’ script as a guideline of how scripts are normally wrote. We discovered that if there was dialogue, it would be placed in the centre of the page and if there was information about the script or any screen shots it would be placed on the left side of the page. We also found out that if you wanted to switch a scene, you would write CROSS-CUT which would change to another scene. We would also put people’s names or any camera angles in capital letters. My script In Control is about Deans mum Sandra getting revenge on Sam for him bullying Dean which lead to death. And Sam meets a new gang which he thinks he is part of because they hang around estates. My script links to out of control because it is carrying on the story but it adds more climax and drama to it with more violence and revenge. I have kept most of the same characters, but I left out Monique who is the girlfriend of Danny and two police officers because there is only one scene with them main police officers. I have included a new gang who hang around with Sam. Sam and Sandra is the main character of the whole script.
DVD CoverWe made our DVD covers on Photoshop. Photoshop has been used to make a lot of other DVD covers. We had already used photoshop before to make other DVD covers of our own. We took our own photographs and put them on the page using layers which allowed us to place them over a background or any other layers. We looked at other famous DVD cover and saw how most of them had a spine and a blurb which was very persuading. We were also able to use filters to make our DVD cover look better. We used a lot of screen shots in the way we structured out our cover.
I have learnt how to use photoshop to a greater degree. Some of the things from this I will take with me and will never forget about photoshop, is using all the different effects and the variety of tools you can use to edit such picture. I really enjoyed using this programme to make our posters as i discovered you could just about do anything with your pictures. The one tool i really enjoyed using was the lasoo tool as you could cut aruond pictures very accuratly.
In conclusion I think the whole project as a whole was very tiring and long, but the final production was to the best of my standard and i really enjoyed learning new things. Media makes you think about how people in the world see a perspective into life and how different media has an effect on people.
