CONTEXUAL STUDIES: SHERLOCK (TV SERIES) REVIEW

The TV Series I have chosen to review is the first series of the BBC Crime Drama ‘Sherlock’.  Sherlock is a modern adaptation of the classic detective character ‘Sherlock Holmes’ created by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle over 125 years ago. Although Sherlock is classically set in Victoria London, this series sets the famous detective in 21^st century London and adapts the classic stories into a modern-day London. Sherlock has had 3 series and a New Year’s special, series 4 is set to be broadcasted in 2017. The show has won over 75 awards and was nominated for a Golden Globe back in 2013.

STORYTELLING UNIT: FINAL EVALUATION

During this project I have learnt many different skills, both with screenwriting and technical film making. As well as developed my current skills right through this project.

I feel that my final script has turned out really well. From my initial pitch of a Thriller drama when I was told that this couldn't be done since it didn't comply with the brief that we were given. I quickly changed my idea and developed it into a different story and was able to take inspiration for different short films as well as take a concept from the Doctor Who series and use my own family's past as a reference to a storyline and ended up making a strong 10 minute script which has been properly formatted and follows all the rules that Steve taught us in our lectures and I can confidently say I'm happy with it which for a writer, is really important. As regards to production, I've been told that I'm not only the first, first year, but actually the first TVP student to take a green screen into the car park and make successful use out of it. I feel I did really well with this and worked professionally throughout the production stage. When it came to setting up and working with the green screen I had excellent time management and got it set up quickly and correctly with plenty of time to spare. When an issue arised like when my actors dropped out on me the day before, I didn't panic but quickly solved the issue and found new actors and worked quickly to ensue I didn't fall behind schedule. I used my contacts and sorted things like getting the wedding ring made and using 2 different cars and also getting a crew together and communicating well with them all so that everyone understood what I needed and what it was we had to shoot. On set me and my crew worked professionally and worked to schedule, even when we went over schedule during the green screen shoot we got everything shot and done before losing the light of the sun which was the important bit. Looking into post-production, my strengths were with my green screen and audio. My audio work went well and when I was faced with the issue of Zak's audio, I wasted no time and got Zak into the studios and he re-watched the scene over and over until he got the timing right and we re-recorded his audio and I synced it up in post and it worked really well. As well as my audio editing making the 2nd scenes music sound like it's inside the house before the door opens and also adding a high pass filter to the music to make it sound like it's coming from the radio speakers which worked really well. As well as making the green screen look realistic and worked to make the concept of a moving car really well.

The issues with the production would have to be one section of the green screen footage where I couldn't matt it out due to bad lighting. I tried garbage matting and altering the ultra key settings but nothing could get rid of this section in the corner of the window, it's only visible for a few frames in one shot but you can see it and it takes away the realism of the car driving. As well another issue was the audio from scene 2, I chose to record this separately and this proved to be a really bad idea as syncing it became an issue and also the quality wasn't very good either. For the other 2 scenes I recorded into the camera and this helped much more and brought much better quality of audio. Finally, during the Production stage we had an issue with lighting which was that the opening shot for scene 1 was filmed in the morning and the rest of the scene was in the afternoon so there's a huge light difference with the sun, this annoyingly couldn't be fixed in post like I'd hoped it could since the lighting is far too obvious and really hard to try and colour out with colour correction. This ruins the video slightly since it takes away the continuity from the opening shot.

If I were to improve this in the future I would focus on my time management with pre-production and give myself more time if I am going to use actors instead of classmates. This is where my project nearly fell apart but could have been avoided if I'd have sorted secondary actors and ensured the actors were ready to film. Also ensure that my actors don't clash during the shooting days since this was an issue when recording the green screen and we went 3 hours over schedule, although we fixed this, it could have been avoided. Finally I'd ensure that all scene shots are filmed with the same lighting to avoid any issues with continuity in the future.

STORYTELLING UNIT: SCREENWRITING RESEARCH

When researching into screenwriting. I'd learnt so much from my lectures about constructing a story and the 5 golden rules of screenwriting, as well as the importance of structure and of dialogue. But what I still didn't quite understand was the layout and format of how to write a screenplay. I've written scripts before but for stage productions, not screenplays so this turned out to be a lot more difficult.
One of my classmates referred me to the website Australian Short Films which lets you look at different screenplays and this helped me get an idea on what sort of layout a script needs to be in and how different writers will write their scripts differently. Some will give a lot of detail on the characters and the type of shot they want. Others will give very minimal detail on the characters but a large amount of detail on the actions of the characters. It all depends on the writer and the type of script as well. But this website allowed me to look at different scripts and understand the right format for a screenplay which is:
1. Scene heading
2. Action
3. Character name
4. Dialogue
This obviously depends on what is happening in the scene but it helped me see the difference, since I was actually very unsure what needs to be in a scene heading and didn't realise that I had to specify if the scene was Interior or exterior.

As well as this I chose to look into two TV series scripts, one of which I chose was written by one of the screen writers I researched into, Russell T Davies. Having had the pleasure of meeting the Science Fiction writer and had the chance to talk to him about his writing he told me "I love the small details, attention to the shot and the focus on key points in the script, that's what makes a script work!" So from this I went on to find one of his scripts online and I managed to find the script for Episode 1 of Torchwood Miracle Day. When reading this I can see what Russell meant, he puts a lot of detail into his scripts including the types of shots he wants which I've not seen in many screenplays that I've already looked at. He describes the characters with little details "REX MARTHESON at the wheel - 30s sharp suit, sharp smile on speakerphone" very simple ways of explaining a character which I ended up using in my script as well rather than detailing everything about the character. What Russell does give a huge about of detail on is the scene actions. "WHAM! DOORS CRASH OPEN - REX wheeled in by PARAMEDICS! The scaffolding pole has been cut away, though a remnant still juts out of his chest. He's wearing an oxygen mask, with IV drips suspended above. He breathes hard, wild-eyed, willing himself to stay awake. In case he never wakes up" that scene action is hugely detailed on how the actor should act and is telling him exactly what to do. Sometimes you'll get scripts which will give the actors very minimal actions and allow them to ad-lib but Russell writes so that it's exactly how he wants it.

Another script I looked into was one by Steve Thompson who was a guest writer for the BBC series 'Sherlock' the modern adaptation of the classic Arthur Conan Doyle character 'Sherlock Holmes'. The script I found was for series 1 Episode 2 The Blind Banker. Steve also writes with huge detail on the actions but rather than the detail on character actions, its more about what we see in the actual scene. "Clang! museum doors are shut and bolted. Clang! The upper galleries are locked tight. Electrical switches. A security man flicks them off one by one. Lights go out through the upper floors" and also "In the gallery's centre is a mannequin - an Empress in black and gold dragon robes. Silently she dominates the room". Steve gives so much detail for everything within the scene and everything around the characters. Rather than the character action he adds to the atmosphere of the setting and creates this dominating environment even though we're only in a museum. But he makes it so that tension builds and we get a real feel for the scene.