The Bil (1983 -2010)
- Set in a fictional London police station
- Longest running UK crime drama
- Originally 12x60mins episodes
- From 1988-2005, became year-round twice-weekly serial
- Peaked audience of 11m viewers in 2005 rivalled Coronation Street
Mise En Scene
- How many locations? - forest, car park with burger van, car, police station, D.I. office, reception, morgue, video shop, living room, church, flat. All together there's at least 11 locations.
- Real or Studio? - I would say that the locations are real and the programme has been made on location.
- Communal space? - There is a communal space in this programme and it's the office where all the officers and the D.I. meet and discuss the evidence and the current state of the case.
Camera & Sound
- Single & multi-camera? - Single camera
- Diegetic or non-diegetic sound? - The sounds we hear through the programme is mostly the dialogue, this is the important sound throughout the programme and gives all the information so almost all the sound in this programme is Diegetic
Narrative and genre conventions
- Realistic characters or stereotypes? - The characters are made to be as realistic as possible since its a crime drama and a much more serious genre than what we've covered before. But at the same time we get stereotypes of the horrible boss (The Detective Inspector), the newest worker trying so hard to reach the top (The Police Officer).
- Acting naturalistic or exaggerated? - The acting is slightly exaggerated to work with the story. Arguments are a bit more shouting and over the top to make it more dramatic and also show the stress that everyone is under.
- How many storylines? - The first storyline we start with is that the police have found a potentl suicide case and a female police officer has woken the Detective Inspector (D.I.) early in the morning but usually doesn't involve a D.I. with suicides unless it's out of the ordinary. We see that the D.I. is horrible to the officer for calling him out and accuse her of wasting his time before finding a suicide note on the body and then storming off the crime scene. We find out that the officer phoned the D.I. because she thought it was a possible murder case and he is angry since being woken up early in the morning on his day off. We begin to get more of a story from the D.I. which is that he has a lot of issues at home and that his wife is pregnant and being on his back a lot and phones him then getting angry because he's been called into work. The main story is on this dead girl and we learn from the all topsy that she over dosed causing the death, she was also 3 months pregnant and she's also got Venereal Disease. After talking to the best friend we also see that she has been involved in making sexual videos with a couple who the police then start to look for.
All the time with this story we're hearing about the D.I.'s wife calling him and wanting him home.
=======================================================================
What is the crime drama genre?
- Evolved from literary detective fiction
- In TV often police procedural sub-genre-'realistic' investigation of a crime by law enforcement teams
Crime Drama - technical conventions
- Editing: Chase scenes, montage, flashbacks
- single camera
- Camera movement - either handheld mockumentary style or steadicam, dollies, cranes.
- Visual devices: ECUs for tension or reveal.
- Titled, low and high angles
- Slow motion
- CG recreations (CSI)
- Graphic text (Sherlock)
Crime genre narrative conventions
- Episodic series format - typically 60 minutes. Usually self-contained closed narratives
- Repetition - relies on returning central cast (team) and location (police station) Conflicts in policing methods often intrinsic to the drama
- Resolution - the very nature of detective/crime genre demands crime is resolved by setting up a mystery. (Film and TV guidelines demanded that 'crime must not pay')
Crime genre - symbolic conventions
- lighting - low-key. Many crime dramas use light-dark contrasts in costume, setting and lighting (e.g. use of flashlights
- Authenticity - props, costumes, settings
- New convention - detection via computer. lighting and exposition
Crime genre archetypes
- The rebel (here/anti-hero): Detective or senior cop. Jaded. Doesn't always play by rules. Sometimes corrupt
- The King (authority figure): commanding officer or station sergeant
- The Innocent (rookie): audience surrogate and empathy
- The Sage: Elderly, wise. If not senior figure, often doctor or scientist
- The Villain: Binary opposition to hero and rookie
Many crime dramas utilize binary opposition: light and dark, good and evil, law and order. But often the investigator has their moral boundaries challenged.
Many also use classic Freudian triangles: Hero (anti-hero) as id, authority as super-ego, rookie as ego that tries to balance the oppositional
Critical approches to genre
- Realism - British crime dramas are often in social realist mode; many popular US crime dramas more escapist and may involve breaking with realist conventions
- Representation - gender and diversity; issues of 'political correctness' vs empirical fact
- Psychoanalysis - genre characters as Freudian archetypes; criminal pathology (the monster/the uncanny); crossover with horror genre ('return of the repressed')
No comments:
Post a Comment