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 21st
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.
Looking into the Mise En Scene of this show, the costumes for this show have been done to work with the genre and style. Sherlock and John’s costumes specifically, starting with Sherlock. Sherlock’s classic costume is a sharp suit with a classic detective hat and a long coat that’s over his shoulders. However, to modernise this look it’s been made so that Sherlock wears a simple and modern black suit with the top two buttons undone as this is a classic style in the modern day and age. As well as this Sherlock wears this long trench coat and always loves it, this type of coat is almost reference to the classic detective style you’d see in old American crime dramas with detective, this classic style has also been done with other detective characters such as Bigby in the Fable comics and John Constantine in the DC Comic universe. This coat almost shows that he’s a detective and is a good way of modernising the classic detective look which Sherlock classically had. The same can be said for John Watson. In the original stories, he has a handmade cane from his time at War and he’s also a Doctor, he dresses smart from being a military man. The costume for the modern John tells us the same. John’s costumes throughout the entire series is smartly dressed, top button done, hair tidy, always to refer to his army days which he spent fighting and helping the soldiers as an army doctor. He’s always dressed smartly no matter what is happening and with their situation, as well in the first episode we see that John has a modern cane given by doctors rather than a handmade cane to keep with the modernisation of the programme. Lighting follows the standard convention of crime drama with having a lot of low key lighting and the use of flash lights being common or key lighting at crime scenes, like in episode one ‘A study in Pink’ where we see the body on the floor fully lit but the rest of the room is in darkness. Make-up is standard for a crime drama, blood where needed for bodies and injuries, standard make-up for actors and actresses to look normal and natural.
Looking into the camerawork for this series. The series
follows the classic convention of having almost all their shots as Steadicam/handheld,
when watching all 3 episodes you can see there’s a slight movement of the shot
every-time, even in shots that appear still. Although this helps keep the pace
moving in the series and keeps with the speed of the characters since every-time
Sherlock makes a deduction it’s at a very high speed. As well as this we get
slight dolly shots to help avoid cuts and keep continuous shots moving, like in
the meeting of John and Sherlock, we see Sherlock working and don’t cut to him
until John has completely entered the room but we get a nice smooth shot of him
entering showing the two characters meeting for the first time. This again is
used in every episode; it makes the series less choppy with the edit and flows
nicer as well as working in hand for the conventional technique of it. Shot wise,
we get many close-ups, specifically on the deductions from Sherlock, during his
explanations so show what we missed. We’ll have an average wide Steadicam shot,
wides and mediums as a normal scene with every action in there, then later when
Sherlock is doing his explanation of the deduction we get flashbacks (standard
editing convention for crime dramas) with close-ups on the key points that Sherlock
noticed which allows us to see how he put the evidence together. An example is
from the Janus Cars scene in episode 3. Below we get one of the main shots of
the scene being the wide shot:
Through this scene we see Sherlock makes the car
dealer turn his head around, scratch his arm and then open his wallet. The
detail is then brought in with close-ups and Sherlock explaining how they are
important in a later scene:
Following on from this, we can look at the editing. What’s
unique about this series is the style of montage they go for. Usually we’d get
a standard montage cross fading between scenes to show the passage of time but
this series uses montage to quickly and effectively show the deductions,
starting with the meeting of Sherlock and John, Sherlock (in another scene)
goes on to explain how he deducted all the information about John. This can be
viewed here:
As you can see it cuts between the close-ups and shots of
Sherlock in the taxi explaining, as well a still frozen shot going around the
characters before zooming in and focusing on the key elements of the deduction. As well with editing we get the graphic titles used with the text messages. Rather than close-ups on all of the texts we get graphics of what is being said which works better with the shots as well
With the sound, mostly all the sound is diegetic, apart from
some shrike or squeaking noises between scenes as sound effects which are
non-diegetic. The main diegetic sound in this series is the dialogue. It's where all the detail comes from as Sherlock's dialogue takes us through his deductions which works alongside the editing and camerawork. As well as this we get the dietetic sounds of the gun shots and natural sounds around such as text alerts, cars passing, guns shots, etc. all to help make the series as realistic and natural as possible by keeping to what would be heard in real life and with the reactions of the characters as well. The music in the series is non-diegetic sound as well, used during transitions or arrivals before a new scene when traveling in the taxi cabs or when leaving 221b Baker Street.
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