Contextual research (TV drama)

(2015-2017)

It's a sitcom created by Michaela Coel. What I loved the most about it was the breaking of the 4th wall, which is not a very common feature. The show is set in a council estate and is about a 24 year old virgin black woman, who was raised in a very strict catholic family and the way she decided to live her life like a normal person. The show shines a light on racism ( 02x02), religion(throughout the series), class and sexism(02x03).

The show only has 2 seasons and has been discontinued, but the shows witter Michaela Coel has mentioned that there's a season 3 in the plans, however nobody knows when it will come out.

The sitcom uses lots of cringe-humour which I tried to replicate (not really sure how it turned out). I tried to look into the characters more and the way they were more than clichés. For example in the begining Tracy's mom seems to be very religious and narrow minded and even throws Tracy out of her home for hooking up with the guy, but at second season she accepts Tracy the way she is and lets move back in.

Comments

DIRECTIONS

The magic 2 every director has to think about is: 1) what's in front of the camera 2) where's the camera positioned. It's important to read the script and break it down to questions: How? - style, mise-en-scene, mood. Who? - cast, crew, collaborators. Where? - locations, set. What? - production, costume, sound design, editing. Key director moments: How you pesent the character. Where you set the story. How you position the light. How you edit the story (rhythm, tone, mood). For our first Directions unit lecture we had to get into groups and have a go at directing a short scene. I found it to be very difficult to direct my DP instead of handling it myself. I ended up with a lot of spare shots I didn't need or couldn't use (mainly because it was hard to get the ball of paper to land into the bin) but the end result didn't disappoint me.

Camera workshop (coverage)

In one of our camera workshops we learned about the importance of coverage. It doesn't matter that in the end we won't use all of the footage and maybe even end up using just few shots, it's important to have multiple shots from diferent angles so that we would have options while editing. During the workshop we had two exercises. One of which was "The Chair": It ended up being pretty short video and I ended up not using half of the footage I got for it. For next exercise we were given scripts and had to interpret it in our own way. While editing I wished I would have filmed few more close up shots and to have actually filmed the whole scene from fixed camera positions.

Studio Idea

Personally, I found it really difficult to come up with an interesting studio production idea. But because "one idea is not enough" (Brown and Duthie, 2010) I came up with 3 initial ideas: 1) Guess the song type of game show, but instead of guessing pop songs, the contestants would have to guess classical music. I got this idea from a game my friends and I loved to play and the way my music teacher used to test my class. 2) Travel guide about how to make the most of your trip, places worth visiting and places that are overrated and not worth your time. I got this idea from my sister who travels a lot and from the way she does loads of research about each and every place she visits. 3) Debate/Game show where 2 groups of people debate about nerdy topics ( whats better Marvel or DC, which Doctor was the best etc.). The idea comes from noticing how much rivalry there is between comic book lovers and overall 'nerds'. I feel like this idea is the stronge...

Aurelija's TV production blog

Search This Blog