plan schedule to complete first draft

Tonight and tomorrow in my long break, I'm going to look at my lyrics tonight and all my research and extracts and make relevant notes alongside them linking everything to my 6 main points so it is ready too turn into essay form, i plan to hand this to matt on wednesday at the latest.

sherlock holmes

How similar are the genre conventions used in the 1968 episode of 'A Study in Scarlet' to the 2010 'A Study in Pink'.

The quality of filming is clearly different from the beginning of ‘A Study in Scarlet’ to ‘A Study in Pink’ this is because of the velar time difference between the airing of these 2 episodes. At the start of the 1968 episode the non-diagetic sound builds up tension when you see the dead body which is the same as a study in pink. There Is also the clear convention of death which is the same in both episodes and is clear in both from very near the beginning if not in the opening shots.

Unlike a study in pink, a study in scarlet is clearly set in the past, you can tell this straight away from the opening shots in the bedroom. The interior in the room is old fashioned, quite grand but garish which is not the type of interior you tend to see in TV programmes set in present time. There’s also the costumes, the women are in grand dresses whereas in a study in scarlet most of the women are dressed in professional clothing such as suits. You can also tell its old fashioned by the actual narrative of the episode, it’s about asking for hand in marriage to parents and it being rejected which is not really a problem you would see now a days unless you were of a certain religion.

The low key lighting of the scenes is a similarity of the 2 episodes but seems to be a convention of the overall genre rather than the series. The non-diagetic music throughout the episode is quite similar but I felt the music in a study of pink was quite old fashioned anyway and I think this worked well with the more modern story line. In a study of scarlet there is exaggerated diagetic sound when the doors squeaking. I feel the low quality of filming in this episode actually helps build up tension as there is a sense of eeriness about the actual filming.

I also found there was a similarity in storyline as in both episode the word ‘rache’ comes up. In a study of pink it is etched into the floor where the woman is dead and in a study of scarlet the policeman finds it on the wall in blood. I think this is a definite sign of a reboot, they have tried to take certain aspects of the old episode and transfer it into the new one but changing it slightly to fit in with new times. There is also the link between episodes with the police as they are featured in both but seem to have been portrayed certainly in the newer episode as incapable of dealing with the crime that has been committed.

Overall I think there are quite a few differences and similarities but I think the way they have taken aspects of the old episode and recreated it into the new episode is definitely effective and works really well. 

Dr who analysis

I looked at dr who episode 2 series 1, I focused on the camera, editing, mise-en-scene and sound. In the opening sequence there is an establishing shot of the earth to inform the audience straight away of the time and geography, this shot of earth is a sci-fi convention. Throughout the programme there is a series of long of mostly long shots and mid shots, along with some extreme close ups. Extreme close ups are used to show the emotion or expression on a characters face or a specific detail or object that the audience should be aware of.
The editing includes fast pace cross cuts that help speed up the passing of time and also shows the movement from scene to scene.
The mise-en-scene setting I found was a sci-fi convention when the characters doctor and rose were in the tardis I found this a convention because in most sci-fi there is a lab or a base. The props are linked to the costumes, there is different props used throughout mainly the laser pen, this is also a sci-fi convention as these gadgets don't normally exist. The actors doctor who especially use scientific terminology when speaking to make it sound like they know what there talking about. The lighting is quite low key I think this is because it's meant to look quite eary and mysterious as if it was bright and colourful it wouldnt be a sci-fi convention.
The sound in this programme was both a mixture of non-diagetic and diagetic, throughout there is a robotic metallic sounding non-diagetic sound bridge of music which is a typical sci-fi convention. The dialogue for the characters is diagetic sound but there is a non-diagetic sound that turns into a diagetic sound when a CD is put in, which is quite unusual.

representation

Women hold only 22 % of strategic decision-making posts in the public media and only 12 % in the private media organisations in the EU-27– as the research of the European Institute for Gender Equality (EIGE) shows. ‘Increased number of women in the decision-making structures of media organisations would bring social justice, better use of talents and innovative decisions. It would also improve media content.’ - says Virginija Langbakk, Director of the European Institute for Gender Equality (EIGE).

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Genre

Sci-fi 

• Futurama 

David X. Cohen, Futurama’s co-creator along with Matt Groening and its longtime showrunner, has said that he and Groening established a “no time-travel” rule for the series early on. Philip J. Fry is no doubt eternally grateful that the writers dispensed with that rule, seeing as how much of his relationship with Turanga Leela has depended on various sorts of temporal anomalies. (To say nothing of how his own existence relies on it, being his own grandfather and all.)

Like two of its clear antecedents, “Time Keeps on Slippin’” and “The Late Philip J. Fry,” “Meanwhile” used its rigidly controlled time-travel conceit to examine the Fry-Leela romance. The Professor’s time-rewinding device opened the door to two common questions that underlie time-control fantasies: What if you could relive a moment over and over again? And what if you could stop time altogether and make one moment last forever? One of those questions was answered with biting irony, the other with sweet symbolism. Only fitting for a show that’s always walked the line between cynicism about the world and affection for its characters’ humanity.

These are familiar themes that Futurama has played well in the past, so it was no surprise to see them re-emerge in its swan song. Structurally, too, the episode had a retroactive feel, with each act devoted to one of the series’ favorite tones. The opening sequences were laced with reference humor, including plenty of nods to the series’ longevity (the crew returning to the moon, site of their first delivery in episode two; Leela saying she and Fry have known each other for 13 years; Bender claiming Fry has told Leela he loves her “like 140 times,” corresponding to the series’ official episode count).

After an emotional pivot, the middle portion went heavy on black humor, as poor Fry violently splattered about a dozen times and the Professor was seemingly torn into temporal shreds. One more sharp turn later, the third act was given over almost entirely to a genuinely romantic montage. Fry and Leela’s extremely extended, globetrotting (or globe-strolling) honeymoon felt like a parting gift from the writers to their characters—all the more so because they were allowed to do one thing animated characters almost never get to do: Age. They lived out their lives. The humor notes here weren’t full-fledged jokes so much as they were grin-inducing moments, but everything worked because it was rendered with such sincere sweetness.

As an isolated episode, “Meanwhile” suffered from some of the mechanical plotting that’s characterized this final season. From the moment Farnsworth introduced his latest thematically convenient gizmo, you could see the story cranking dutifully toward its emotional climax. The rules of this iteration of time-travel were intriguing—the 10-second recharge limitation and the hazards of vacating the time bubble created interesting wrinkles that were used successfully—but it didn’t find much time to let loose many great or surprising jokes.

As a coda to a long-running series, though, the episode was much more successful. It brought its characters to satisfying resting places: Fry and Leela finding meaningful closure, Prof. Farnsworth cruising through a maze of quasi-science-y mumbo-jumbo, the rest of the Planet Express crew frozen in a moment of triumph after Bender led them to save the day, however briefly.

Then the episode dropped in a reset button ex machina, because nothing ever truly ends in fictional universes like this one. Sitcoms always return to the status quo ante; sci-fi always has new worlds to explore. And series that have been revived twice can’t afford to wrap things up too tidily. In more ways than one, “Meanwhile” ended a frequently cynical show on a disarmingly optimistic note.

• Misfits

Cast your mind back a year to the end of Series 3 of Misfits and - amid the ghosts and Simony-timey-wimeyness – you'll remember that there was a feeling that an era was coming to an end: that with plots sutured and so many of the main cast gone, the show could have feasibly finished after three solid series of community service superpowers. But while Series 3 seemed prepared for oblivion, Series 4's last episode gives a middle-finger to closure.

In places it feels like Episode 8 is too preoccupied with gestating tantalising new plot threads for (the just commissioned) Series 5, than actually providing a satisfying conclusion to a bumpy run. The mystery of Abbey's personality, Finn and Jess's relationship, the heartbreak behind the Probation Worker's unexploded bomb of a face...All three are difficult to engage with this late on when we're annoyed at the thought of having to wait a year to find out how they'll develop.

Most egregious of all is the idea that Geordie boreman Alex might return with a power that's more interesting than talking about his cock, thanks to a handy transplantable lung lying around like an abandoned bagpipe. We hope it's merely a joke, but from the prominence he was given on the operating table we suspect not. Maybe he'll come back like Dr. Manhattan in Watchmen: big and blue and with his prized dick gently swaying in the chilly estate breeze like a broken wind-chime.

When not worrying about its own future this is actually a solid, but not spectacular, finale filled with more blasphemy than a Frankie Boyle gig at The Vatican. That's because it's smart enough to focus on its best asset, Joe Gilgun, and gives him opportunity to rise magnificently to the challenge of creating some depth to Rudy. It's a performance that infuses his carefree cheek with real pathos and heartbreak and Nadine's death would feel cheap were it not for the emotional side that the writers and Gilgun have carved from Rudy's seemingly unalterable vulgarity.

It's a shame Nadine has to die. If there's one thing the show could have teased more it's the idea of a deviant dating a former nun who can summon terror incarnate. Nadine's Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse are typically reflective of the show's urban aesthetic, re-imagined as a gang of bike-riding, samurai sword swinging hoodies, but their brevity on screen and their one-dimensional purpose are disappointing. These are meant to be demons of vengeance, but they come across more like four youths holding up an off-licence, and vanish just as quickly.

So ends a series that has, on reflection, been a mixed bag. A collection of good story ideas undermined by a change in cast that the show always seemed uneasy about. Yet we have hope for the fifth series, because the finale does manage to capture the peppy group dynamics of the show's early days. You wouldn't call Series 4 a triumph for the show, but based on the gang we're left with it might be that Misfits' fifth year will be something more special. We're already praying hard for it.

Cop drama 

• Good cop 

Ever since ITV1 cancelled The Bill, uniformed bobbies on the beat haven’t felt much love from the makers of TV drama. It’s usually their plain-clothes superiors in CID who take the lead, briskly quizzing pathologists and cleverly hunting clues. So BBC One’s Good Cop was an intriguing idea – a Britflick-style serial about an ordinary PC in Liverpool, with brooding hunks, inarticulate dialogue, rain, and sustained pugilism.

So far so good. And Warren Brown was predictably excellent as Sav, the good cop of the title – indeed Brown’s magnificent pecs, lovingly moonlit as he peeled his top off, could win a Bafta all of their own. Stephen Graham, sadly, had less to work with as Sav’s nemesis, Noel Finch. Unlike most of the malevolent Toby jugs that Graham gets to play, Finch had no depth, no internal conflict: just a cookie-cutter baddie who made the Hooded Claw look like Tony Soprano.

Things also got frustratingly worse as the plot unfolded. Sav first laid eyes on Finch in a diner, where the leering Finch stalked a hapless waitress into the ladies’ and readied to assault her. Whereupon off-duty Sav burst in, suddenly all warrant card and righteous indignation, and put paid to Finch’s nasty plan. “The next copper I see on his own,” growled Finch before he scarpered, “I’m going to hammer him.”

Cripes. Later that night, Sav and his best-buddy patrol partner (Andy, played by Tom Hopper) were called to a noisy house party. Andy managed to get in at the front door, with Sav heading to the back. But the back door was barred. Though Sav tried to truncheon his way in, he could only look through the glass in horror as Finch and his mob appeared around Andy in the shadowy hallway.

Poor Andy was by now the victim of two convenient coincidences (that his patrol car had been sent out on this call, and that he, not Sav, went in at the front). And he went on to be beaten almost literally to a pulp by Finch’s gang, who did add rather a good flourish at the end by dropping a telly on him. Throughout said beating – a full 62 seconds – Sav just bashed away at that locked back door, clearly too thick to run round to the front, where Andy had just got in.

Tom Hopper’s name hadn’t been on the opening titles, which is never a good sign. And sure enough, after a coma just long enough to allow Sav a bedside monologue, Andy died. Sav told nobody about Finch’s earlier threat. Instead, he went back to the scene of the crime, where he found a convenient gun under a conveniently creaky floorboard, Finch conveniently turned up for no good reason, and Sav shot him dead. Then he went home, took his top off, and spent the rest of the episode covering his tracks.

Sticklers might now point out that a truly good cop would, at any number of junctures, have briefed his boss/not killed the bad guy/owned up. Despite the lachrymose music, it was impossible to feel any sympathy for Sav. Or to care what happens to him in the rest of this series, which started with real promise but failed to fulfil it. By the end, I was yearning for a nice chief inspector, with a plausibly complicated home life and a chewily complex case load.

• New tricks 

'When you look into the abyss, the abyss also looks into you," says Alun Armstrong's character Brian, at the start of New Tricks (BBC1), looking into a pint of lager. I don't know if that – a pint of lager – is what Nietzsche meant; but it is an abyss of sorts, especially if, like Brian, you've had issues with drink in the past.

Next thing he's up and punching the highly decorated police commander whose leaving bash this is, getting him back for something that happened a long time ago, and getting himself suspended in the process. Unable, therefore, to work on this case. Well, unable to work on it officially. He's there, behind the scenes, puzzling it out, with his pencil and his numbers, and his Lego boats, and his lugubriousness. Booze isn't the only failure in Brian's life.

The case is the murder of a wayward shipping heir (hence the Lego boats) back in the 1990s. I do have a little problem with the whole premise of New Tricks. If a crime wasn't solved soon after it happened when the evidence – and the detectives working on it – were still fresh, how are these retired clowns, the Unsolved Crime and Open Case Squad, going to get to the bottom of it all these years down the line? Also, shouldn't it be UCOCS, rather than UCOS? But then I guess other police departments would know them as You Cocks …

Anyway, Detective Superintendent Sandra (Amanda Redman) plus retired coppers Gerry and Steve (Dennis Waterman and Denis Lawson) fuss about, bickering, making their inquiries, down at the docks, among the containers. Like season two of The Wire … Except so not like season two of The Wire obviously, because that was real and powerful and involving, and this is a comedy caper, cosy and British, like a tea cosy.

The investigation takes them to Gibraltar, where there's a comedy incident with a monkey of course, because you can't go to Gibraltar and pass up an opportunity like that. Plus Sandra gets flirty with a local businessman, and the boys get hot and bothered and even grumblier and grumpier in the heat. Then Gerry and Steve get locked in a container and loaded on to a ship. Ha, please leave, ship, take them to Somalia. Or, better still, have a little hole, maybe not so little, below the waterline ...

That's not going to happen though, not in part two next week, not in the rest of the series. The Den(n)ises are sticking with New Tricks for the moment. It's Armstrong who's off soon, following James Bolam who went last year, complaining that the script wasn't what it had been (had it ever been anything?). Amanda Redman is on her way out too. You can't really say they're leaving a sinking ship though. It's still just about the most watched thing on TV. Nicholas Lyndhurst and Tamzin Outhwaite will soon be joining, New Tricks is afloat, in rude health. Bafflingly.

That's the real mystery here. And something that UCOS should perhaps be investigating – investigating themselves in other words. They need to go back to 2003 and reopen the case of how what was originally a one-off was then commissioned into a series (maybe Brian can make a Lego model). And then another series. And again … This is series 10, can you believe it? That's twice as many The Wire! (Obviously I'm not really comparing New Tricks to The Wire, that would be ridiculous.)

Also obvious is the reason for all the recommissioning: Viewing figures. It's YOUR fault, all nine million of you. Yes, NINE million. That's nearly twice as many as Luther gets. Luther, which is original and bold and has a charismatic lead. Against New Tricks, which is not just past its sell-by date, you can actually see the mould growing on it. It's not interesting as comedy – the jokes are either about the characters getting on a bit, or they're puns. Nor is it interesting as a cop show. There's no psychological profiling here, or crime-scene investigation – it's about hunches and leads, plodding along, working it out with a pencil, and making Lego boats. Maybe the odd chase, until they run out of breath.

But it's undemanding, and safe. You don't have to think too much, can just let it wash over you, like warm soapy watery water. So you do, again and again. Well, if not you, then everyone else does. Maybe not a mystery then, but almost certainly a crime.

Genre Conventions 

Sci-fi 

• A time setting in the future, in alternative timelines, or in a historical past that contradicts known facts of history or the archaeological record.
• A spatial setting or scenes in outer space (e.g. spaceflight), on other worlds, or on subterranean earth.
• Characters that include aliens, mutants, androids, or humanoid robots and other types of characters arising from a future human evolution.
• Futuristic or plausible technology such as ray guns, teleportation machines, and humanoid computers.
• Scientific principles that are new or that contradict accepted laws of nature, for example time travel, wormholes, or faster-than-light travel or communication.
• New and different political or social systems, e.g. dystopian, post-scarcity, or post-apocalyptic.
• Paranormal abilities such as mind control, telepathy, telekinesis, and teleportation.
• Other universes or dimensions and travel between them.

Cop Drama 

• are constructed realities
• depict constructed versions of reality that appeal to audiences
• encode hegemonic values and ideologies
• represent current societal responses to crime
• use formulas
• employ some stereotypical representations
• make iconic use of hand guns, police cars, banks, uniformed and ununiformed police, and explosions

TV Industry

The major TV channels in the UK are BBC1, BBC2, ITV1 and Channel 4, their target audience’s range from children to adults. BBC1 is the UK’s most popular channel, the channel showcases Britain’s best talent and the nations most talked about and loved programmes. BBC1 targets both working class and middle class citizens. Programmes such as Eastenders and Holby City are aimed at the lower class; these programmes are put on later at night (Eastenders 7.30pm or 8pm & Holby City 8pm) because people will be home from work by that time. During the course of the day while people are at work programmes such as Bargain Hunt & Escape to the country are on, I think these programmes are aimed at the older generations that have maybe retired and may be at home for most of the day.

BBC2 is a mainstream channel, the main genre schedule to air on this channel is factual programming, they aspire to be the place that viewers find the finest arts, history, science and human interest documentaries. I think BBC2 is aimed at the older generation 40-60 as I think the genre of programmes such as factual programming would only appeal to a few of the younger generations. BBC2 airs programmes such as Dragons Den, which would target an audience of intelligent entrepreneurs.

ITV1 is aimed at all audiences, the time of day would depend on the specific target audience, they air different genre of TV programmes to target different audiences. It airs programmes such as Emmerdale and Coronation Street aimed at the lower class, it also airs football matches on a regular occasion aimed at middle-aged males. There’s a wide range of genres that would appeal to a wide range of audiences, so the channel ensures different people would tune in at different times rather than having the same audience for the whole day. 

Channel 4 aims its shows at 16-34 year olds, which is a broad target audience, this keeps the channel up to date with the younger generation as it has aired programmes such as youngers which were aimed at the younger generations as the storyline for the programme was something that teenagers might be able to relate to. Channel 4 also airs a lot of documentaries but they take a different approach to them which would be more appealing to the younger generation and would encourage them to watch it.

BBC1 is funded mainly through the television licence, which costs £145.50 per year per household. According to the BBC’s 2012/13 annual report its total income was £5,102.3 million, which can be broken down into: £3,656.2 million in license fees collected from householders, £1,101.2 million from the BBC’s Commercial Businesses, £269.7 million from government grants and £75.2 million from other income such as rental collections and royalties from overseas broadcasts of programming. However commercial programmes are funded by a small amount of television licence, but the rest is funded by advertising as people who own the commercials pay to have there advertisements aired on the TV channels. 

obsessed analysis