Making and Unmaking Meaning in Television: From I Love Lucy

to Modern Family

HUM 3085: Television and Popular Culture

Spring 2015Dr. Perdigao

January 30-February 2, 2015

Modes of production• Multi-camera live studio production: origins in radio,

adaptation in 1940s in television (Mittell 164)

• Almost every form of television in the 1940s was broadcast live; exceptions in 1940s and 1950s in stand-alone plays, anthology drama (167)

• Single-camera telefilm production: from early days but increase in popularity

• Base in Los Angeles vs. New York (168)

• Hollywood filmmaking

• Single camera to shoot scene from particular angle

• Master shot as distant shot to cover entire scene (168)

Experiments in Form• Extensive postproduction process but benefits in flexibility in

location shooting

• Durability and high-quality of the medium, higher resolution (Mittell 169)

• Dragnet (1951-1959) as breakthrough program to popularize telefilms on major network (169)

• Quality of picture in reruns as another benefit (170)

• Multi-camera telefilm studio production: example of I Love Lucy, hybrid form

• Demands of actors—production in Hollywood and shooting on film (171)

• Desilu Studios created to absorb the costs, financing the show (172)

The Great Divide• Performed in television studio in front of a live audience but

cameras recorded action to tape, then editing in post-production (Mittell 172)

• Emergence of videotape in the 1950s as key development that innovated the medium (173)

• Live-to-tape programming popular in the 1960s

• Live-edited videotaped sitcoms: All in the Family, Roseanne, Everybody Loves Raymond

• Live-edited videotaped sitcoms feature “limited settings, character relationships, and longer scenes”; themes “emphasize domestic life and the community of a family or workplace” (175)

Experiments in Form• Most comedies shot in multi-camera studio mode, with live

audience giving feedback (Mittell 252)

• Live broadcast in early 1950s, shift after I Love Lucy’s use of multi-camera telefilm system, live-to-tape model in the 1970s (252)

• Single-camera telefilm system: M*A*S*H (1972-1983), 1990s and 2000s: Malcolm in the Middle (2000-2006), My Name is Earl (2005-2009), The Office (2005-2013) (252-253)

• Telefilm sitcoms feature “more editing, varied locations, and multiple storylines that are controlled and paced through postproduction editing” (Mittell 175)

Modernization and Resuscitation• Modern Family premiered on September 23, 2009 on ABC• http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1444504/

• Success for network that had rejected The Cosby Show, saying that sitcoms were dead

• Self-analysis worked into show’s format, self-analysis, self-exposure

• “Baring the device,” breaking the fourth wall

• Use of the set, staging

• The Cosby Show and the Huxtable home

• Multi-camera mode, live studio

• Single camera, three storylines in Modern Family

An Evolving Form• Television texts to be “read,” interpreted

• Text: “any bounded communication system that can be analyzed, from a novel to a billboard, a piece of music to a painting” (Mittell 159)

• “Texts need not be grounded in language, as visual and aural expression convey meaning and can express ideas. Television programs are clearly texts for the purposes of analysis, offering a range of meanings expressed through visual, sonic, and linguistic cues” (Mittell 159).

• For interpretation, uses of terms/theories from the study of film, literature, visual art, music, and theatre

• Also recognition of the distinctions of the medium (Mittell 159)

Stylistic analysis• Staging:

set, props, lighting, costume, makeup, and actor movement and performance (Mittell 177)

• Film’s mise-en-scène (177)

• Camerawork

• Capturing the image, style of shooting

• Speed of motion

Perspective• Lenses

• Focal length: “alters the degree of magnification and depth of an

image” (Mittell 185)

• “[A] long focal length makes objects appear closer to the camera than they truly are, while shorter focal lengths can create the illusion of objects appearing farther from the camera” (185)

• Telephoto lens:used to “capture images from far away” (185)

Perspective• Wide-angle lenses use short focal lengths; “fisheye”

distortion but allow panoramic shots (185)

• Longer focal length=compresses depth, flattened image (185)

• Shorter focal length=increases depth, deeper space (185)

Focus• Depth of field:

“range of distance from the camera in which images can be in focus” (187)

• Rack focus: Alters focal plane to shift what part of the image is sharp and clear; changing focus from one character to another (background vs. foreground in focus, quick change) (188)

• Framing:camera constructing the image, giving sense of space

• Establishing shot:Extreme long shot that “sets the scene from a distance” (189)

• Long shot:More details in a scene, sense of space (190)

One fish, two fish• Two shot:

Two people converse within the frame

• Three shot: Three characters

• Two shot west:Soap operas; one person stands in front of the other, both peer beyond the camera; two do not see each other’s reactions (191)

• Closeup:Intimacy and emotional expression, fills frame with person’s face (192)

• Medium closeup:Frames person’s chest to top of his head

Orientation• Extreme closeup:

“[A]llows an isolated detail, object, or body part to fill the screen” (192)https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QZhXuawVRHU

• Low angle shot:Camera shooing from below, making object/people seem larger

• High angle shot:Camera shooting from above, making object/people seem smaller (192)

• Canted shot:Camera shoots at an angle, creating sense of disorientation (192)

Camera movement• Tilt

• Dolly and tracking shots

• Crane shot

• Hand-held cameras

Editing• Continuity editing:

Natural, realistic feel; continuity of time, space

• Cut:Switch from one shot to another (197)

• Jump cut:“jars and distorts viewers by breaking continuity” (196)

• Shot/reverse shot:Back-and-forth editing between closeups in a dialogue (197)

Transitions• Fade-outs:

To a black screen

• Fade-ins:From black screen to illumination

• Dissolves:Transition from one shot to another, images briefly overlapping (200)

• Wipes:Line or shape appears on the screen as one image is replaced with another (200)

Fragmentation• Cross-cutting:

Establishes parallels between storylines, continuity (200)

• Flashback: Transition to earlier point in the story

• Split-screen: Division of physical space of the frame (204)

Storytelling• Diegesis:

The world created in the text, storytelling• Diegetic sound:

Sound characters can hear: dialogue, noises within the scene, and music onsite (209)

• Nondiegetic soundSound only audience can hear, soundtracks, etc. (209)

• Voiceover narration, often as framing device at the episode’s beginning and end

• Internal voice of character; ex: Carrie’s narration on Sex and the City as diegetic, originating in storyworld

• Extradiegetic narration:Existing in storyworld but not emerging from on-screen action; ex: Mary Alice from beyond the grave in Desperate Housewives or the retrospective narrator Kevin on The Wonder Years

Periodization• Production, distribution, and transmission as the

exchange of programming (Mittell 19)

• Production company manages the creative process (oftentimes subsidiaries of film studios)

• Logos or bumpers at the end credits of programs

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NCLPHSVtvmU

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BC-eFU6OgxA

Productivity• Deficit financing: significant debt for first few years of a

series; license fees only covering a portion of production costs—financial gains with longer running series (Mittell 22)

• Showrunner: coordinator manages production process from concept through the series (Mittell 22)

• Standards-and-practices department for each network (Mittell 26)

• Hollywood studios mostly producing or co-producing fictional programming but independent television producers have played significant roles, decreased (not deceased) function since 1990s (Mittell 23)

• Independent television producers: Desilu Productions (I Love Lucy, Star Trek), Carsey-Werner Company (The Cosby Show, That ‘70s Show)

Redefining• Shift from Network Era in 1980s and 1990s with new

networks: Fox in the mid 1980s and UPN and the WB in the mid-1990s

• WB and UPN disbanded, recreated as The CW (co-owned by Warner Bros. and Viacom)

• Counter-program as series targeting different audience (29)

• Logos and snipes, or pop-up ads advertising new series (30)

• Branding network identities (30)

• Cable and satellite channels (31)

• MTV and branding (32) [What, MTV and music videos?]

Hybrids Don’t Just Appear on The Vampire Diaries

• Syndication as model of distribution; no centralized schedule or channel identity (Mittell 33)

• Formulas

• Innovation, imitation, saturation (Mittell 46)

• Spin-off: Buffy to Angel

• Franchise: Law & Order, CSI

• Clones

• Recombinants: Roswell=X-Files + Beverly Hills, 90210? (Mittell 46)