The media product that I have chosen to analyse is Doctor Who.
Purpose:
The purpose of Doctor Who was originally to educate young children about the past and about History. They did this by having the main character travel back in time to see what life used to be like. However, after not long Doctor Who because more about entertainment then education. It became more fantasy then factual with Aliens and completely new species being made up. They even put there own twist on important historical events like World Wars 1 and 2 and the sinking of the titanic. At present Doctor Who is defiantly an Action, Drama, Science Fiction show and it's purpose is to entertain.
Genre:
The main and Genre in Doctor Who is defiantly Science Fiction. The official definition of "Science Fiction is "fiction based on imagined future scientific or technological advances and major social or environmental changes, frequently portraying space or time travel and life on other planets." Doctor Who fits this definition very very well. Firstly because, the fact that the main character travels around in time in a time machine that can travel through space too would defiantly be classed as an "imagined future scientific or technological advance". Secondly the phrase "frequently portraying space or time travel and life on other planets" is exactly what happens in every episode of Doctor Who, it's the whole theme of the show. So because of the Typical features of Doctor Who that I have just mentioned and the way they link in so well to the definition of Science Fiction I don't think you can argue with the fact that Doctor Who is a Sci-Fi. However there are also some other genre's that Doctor Who displays the characteristic of. For example, Action. The definition for an action film is "Action film is a film genre in which one or more heroes are thrust into a series of challenges that typically include physical feats, extended fight scenes, violence, and frantic chases. Action films tend to feature a resourceful character struggling against incredible odds, which include life-threatening situations, a villain, or a pursuit which generally concludes in victory for the hero" This also sums up Doctor Who. We have the Doctor and his companions, the hero's, an every episode they face a new challenge which they always manage to over come due to the resourceful character; The Doctor. There is a bit of comedy and romance in Doctor Who as well but these are never pushed forwards as the overall themes. Romance movie's tend to have the story lines bases around a few characters who are all in a love triangle. Some of the stylistic conventions of Romantic movie's include it being set in modern day, the characters being usually good looking people who are looking for love. The character's don't have super powers or amazing skills like they would usually in an action or sci-fi, they are just normal people. Also Romance films are realistic in the way that there isn't really any special effects and there isn't anything that happens in them that couldn't happen in real life. They are very relatable. I would say the overall themes of the show are defiantly Science Fiction and Action. It's the same kind of thing with comedy. In Doctor Who there is quite a lot of comedy but again it's not pushed forwards as one of the main themes, it is simply an asset to the story line and it adds interest. Comedy is also very similar to Romance in the way that the settings etc. will be normal and the characters will be normal people in normal situations and it's the story lines that make it a comedy. Some of the things that you would expect to see in a comedy is people doing weird things that you wouldn't expect to see in such a normal situation, which is funny. There is usually a lot of sarcasm and a lot of jokes and funny comments from the characters. In comedy aimed at a younger audience you will also expect to hear a lot of bad language. So over all I think that Doctor Who is mainly Science Fiction and action with a tiny Romance and Comedy. I think the fact that it relates to so many genre's is because it's purpose is to entertain so therefore to entertain many people it would have to have something in it that everyone likes. This is what makes it such a popular show, There is something in it for everyone.
Form:
Doctor Who is played on the BBC in episode that are 45 minutes long each. There are around 12 episodes per series. As we have already established Doctor Who is a Sci-fi, action drama series. There has been 8 series of Doctor Who since it's return in 2005 and another 2 have been announced. Doctor Who generally has an individual story line in each episode but then it has an on going story line through out the series. IMDb describes it as "In each series, there is an underlying story arc that pans all episodes until finally fully addressed in the season finale." When Rustle T Davis used the write the series of Doctor who, The good thing was that you could watch an episode of Doctor Who for the first time ever without knowing any of the history and you could understand most of it. On the other hand it was also really good for people who have a watched the whole series and know about the history because it adds a bit more excitement into the episode and it makes the episodes deeper. However since Rustle T Davis left and Stephan Moffat took over writing Doctor Who it has changed a lot. The series have more complex story lines. There are still the individual stories most episodes but there is a lot more references to the main on-going series story line and some episodes that just focus on that. This does make it difficult for people who are new to Doctor Who because there not going to know what a lot of it means. It also makes it difficult for young children who watch Doctor Who because it would be hard to follow and really confusing. "The Day Of The Doctor" is a Doctor Who special episode and was all about the Doctor's past. It was defiantly written for on going fans and not for people who have just started watching. I've watched all episodes since the return in 2005 and I struggled to understand it. A lot of people do enjoy Moffat's writing though as it makes it more interesting and challenging to follow and understand. So both ways of writing are good, but some are better for others.
Form:
Doctor Who is played on the BBC in episode that are 45 minutes long each. There are around 12 episodes per series. As we have already established Doctor Who is a Sci-fi, action drama series. There has been 8 series of Doctor Who since it's return in 2005 and another 2 have been announced. Doctor Who generally has an individual story line in each episode but then it has an on going story line through out the series. IMDb describes it as "In each series, there is an underlying story arc that pans all episodes until finally fully addressed in the season finale." When Rustle T Davis used the write the series of Doctor who, The good thing was that you could watch an episode of Doctor Who for the first time ever without knowing any of the history and you could understand most of it. On the other hand it was also really good for people who have a watched the whole series and know about the history because it adds a bit more excitement into the episode and it makes the episodes deeper. However since Rustle T Davis left and Stephan Moffat took over writing Doctor Who it has changed a lot. The series have more complex story lines. There are still the individual stories most episodes but there is a lot more references to the main on-going series story line and some episodes that just focus on that. This does make it difficult for people who are new to Doctor Who because there not going to know what a lot of it means. It also makes it difficult for young children who watch Doctor Who because it would be hard to follow and really confusing. "The Day Of The Doctor" is a Doctor Who special episode and was all about the Doctor's past. It was defiantly written for on going fans and not for people who have just started watching. I've watched all episodes since the return in 2005 and I struggled to understand it. A lot of people do enjoy Moffat's writing though as it makes it more interesting and challenging to follow and understand. So both ways of writing are good, but some are better for others.
Style:
The style of Doctor Who has defiantly changed over the years. It's always been a family friendly show, being on at around 7pm on a Saturday is perfect timing for families to sit down and watch Doctor Who together. Some scenes would be quite scary to little kids like the kind of scenes where you know something is going to jump out and it's really tense. These kind of scenes would normally have really slow, tense music (like in Jaws) or it would be silent because silence is sometimes scarier then scary music. Other styles that can make the scene appear tense and scary in Doctor Who include; Dark/ shadowy lighting, jumpy shots and fear being conveyed through the characters. The iconography mainly focuses on shots of the characters because in these scenes they tend to keep the audience in the dark as much as the characters are just to add to the tension because if the audience don't know what's going to happen it makes it much more dramatic to watch. Since Stephan Moffat took over writing the series there are a lot more of these scenes and sometimes full episodes are filmed like this. one episode that comes to mind straight away when discussing this style is the episode "Blink" from the 3rd series. It was a very spooky, jumpy, tense episode where you just wanted to shout "Don't open that door" or "Don't go in there". This episode was written by Stephan Moffat but this was before he became the main full time writer of the series. However there are also some episodes that focus more on the comedy side of things. These kind of episodes are filmed in the total opposite way to the spooky, horror style episodes. There is music in most of it, it's easy watching and not tense and it's usually filmed in lighter places where you not worried about an alien jumping out. One episode that I found was quite a comedy episode is "New Earth" from series 2. The main things that make it funny is the characters and the way the actors and actresses portray what's happening. If the actors were being serious and emotional then the episode could have been a lot different, even if the plot and script was identical.
Content :
"Doctor Who is a British science-fiction television programme produced by the BBC. The programme depicts the adventures of the Doctor, a Time Lord—a time-travelling humanoid alien. He explores the universe in his TARDIS, a sentient time-travelling space ship. Its exterior appears as a blue British police box, which was a common sight in Britain in 1963 when the series first aired. Along with a succession of companions, the Doctor faces a variety of foes while working to save civilisations, help ordinary people, and right wrongs." ( -Wikipedia)
This description from Wikipedia sums up the content of Doctor Who very well. Each episode has a story line in it and the story lines always fit around this theme and content description. The content is always age appropriate as it is on before the water shed time (9:00PM). I would say that most of the content is aimed around teenagers because of the way that there are some things in it that would scare young children but on the other hand it's not really aimed at adults either. You can tell this because the humour is quite young, there is nothing sexual, no swearing and as I said before, it's on before water shed.
Production Process:
The production process is a very long and drawn out process. There are so many different aspects to consider like cast, script, location, equipment, filming, film crew, editing, special effects and distribution.
When it comes to writing the script for Doctor Who it can get quite complicated. First of all there is the main writer of the series. From series 1 to series 5 Rustle T Davis would write a script that covered the main/ underlying story line that would go on though out the whole series. The BBC would then draft in other script writers to write the individual episodes but these episodes would always stay true to the full underlying story line that the official writer had already written. The official writer tends to write the series finale episode/ episodes too. Stephan Moffat began as one of the individual episode writers in Doctor Who but then when Rustle T Davis left the show, he took over the role. Some of the episodes that Moffat wrote before he took over include "The Empty Child", "The Doctor Dances", "Girl in the Fireplace" and "Blink". In these episodes you can easily see Moffats writing style as it is more spooky and scary.
There isn't much information available about how they cast Doctor Who. However I have been able to pick up things here and there and piece this together. I recon that when the time comes for the BBC to find a new cast member for Doctor Who, the people who's job it is to cast for Doctor Who wouldn't advertise it because they would get to much interest, instead they would look at actors and actresses that they already know of and offer them the chance to apply/ audition for the role. The writers and directors also have say and can suggest people. This is backed up by the evidence that I have gathered from various interviews with the writers/ production team of Doctor Who. "I was at the Baftas shortly before we were contemplating Peter" - Stephan Moffat (talking about how they cast Peter Capaldi, the 12th Doctor). Here he says that they were contemplating Peter which suggests that they do decide who to offer the role to based on people they already know. Some more evidence to suggest that they cast people who they already know is that most of the actors and actresses that have played major roles in Doctor Who is that most of these actors and actresses have been small roles in Doctor Who before. The biggest examples of this are: Freema Agyeman who played Martha Jones one of the Doctor's companions, played a Torchwood agent in an "Army Of Ghost" from the second series. Karen Gillan who played Amy Pond, also a companion of the Doctor, appeared in the episode "Fires of Pompeii" along with Peter Capaldi who is currently playing the Doctor himself.
I have quite a lot of information regarding the Locations that Doctor Who is filmed at and how these locations are discovered. This is due to an interview with Iwan Robberts that was done by "The Mirror". In this interview he describes in detail, the process that they go though to get the right location. “I have a huge database of pictures on my laptop, from parks and woods, to residential houses, just so many of them. And you use that as your library, so you look at a Doctor Who script when you get sent it, and think to yourself ‘I’ve got that location’, ‘I know a great place for this scene’. This is a short section from the interview that describes how he finds the locations to film in. He also states in the interview that most of it is filmed in Wales because on minuet you are in a busy city and the next your in rolling countryside which makes it a very good place to film because the locations are easy to get to and they don't involve too much travelling.
The times it takes to shoot an episode is very long due to all of the special effects. A single episode can take up to 3 weeks to film and then it's only on the TV for 45 minuets. The hour long specials take up to a month. The scedual requires the main actors and actresses to work for up to 12 hours a day for 10 months of the year.
Once the filming is complete, the production team get to work editing and fainalising the footage to make up an episode. All the episodes are finnished before the series airs. However the BBC have to be careful with the footage becuase there are people who try to get hold of the footage before it is aired. For example, whilst the first series was nearly finnished TV pirates kept trying to get hold of the preview tapes. These tapes need to be transported from Cardiff to London so one of the people in the office had the idea of labelling the tapes with "Torchwood" which is an anogram of "Doctor Who". This was to confuse the pirates and stop them from taking the tapes. This was sucsessful and it even inspired the first Doctor Who spin of which was called "Torchwood".
Content :
"Doctor Who is a British science-fiction television programme produced by the BBC. The programme depicts the adventures of the Doctor, a Time Lord—a time-travelling humanoid alien. He explores the universe in his TARDIS, a sentient time-travelling space ship. Its exterior appears as a blue British police box, which was a common sight in Britain in 1963 when the series first aired. Along with a succession of companions, the Doctor faces a variety of foes while working to save civilisations, help ordinary people, and right wrongs." ( -Wikipedia)
This description from Wikipedia sums up the content of Doctor Who very well. Each episode has a story line in it and the story lines always fit around this theme and content description. The content is always age appropriate as it is on before the water shed time (9:00PM). I would say that most of the content is aimed around teenagers because of the way that there are some things in it that would scare young children but on the other hand it's not really aimed at adults either. You can tell this because the humour is quite young, there is nothing sexual, no swearing and as I said before, it's on before water shed.
Production Process:
The production process is a very long and drawn out process. There are so many different aspects to consider like cast, script, location, equipment, filming, film crew, editing, special effects and distribution.
When it comes to writing the script for Doctor Who it can get quite complicated. First of all there is the main writer of the series. From series 1 to series 5 Rustle T Davis would write a script that covered the main/ underlying story line that would go on though out the whole series. The BBC would then draft in other script writers to write the individual episodes but these episodes would always stay true to the full underlying story line that the official writer had already written. The official writer tends to write the series finale episode/ episodes too. Stephan Moffat began as one of the individual episode writers in Doctor Who but then when Rustle T Davis left the show, he took over the role. Some of the episodes that Moffat wrote before he took over include "The Empty Child", "The Doctor Dances", "Girl in the Fireplace" and "Blink". In these episodes you can easily see Moffats writing style as it is more spooky and scary.
There isn't much information available about how they cast Doctor Who. However I have been able to pick up things here and there and piece this together. I recon that when the time comes for the BBC to find a new cast member for Doctor Who, the people who's job it is to cast for Doctor Who wouldn't advertise it because they would get to much interest, instead they would look at actors and actresses that they already know of and offer them the chance to apply/ audition for the role. The writers and directors also have say and can suggest people. This is backed up by the evidence that I have gathered from various interviews with the writers/ production team of Doctor Who. "I was at the Baftas shortly before we were contemplating Peter" - Stephan Moffat (talking about how they cast Peter Capaldi, the 12th Doctor). Here he says that they were contemplating Peter which suggests that they do decide who to offer the role to based on people they already know. Some more evidence to suggest that they cast people who they already know is that most of the actors and actresses that have played major roles in Doctor Who is that most of these actors and actresses have been small roles in Doctor Who before. The biggest examples of this are: Freema Agyeman who played Martha Jones one of the Doctor's companions, played a Torchwood agent in an "Army Of Ghost" from the second series. Karen Gillan who played Amy Pond, also a companion of the Doctor, appeared in the episode "Fires of Pompeii" along with Peter Capaldi who is currently playing the Doctor himself.
I have quite a lot of information regarding the Locations that Doctor Who is filmed at and how these locations are discovered. This is due to an interview with Iwan Robberts that was done by "The Mirror". In this interview he describes in detail, the process that they go though to get the right location. “I have a huge database of pictures on my laptop, from parks and woods, to residential houses, just so many of them. And you use that as your library, so you look at a Doctor Who script when you get sent it, and think to yourself ‘I’ve got that location’, ‘I know a great place for this scene’. This is a short section from the interview that describes how he finds the locations to film in. He also states in the interview that most of it is filmed in Wales because on minuet you are in a busy city and the next your in rolling countryside which makes it a very good place to film because the locations are easy to get to and they don't involve too much travelling.
The times it takes to shoot an episode is very long due to all of the special effects. A single episode can take up to 3 weeks to film and then it's only on the TV for 45 minuets. The hour long specials take up to a month. The scedual requires the main actors and actresses to work for up to 12 hours a day for 10 months of the year.
Once the filming is complete, the production team get to work editing and fainalising the footage to make up an episode. All the episodes are finnished before the series airs. However the BBC have to be careful with the footage becuase there are people who try to get hold of the footage before it is aired. For example, whilst the first series was nearly finnished TV pirates kept trying to get hold of the preview tapes. These tapes need to be transported from Cardiff to London so one of the people in the office had the idea of labelling the tapes with "Torchwood" which is an anogram of "Doctor Who". This was to confuse the pirates and stop them from taking the tapes. This was sucsessful and it even inspired the first Doctor Who spin of which was called "Torchwood".
All the information here was collected from Wikipedia, IMDb, BBC, and The Mirror
