Making and Unmaking Meaning in Television: From I Love Lucy

to Modern Family

HUM 3085: Television and Popular Culture

Spring 2014Dr. Perdigao

January 24-27, 2014

Modernization and Resuscitation• Modern Family premiered on September 23, 2009 on ABC

• Success for network that had rejected The Cosby Show, saying that sitcoms were dead: (http://entertainment.time.com/2014/01/22/why-nbcs-new-bill-cosby-show-wont-solve-its-sitcom-problems /)

• 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

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 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)

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)

• 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