Sit-coms have been very popular genre in the television and film industry, usually best seen as a television series because you have more time developing your characters for the audience and producing better comedy as It often takes an understanding of the characters to make the comedy funny. Two Sitcom series which I have looked at are ‘The Inbetweeners’ and ‘My Family’.
‘My Family’ first started in 2000 and ‘The Inbetweeners’ started in 2008. My family has been running for eleven series and it is a traditional sitcom and follows the standard codes and conventions seen in most sitcoms. It uses the typical social family group of one mother and father who are married with two children. The family are dysfunctional with quirky characters and plenty of comic conflict between them. Most of the episodes are filmed at their house and the sets are very limited. The ‘Inbetweeners’ is a fairly recent sitcom which has come out in the last couple of years; this sit-com appears to be more untraditional as it does not seem to use the traditional codes and conventions., but when analysed much of it takes on the same style of the traditional ‘My Family’ type of sitcom. It is about a group of teenage characters that over time you could say become like a family group to watch and something that it’s teenage audience will be able to identify with and feel part.
The style of production is also interesting to analyse, In ‘My Family they use ‘typical canned laughter ‘ throughout the episode and in the ‘Inbetweeners’ this is not used at all. Younger audiences tend to find canned laughter insulting and definitely would not be seen as appropriate for a sitcom that is seen to be cool and edgy.
Also, the location of the Inbetweeners is a hard one to decide if it follows a traditional sit-com because generally most each episode is filmed in a different location, but each character has their home and that seems to be a fixed location throughout each episode and season.
The comedy of both ‘My Family’ and the ‘Inbetweeners’ in many respects follows similar lines using the comic trap scenario where characters get caught in a situation they can’t or don’t want to escape from. The comedy is seeing the characters overcoming the frustrations and obstacles they face and making themselves look foolish.
From doing a content analysis of the traditional codes and conventions for both sitcoms ‘My family’ ticks all the boxes and the ‘Inbetweeners’ ticks some of the boxes. This new sitcom ‘The Inbetweeners’ shows that the present sitcom genre is starting to expand and find news way of entertaining their audiences using content and comedy that is relevant to a new young audience, however it is still has many of the traditional blocks of comedy that have been used in sitcoms for years.
Overall, sitcoms are becoming less traditional because they are not limited to an amount of characters or even the location. This is great for the genre as they are meeting the comic needs of a new generation that need to identify with characters that they can relate to and in a style that is will resonate with them . However these non-traditional sitcoms are fairly expensive to make. For example, The Inbetweeners is very popular and made a lot of money, but so far they only made three seasons and a movie to round it off. This was because the writer thought they couldn’t take it any further, in my opinion they could of taken it to university from school, but they decided not to because they could damage the series and it’s style. My family first started in 2000 In this eight year gap other non traditional sitcoms have come out like ‘The mighty Boosh or ‘The office’ . These non traditional sitcoms have been very successful and haven’t died out because of lack of popularity. My Family on the other hand is starting to lose its popularity because the typical traditional family sitcom is losing its appeal and starting to bore it’s audience with the same family issues and situations. The ‘My Family’ series eventually got axed by the BBC as it’s viewing figure went down.
Task 2
In this document I will be talking about the genre horror and how it has changed over the years. So what are the codes and conventions? Well some of the codes and conventions are teenagers are always involved, blood and gore, people get killed, group of people, monsters, psycho killers and a cliff-hanger. These are the few codes and conventions in the horror genre and there so many to pick, but these are the main obvious ones.
I think that horror has changed dramatically over the decades because of the technology which has been introduced. This has also, affected the codes and conventions by revealing less of the idea of the film. Horror movies in the 70’s and 80’s were very much based around an evil character which could be physco killer or some sort half human and half animal monster. For example, Nightmare of Elm Street was based on a physco killer who killed children in nasty ways in his dreams. Some of the obvious codes and conventions for this is that ‘A group of teenagers are involved and are getting mauled by an evil physco killer’. There are about three simple conventions there. Looking at later films currently coming out today, they show more complexity in the codes and conventions by not making the characters too predictable.
For example, a film called Paranormal Activity is filmed from a individual’s perspective (in the way it is filed) to bring out the realism of the film, this also keeps the monster hidden from the camera. I have also, noticed that the horror runs a lot slower in contemporary films and there’s a better build up and understanding of the characters because in ‘Nightmare On Elm Street’ that they went straight into narrative which ruined the character development for the audience. These changes to the codes and conventions are helping the target audience to understand the narrative better and helps creates more suspense for the audience. Also, the narrative allows the audiences imagination to be more creative.
The Horror genre is a genre to get right because all of the aspects of the narrative have to be perfect in order it to make it believably for the audience.
In conclusion, the Horror genre has changed for good reasons and will continue to impress future audiences to come.
References
Task 1:
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