Making and Unmaking Meaning in
Television: From I Love Lucy to
Modern Family
HUM 3085: Television and Popular Culture
Spring 2015
Dr. 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 sound
Sound 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)