Preliminary Video

Codes & Conventions in a bit more detail!

Television drama plays a central role in television schedules and an almost unprecedented range of TV drama is now being broadcast on terrestrial, cable and satellite channels. TV dramas entertain us but also play an important role in shaping the way we perceive the world. In television drama codes and conventions are used by the director to structure the narrative. Television drama is a vast genre which covers large numbers of sub-genres which have developed within this.

Media products uses a number of conventions to make the product appear to be seamlessly produced which means that it appears as though meaning had already existed prior to the construction of the film. In fact the cinematic codes and conventions of production produce an axis of meaning.

The codes and conventions of a text help create meaning. Codes can be divided into two categories – technical and representative:

• Technical conventions are all the ways in which equipment is used to tell the story in a media text, for example the camera work in a film.

• Representative conventions show what is beneath the surface of what we see. For example, a character's actions show you how the character is feeling.

Sound

Sound is said to be the symphony of the emotions and truly plays a key part in TV dramas. Music has the ability to alter our mood, change our point of view and force us to think, act, and respond a certain way.