Skins - Cassie Extract

We watched a short extract from the T.V. drama Skins; it was an episode of Cassie coming home from a mad party in which spaghetti got plastered everywhere, to find her parents with their hands down each others trousers. This was the first piece of Skins I have ever seen and from this one extract I can tell that series is definitely appealing to a teenage audience due to the wild parties, sex and drugs. Although the series deals with issues that affect teenagers today, it extremely stereotypes its characters and makes teens out to all be pill popping, alcoholic, sex addicts; it is this construction of teenage life that gives young adults the name it has got today (‘I blame the kids!’), and due to its huge audience popularity it may also influence them to start doing the things that they see on the programme. On the other hand it may open their eyes to the stupid things that they see and the production team may just wish to let the audience escape their boring and monotonous lives, and of course the programme would not be half as interesting if all they showed were teenagers watching T.V, doing homework and occasionally going to a party.

Cassie is angelic, pale, blonde, with a soft cute voice and wearing a gold dress, signifying her innocence although the dress is not pure white like her mother and fathers clothing which reflects their childlike behaviour and in conjunction with the VW12 ‘hippy’ van outside their nice house and the naked pictures of her mother painted by her father all over the house – even in the baby’s room – all these combine to show the rebellion of Cassie’s parents during their mid life crisis. This stereotypical view of rebelling parents is torn between them trying to be good parents but failing miserably by trying to communicate to Cassie with cute pet names like ‘kiddums’ and asking her questions to do with her anorexia seeming concerned even though they change the subject very quickly as their minds are only on sex.

In an attempt to escape the disgust and embarrassment of her parents Cassie has developed anorexia so at least there is one thing in her life she can be in control of, and to block out the incessant noise coming from her parents room into her little brother’s where she is sitting she takes drugs. So beneath all the stereotypical views of teenagers there is a serious matter arising from all the points made, that it is the parents fault, what their children do and teenage behaviour is all a consequence to their family life.

Although I did not particularly enjoy ‘skins’ because of its stereotypical view on teenagers (which many teenagers do not seem to notice or care) and the majority of the cast not being able to act, I did think it utilised music to its full extent using non-diegetic on the bus when the child is offering her a biscuit in an enchanted manner to evoke the audience’s pity and love, and at the same time it uses diegetic sound of the mobile above the baby’s bed to create the sense of realism so needed in a soap.

Overall ‘skins’ is good at tackling the controversial issues facing teenagers, however it lapses into unrealistic phases in which the stereotypes of out of control teens and uninterested parents take over the show.

Wallander - a T.V. production

Wallander is a new T.V. series involving a detective aptly name Wallander, whose job it is to investigate homicides. This plot and theme of this series is very similar to thriller conventions in film so to analyse and compare this to thriller films should be quite interesting. I have only seen the first episode as it is a new series however this was an extra long episode of one and a half hours so there is plenty material to look at.
The opening credits consisted of the face of the actor playing Wallander (Kenneth Branagh) in black and blue block colour framed by yellow which were the words of the title using the letters a, a, d and e as they are the letter with holes in them. once all the letters were exhausted it was just a yellow screen with Wallander in black unobtrusive letters. The yellow mirrors the colour of the Rape Seed plantation in which the opening sequence took place with a young girl committing suicide. The large use of yellow may also intimate cowardliness or jealousy that is to come, after watching the whole episode i find that the yellow would be a good representation of Wallander's troubled mind which is close to cracking and could be interpreted as cowardly. Whilst watching these credits the yellow gave me the picture of lines on a road, this signifies the journey of twisting and turning plot that the series contains. The blue/black face also shows sadness 'he was feeling blue'. And also provides an image of a storm that is to come.

The Thriller conventions shown by the first episode shows the style of this series as it has a flawed hero, many male protagonists, mystery into who the murderer is, slanted blinds and fast tension building music. I could not see many differences between this T.V. thriller and that of the big screen productions except that this is a series and obviously the story is carried on throughout the space of time the series lasts. There was one subtle difference that i did notice however, which was the repetition of some of the shot types used, as well as having a variety of shot compositions the variety was not as wide as that of a film and the shot that was often used was extremely strange and the audience saw the main male protagonists reflections in windows, vases, mirrors etc. This indicates that there is a hidden person inside everyone or that there is always someone watching which adds to the sense of tension/worry, although these types of shots would be used in films the frequency in which they would be used is definitely not as much as was used in 'Wallander'.