Deutschland '83 Representations

Deutschland '83 walk through

Deutschland 83 intro

Season 1, Episode 1 'Quantum Jump'
October 2015 aired in Germany, January 2016 aired in UK

(Episode titles taken from actual NATO military exercises)

Verisimilitude = Very realistic (Using real life events)

Channel 4 poster:

- 2 sides - Split down middle - East and West

- Dark side, East - Grey, communist, barbed wire

- Light side, West - Colourful, love, fruit, games

- Character split in two - Uniform and casual

- Young character but historical programme

- Binary Opposites - Two hands each side - fist on the left connoting violence/rebellion and peace sign on the right showing freedom with kites coming from it. 

- Space invaders connoting the 80s

- Dictatorship Vs Love

- Binary opposition of colour

- Grass vs concrete rigid structure

- Consistent yellow font through both sides showing they are happy each side no matter of living standards, 

Distributor is 'Walter presents' 

Trailer:

- Song is 2 tribes by Frankie goes to Hollywood
- Ronald Reagan - speech, cold war
- Fast editing - action packed - high production value
- Enigma codes - 2 sides? Romance? Spy? running?
- East vs West = Violence 

Assessment

East Germany in the 80's

- After the 2nd World War, Germany was divided into Eastern and Western Germany.
- As a result of this the Capital, Berlin was also divided into east and West.
- The West was very capitalist, modern, free owned by the UK and Us whereas the East was communist under the ruling of the soviet union. The East was government controlled using the secret police, The Stasi.
- For the first 7 years after the split, people were allowed to travel between the borders which let many people in the east move to the west.
-In August 1961, the border closed splitting Berlin, splitting up families and an 87 mile concrete wall was build to divided the two sides, there were 176 watch towers making sure people didn't cross.
- There was a space between the wall called the death strip were people would be shot dead if entered.
- There were several checkpoints that people could cross between, mostly UK and Us people. One was called Checkpoint Charlie used primarily by Americans.
- It stood for 26 years but in the 1980s many started to criticise the wall. In a speech from Ronald Reagan, the American President, he stated 'Tear down this wall!'
- This cause many Eastern Germans to protest resulting in them approaching the wall and destroying it by hand.

What was life like?

-  There was a lot of surveillance and most people lived double lives. They would do one thing at home in their privacy and something different when out in public. E.g. watch western Tv but not mention it outside of the house. 

- Poverty was also a big thing as people could only afford the bare essentials. Brands did not exist and the state created its own industry for nearly everything.

- People weren't allowed past the Berlin wall into the west so many tried to sneak into the country but many failed resulting in death. Others hid in cars from western visitors, dug under the wall, went through sewers etc.

What did young people do for fun, like, listen to?

- Music was heavily censored as authorities reviewed lyrics for hints of dissent. Bands were only allowed to sing in German but the youth wanted to listen to bands from abroad so a black market developed of copies of western artists' music. 

- Many young people joined youth groups were they would come together to learn socialistic views and organise events for younger children. Others enjoyed going out to theatres and watching movies. 

What was education like?

- Instead of being taught English as it is a world language that is usually taught in schools across the world, students were taught Russian. 

- Many classes included socialism views which taught children basic etiquette and how to work together. For example, pioneer classes where each child would bring in something like show and tell which gave them the opportunity to talk to each other about their lives. 

Why was there so much tension and suspicion?

- Many east Germans were put under surveillance if the stasi thought that they were being rebellious by associating themselves with Western culture. 

- East Germany regarded the west as being run by old fascists and corrupted by big, international companies. They suspected the west to prepare for WW3. The west stated that the east deprived citizens of their human rights such as freedom of religion, speech and ability to leave the country. 

Why did people want to escape the East?

- The East was heavily run by the government which meant that people had a lack of freedom in how they lived their life. Everything was controlled, their social life, their work, what they said and what they did. People wanted to escape the East in order to have more freedom and the ability to express their views without being scared of being imprisoned or punished. 

Why did people like and respect the public?

- There was no unemployment as they didn't believe in the concept therefore there was no benefits and workers were afforded the safety of their jobs as they couldn't be fires unless they committed a serious offence. 

- They helped women in the workplace as they though the patriarchy was viewed as a symptom of capitalism. They implemented a strong foundation of laws to protect mothers and distribute childcare services. There was more equality as there was a smaller gender pay gap than in the West.

- They offered free health care, free places to kindergarten and school and had affordable housing.  

What was the relationship between the citizens and the government/stasi nearing the end of the cold war?

- The stasi, which was the largest network of secret police in history were able to infiltrate every facet of society and it is estimated that one in five adults in the country were directly connected to them.

-  Some citizens were happy in their living standards as there was benefits such as more quality, more work, free health care etc however a majority started to get rebellious as more people were being put under surveillance and being punished for the smallest things as the country was over-dictating. Therefore, this led to citizens tearing down the Berlin Wall by hand in order to get their freedom. 

How did they view the West?

- The West contained modern ideas with the allied countries of the Us and Uk. This meant they had popular culture such as western music, fashion and ideals. 

Regulation and Long form TV Drama: Fact-finding

Essay layout plan

Discuss the ways the extract constructs the representation of...

POINT

EXAMPLE FROM SCENE

EXPLORE-

CAMERA

EDITING

MISE EN SCENE

SOUND

REFOCUS ON AUDIENCE

COMPARE

1. LFTVD conventions- intro
2. Narrative, examples
3. Character development
4. Genre

Media Language

Camera-

Technical codes
Frame- closeup, long shot, etc
Angle- Low, High, Birdseye
Movement- Crabbing, tracking, panning

• In the scene where Benny and the social worker are talking, the high angle shot has been used to show Benny looking down on the social worker which is irony as she is the higher participant
• Close up tracking shot of the phone after it electrocuted Joyce showing distress and panic
• All shots of the boys are at eye line showing them as being equal 
• When Benny is shot is a long shot which quickly zooms into eleven showing panic

Mise en Scene-

Costume
Lighting
Actors
Makeup
Props
Setting

• Byer's house- dim lighting, brown clothes, 80s exterior 
• Yellow phone contrasts and stands out= communication
• Bennys diner- Eleven seeks shelter
• Woods- heavy rain, pathetic fallacy 

Sound-

Music
Contrapuntal
Diegetic/ non-diegetic
Offscreen/ on screen
Voice over
Emotion
Dialogue- how/what is said

• Off screen sound of pot wash in Benny's diner to on screen of Benny's washing 
• Off screen diegetic knocking disruption in the narrative and raises alarm 
• Diegetic dialogue 'you don't sound like you did on the phone'
• Non-diegetic contrapuntal song commences as soon as Benny is shot- White rabbit Jefferson find song - volume and pace increases as Eleven runs away
• Non-diegetic sci-fi instrumental emphasises tension when they find Eleven 
• Joyce on the phone screen diegetic sound of mysterious creature
• Nancy's room- Africa by Toto is contrapuntal- romantic mood- 80s theme

Editing-

Screen time
Transitions
Order of narratives
Pace
Special effects

• In the scene of Steve and Nancy in her room jump cut is used to show the proximity between the teens. As he moves closer the audience are made aware of the advances in intimacy within their relationship as it blossoms. 
• When the social worker arrives at Benny's diner. The pace of the cuts, along side the intense non-diegetic creates an overall sense of panic as the officials look for eleven.
• The electric bolt that comes off of the phone shows Joyce's first sign of communication with Will and some sort of sci-fi other
• Shot reverse shot- jumps from one character to another and back again
• Multi stranded narrative. Underlines the LFTVD drama conventions. In the scene- happening mostly simultaneously except Eleven's escape and discovery. Linking characters at the end of the episode. 

Comprehension activities

Fandom

Representations Essay

Throughout the first episode of Stranger Things a number of key representations are shown of the characters creating ideas and concepts of whats to come, along with stereotypes of specific characters.

In the sequence, I looked at a series of scenes of; the woods, the boys house, Nancy's room and Benny's diner were shown where we meet a number of characters who fit into specific categories of being either typically stereotypical or going against our initial opinion of the characters.

In the scene in the woods the main characters that we are introduced to are Officer Hopper and the boy's teacher. The teacher is represented as being helpful and caring, meaning he is worried for Wills safety and wants to go the extra millet help find him. However, he is more of a minor character in this part of the show as he doesn't affect the narrative massively, but he helps to give context and change the representation of Hopper by querying him out his daughter. Our initial representation of him being a careless unorganised character is changed as soon as we find out that he had a daughter who died a few years ago. We are first fed the idea that Hopper has a family at the beginning of the episode when we see a tracking out shot of a drawing of what we find out is a mum, dad and child which was drawn by Hopper's daughter, this shot then leads round into a shot of Hoppers caravan which is a mess with beer bottles, cigarettes, clothing, etc all scattered around the place. This almost masks the drawing that we have just seen and creates the representation of Hopper being careless and unorganised. Then in the sequence I looked at our representation of him is flipped on its head as we instantly feel bad for him and look at him much more sympathetically as his daughter died.

The boy's are represented as being very mature for their age as they all act in a very grown up way as they want to help to find their friend showing them as loyal and compassionate characters. However, they are all using radios to communicate with one another creating the sense of youth and immaturity as we see sharp shots from each of the boys communicating with one another through them in their own "secret" speech which may not be understood by their parents and other adults. We see this prior to this when the boys get called into the head teachers office where they all use unstandardised specialised speech which only they understand because they play the game that the vocabulary has come from. This make the story a lot more realistic because it is something that would have been much more common to see in the 80s when this TV drama was set.

In the next scene we see Nancy get the chance to break the stereotypical studious girl representation when Steve climbs through her window. Even through she lets him in she is still very aware that she needs to prepare for her test and won't let him distract her. Steve is the stereotypical bad boy heart throb and is represented as being a bad influence on Nancy at this point. Nancy is still shown as being nervous and conscious of what she is doing as she is very doubtful of letting Steve in and at the end of this scene she slams the window shut creating a very abrupt, sudden effect which could be a reflection of how she is feeling.

Stranger Things Presentation Notes

Ownership-

• Owners- Duffer Brothers 
• They pitched stranger things 10 companies getting rejected until Netflix agreed to air the show and instantly loved it
• 21 laps run by Shawn Levy
• Netflix plan to make $2 billion dollars
• Netflix created their own social media accounts #JusticeForBarb
• Netflix paid for Stranger Things and distribution 
• Target audience varies 
• 15.8 million views in the first episode
• Netflix announced its entry into 130 new countries

Production-

• 21 Laps Entertainment produced Stranger Things
• Budget per episode $6 m to produce, $48 per episode
• 8 episodes in first season
• 2000 members cast and crew
• Above the line (budget for advertising) and below the line (memes)
• Pre-production, original from Netflix
• Fictional town
• Filmed in Atlanta, Georgia
• Took 7 months to film, filmed in 2016
• Took 11 days to film each episode
• Tested images to have soft and round tones similar to 80's
• Took into account  smart phone use, so Duffer Brothers composed filming to be effective to both big and small screen platforms
• Kevin Ross edited, along with Dean Zimmerman
• Edited in a week

Distribution-

• Can watch stranger things on iPad, smart phone, smart TVs, computers, and tablets
• Subscription only service
• Changed the language on the front covers to attract the different audiences
• DVD boxset
• Vertical intergration- Netflix produces it, distributes it and broadcasts it (owns all of the rights)
• Available in 20 different translations 
• Netflix is available in 190 countries
• Simultaneous release- whole season in one go

Marketing- 

• Netflix was responsible for the marketing 
• Used unique aspects scubas virtual reality- interactive experiences
• Announced a planned release for a planned release for July 15th 2016
• Cultural 80s nostalgia 
• Trailers were released which included the thriller theme of the drama
• Soundtrack
• Clothing and food
• Word of mouth
• Netflix had to use very little marketing 
• 360 degree virtual reality video on youtube
• Eggo Waffles recipes were released in pair with each episode of season 2 
• Eggos were an 80s food
• Merchandised and fandom made products
• Hidden vending machine in NewYork-competition (Stranger things TV Instagram)
• Topshop paired with Stranger Things 
• Google map
• 80s eggo advert- leggo my eggo

Stranger Things Representations

Rolan Barts-

• Signifier 
• Denotation 
• Connotation

Constructed Realism-

• Nothing can be real in TV drama
• The idea that all media products and what we see in them is made/ built using technical codes and media language such as camera work, editing, etc.

Dominant ideology-

• System or structure of beliefs, values and ideas about the way we should live, behave and think

Representations in the media-

• All media products are 'constructed'
• Producers use different elements/ conventions of media language to construct these representations 
• Producer of different LFTVD may use different elements of media language to:

- Offer different representations 

- Communicate different ideas and viewpoints about individuals/ social groups or identities, events and issues

-

Stranger Things notes

Essay Plan-

Point

Example

Specific

Analysis

Theory/ terminology

Answer the question

Stranger Things Season 1 promo

• Mid shot
• Close up- showing expression
• Direct eye level
• Tracking long shots
• Tracking close up- tension 
• Leave cliff hangers- allowing the audience to create scenarios win their mind
• Enigma codes
• Star power- 80s heart throbs (Winola Rider)
• Specific dialogue- Hopper  
• Netflix logo- branding
• Low key lighting- enigma
• Investigative narratives and crime conventions

Stranger things walk through

80s film research

• The Duffer brothers created Stranger things as a homage to 1980s films
• ET-

Stranger Things pays homage to ET (1982) It uses images of kids on dirt bikes riding through suburbia and into the wilderness and shows the children on a quest. The series also has an extensive usage of flashlights - and flashlight beams - in the darkness. Many shots in the series mirror the lighting and framing found in E.T. the film.

• Ghost busters

Stranger Things makes connections to ghost busters during the halloween scene in season 2.

• Stand by me

Stranger Thing Character Representations

LFTVD notes

Long Form TV Drama-

• Cultural Zeitgeist- Stranger Things
• High quality drama
• Multiple episodes
• Content can be dark and difficult but innovative
• It now attracts some of the best and innovative writer and actors
• Time shifting, easily accessible 
• Keeps people invested
• Lots of creativity 
• Characters change in natural and surprising ways
• Lots of different networks competing
• Can show theme development 
• Vocab - easter eggs, time-shifting, VOD, PVR, streaming, terrestrial tv
• State of the nation TV
• Things that are going on today

TV Drama-

• Various locations
• Stock Characters
• Multiple narratives
• 1 hour episodes
• Dramatic cliff hangers
• High production Values

LFTVD Meanings...

• Has a number of episodes that create a narrative and tell a story to the audience 
• Technological change on TV industry 
• How audiences consume and interpret LFTV
• Considering the economic context behind the large budgets 
• 6 million for the 1st season

Stranger things poster-

• Setting- Prison, Garden
• Themes- friendship, mystery, power, falling adversity 
• Genre- supernatural, action, sci-fi
• Narrative- chase, young people hunting something down, binary opposition 
• Characters- young, varied expressions (negative), US, binary
• Intertextuality- starwars, ghost busters, ET, Goonies
• Historical period- 80s, clothing

Stranger things-

• ET, Goonies, Gremlins, Ghostbuster, Nightmare on Elm Street
• Stephen King (horror) tweeted about it, likes the show
• 1980s nostalgia 
• Set in 1983
• Duffer twins created stranger things- born in 90s
• 80s actress as mother 
• Fan artwork
• Trapper keeper 
• Duffers were rejected by mainstream HollyWood multiple times, Netflix 'rebels' took them on
• First season is set in November 1983
• Anxiety of influence- overcome
• Weaponised intertextuality 
• Fan service
• Pastiche- opposite to parody
• Pop culture metaphors used- Dungeons and dragons (lord f the rings, hobbit, star-wars)
• 11 is compared to ET and Fire-starter/ Carrie
• Creative misprision- misreading to create something original 

https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1_qi0ZwN7GBlnjbIKJLFgDMAi-UOF76j-L1ZvSnEWWFU/edit?usp=sharing

tabloid vs broadsheet

Questions:

Daily Mirror 

The Guardian 

Who was involved?

-       The twins (one-year-old Gabriel and Maria)

-       Bidhya Sagar Das, 33 (the supposed dad)

-       Cristinela Das, 28 (the mum)  

A one-year-old child who was killed in hammer attack

his father who has been accused for the killing

the child’s twin sister who was rushed to hospital after 

What happened?

-       One-year-old Gabriel was pronounced dead and the sister remains in a critical condition. 

-       The dad was arrested last night on suspicion of murder and attempted murder. 

-       Neighbours said the children’s mother ran into the street screaming 

-       Forensic officers were seen collecting a hammer from the property.

A father attacked his one-year-old son killing him and leaving his twin sister with severe head injuries. Both children were rushed to  east end hospital where the boy was declared dead.

Where did it happen?

Hackney, North London. 

Finsbury park north London 

When did it happen?

11.10pm on Saturday (18.03.17)

18^th of march 2017

How did it happen?

A man has been held over a suspected HAMMER attack on twin toddlers. 

Still to be confirmed 

Why did it happen?

Still to be confirmed 

Still to be confirmed 

What do you notice about the difference in content and how the articles convey this information? Why do you think that is?

-       A myriad of pictures 

-       Title is less understated (more dramatic)

-       Covers more content 

-       Emotive words 

-       Daring titles that includes a lot of information. However not a lot of text.

The guardian shows no graphic images or doesn’t go into detail about motives

Lots of text with