What
makes the programme a single camera show?
How is
it produced? What technical elements are
used such as lights, camera and sound?
How are
episodes structured?
How are
scenes structured?
Is the
show written on an episode basis or the entire season? How do you know?
What
genre is it? Why does it fit into the genre?
Conclude
your thoughts.
Breaking Bad
Breaking Bad is a single camera show
because only one camera is used to shoot at a time. The set and actors return
to their starting points for a scene before every take, only the camera moves
around to get more shots from every angle. This gives the director more freedom
with where they can place the camera because there are no restrictions, like
another camera being in the shot. I think that shooting it as a single camera show
places the audience within the scene because the freedom of the camera makes it
seem more real.
Breaking Bad is shot with many locations,
Walter's house, many different labs, Jesse's house, Hank's house and many more
places outside in New Mexico. Because a lot of it is outside, its mostly natural light and its low light in Jesse's house and a normal level of light in Walt's house. Almost all of the sound is dialogue the rest is cars.
Breaking Bad is a serial show because
every episode follows a long narrative with each episode telling a segment of
the narrative. The narrative over all of the series is set over 2 years,
sometimes there are flash forwards and flashbacks that go to before the
narrative to give the audience extra information. The narrative is about the
progression of one man through the 2 year and all of the people that he
encounters in this time. This gives the audience a reason to keep watching. I believe
that watching a serial show is more entertaining because of its character
development and longer narrative.
The main character is Walter, he has to
hide his dark side from his family. To do this he must tell a lot of lies, the
audience knows when he is lying because they saw what he has really done. The
scene is strutted around Walters’s lies and how he avoids telling his family.
The scenes build tension by Walters’s family finding clues to his secretes but
when they confront him about it he creates another lie. The camera captures Walters’s
reaction when they confront him and the audience can see the reaction and the
character thinking quickly.
Breaking Bad is about a chemistry teacher
who is diagnosed with lung cancer. To make money for his family when he's gone,
he decides to cook crystal meth with a former student. Together they create a
lot of meth and sell it to drug dealers. Throughout the series they encounter
many dealers that create problems for them, and the only way to get out of it
is to kill them. Meanwhile Walter’s brother in law, a DEA agent, is hunting
down a meth cook, who is actually Walter. All of these points picked out from
the series makes the genre of Breaking Bad a crime, drama, thriller.
