Monday 30th September

Today's Media Studies lesson was a theory lesson. In today's lesson we were talking about television dramas. To start the lesson of, we had to brainstorm what we would expect to see in a television school drama of this label, this would include things such as teachers, students, school setting, exaggerated story line etc.

After we had brainstormed we watched 15 minutes of TV school drama 'Waterloo Road'. Whilst watching the school drama, I had to look out for the following things:

-Themes

-Characters

-Plot

-Iconography (setting, costume, props)

Some of the themes in the episode of Waterloo road that we watched was the death of a character that had died in a previous series of the programme. I also took a note of the characters, these included teachers, students, head teacher, this linked into the brainstorm as it is what you expect to see in a school television drama. The television drama also took place in a school setting (chairs, tables, staff room). The props also linked into the brainstorm as all of the teachers used white boards and diarys. The students at the school also wear school uniform, but in this specific episode there was two new pupils and they didn't wear the school uniform, this was to make them look different, and make the target audience interested in the storyline. 

Today's lesson was very useful as it helped me identify what you should expect from a TV drama and why these things should occur in the drama. It also helped me to understand how much detail has to be included when actually writing about TV dramas.