Cuffs: Establishing Genre

Music for crime drama -
quick beat
non-diegetic music 
sirens 
cars

Audience appeal -
Attractive main characters - to attract bored people 

Clothing - 
Police uniform

Theory review: Blumler and Katz - theorists from the 91970s researched how audiences consume a media product with the aim of getting a particular pleasure from the product, They identify 4 pleasures: Entertainment; Surveillance; Self-identity; Social identity.

What do the opening scene and credits suggest/tell us about the genre, narrative and characters?

Consider:

• Media language: sound editing, graphics, mise-en-scene, theme music, locations
• Representations of characters and place
• Tone of the show

The opening scene has grunge-like music, targeting the younger audience. The use of the bright colours like yellow show that it's going to be upbeat, same with the music. The genre is breaking stereotypes as it's showing a lot of graffiti but it also doesn't as it's showing that the police are above the graffiti. Meaning, the police are above of society, making them seem powerful and dominant.

The opening scene follows expected conventions of a crime drama as there are policemen showing that they're more powerful than anyone else in the city and the grunge like effect/dark lighting of Brighton shows  that there's going to be crime in the city. The opening scene breaks expected conventions of a crime drama as the music is upbeat and the font used is in yellow, and this shows that this crime drama is more positive than others as other crime dramas tend to use colours like black, red and blue. The audience will be attracted to this show because they will find it interesting as there is a sense of good vs evil with the use of graffiti below the policemen. Showing that the police are good and society is evil. 

How has sound been used to create meaning?

The sound in the opening of the TV Crime Drama Cuffs is a non-diegetic sound of the background music which is tense and upbeat which automatically show it's a crime drama. The ambient sound of the seagulls shows that the first scene is set in on the beach, and the ambient sound of the police radio also shows that there's crime on the beach and a policeman needs to sort it out. The ambient sound of the sirens shows it's an emergency and this build up the tension fro the audience. There's a sound bridge of non-diegetic between the shots of the beach and police station, then goes to diegetic sound when it shows dialogue of a policeman talking. There's diegetic sound of yelling (dialogue) and the punch sound of the broken nose. Showing violence has been acted upon a policeman. This follows crime drama conventions as the use of diegetic sound of the police sirens shows that it's the usual crime drama as there's action and and the audience will think this is exciting as they're curious as to what's going to happen and will make them continue to watch it to find out what the crime is about.