Modern Family - Analysis of Opening Sequence

Modern Family

Analysis of Opening Sequence

The opening sequence of the ABC mockumentary Modern Family is a very short one. It is merely an 18 second sequence of each of the main families holding a large picture frame displaying another family that appears in the show. This is called the Droste effect, which is used to show a picture within a picture, and how the families all interact with each other in quirky and comedic ways. The cinematography is simple. It features each of the families for about 2 seconds, appearing to pose for a portrait in front of their homes, which also gives the audience an insight on the lifestyle of them. The camera quickly pans away from the family into another scene with the next family holding a picture of the previous family. The sequence is very simple, but also very interesting in that it tells the audience exactly what they need to know about the series before the episode. The families are quirky and weird in the way that they interact with each other, their poses tell the audience what kind of family they are, and even the music, which is an upbeat big band jazz tune tells the audience that this is a comedic and satirical show, not to be taken seriously.

Though obvious to anyone who has previously seen the show, the title sequence is directly modeled after each and every episode. The title sequence is split into four different acts, returning to the status quo by the end of the episode. These acts which all coincide with each other show the audience the segmented nature of the series, in the way that each of the families have their own subplot in each episode, but all somehow affect each other’s subplots. This also explains the use of the Droste effect in the pictures. The end of the sequence shows a large portrait of all of the families standing with each other in front of a white background, perhaps to represent purity of the serenity of the normal, holding a portrait with the title of the show.

The sequence even shows a little bit of development of the characters, though it is not at all thorough, or even entirely noticeable, perhaps to represent the spontaneous nature of the series. The first family appear a normal family, all smiling pleasantly, which perhaps even looks fake and forced to the audience, maybe representing how they are a dysfunctional family who happens to know how to behave in public. The second family is two men and their adopted child making strange facial expressions at each other, while returning to a rather annoyed face upon looking away from each other. This might represent how different they are in personality from each other and try to hide this fact upon interaction. The third family is a mother, a father and their son in the middle. This family appears normal at first glance as well. The mother appears very well dressed and is posing ostentatiously for the camera, showing how she is perhaps a well-mannered and classy woman with an abundance of self-confidence. The man is showing what appears to be forced, slightly annoyed smile, which perhaps shows how he is detached from his family and doesn’t feel interested is being pleasant. Their son also appears to be very well behaved, showing a wide smile while holding a picture frame, showing how he may be the intelligent and reasonable part of the family.

Analysis of Reader's Digest

Reader's Digest

Analysis of Front Cover

Front cover of the May 2007 issue of Reader's Digest

This is the front cover of an issue of the general interest magazine: Reader's Digest. It's a very interesting magazine that appeals to people with all kinds of interests, filled with something to suit everybody's needs. The front cover of this particular issue of very eye catching because there is a lot happening on the page. There is a bucket of popcorn with the text "America's 100 Best New Discoveries". The popcorn bucket with a wide variety of subjects inside represents America's most common and popular interests. The title underneath reads "People, Places and Gotta-Have-Its & More". This would mean that there is a section in the magazine, or the magazine is entirely about these things that Americans are interested in, presumably in the form of a list. Among the subjects included are Brad Pitt, which would symbolize entertainment and film, hotdogs and cupcakes which would represent comfort food or America's unhealthy eating habits, shoes and roses which would symbolize beauty or high-fashion, cars and iPhones, the Empire State Building representing New York, and beer and cards representing America's favorite past times. The background of the magazine is all white so as not to distract the reader from the main subject of the page, the bucket. Additional information is added to the cover in yellow banners or speech bubbles to make the text easy to read and understand.

Reader's Digest

Analysis of Double Page Spread

This is a double page spread of an issue of Reader's Digest called Laughterpedia. The page advertises Laughterpedia as a segment that compiles a series of people, quotations and headlines, presented in a humorous and unbelievable way. Some of the people featured include Barack Obama, Jay Leno and amusing Twitter posts. As for the design of the page, it's littered with images and illustrations of characters or real people acting amusingly, in order to act as a visual aid for the wall of text beside it. Additionally, there are lowercase letters with faded colors in the background appearing to be alphabetically ordered, and would continue into the next page. The design of the page itself is quite simple and minimalist, which is appropriate and effective for its purpose. There are no outrageous and ostentatious designs anywhere to be found so as not to distract the reader from the text and images. The images are what the reader notices first, and upon it are therefore compelled to read the wall of text to understand the meaning of the image. The text is usually presented in a relatively large font so only a small amount of writing is visible on the page so as to keep the reader constantly searching for something new to look at on the page, therefore keeping them interested. 

Media Research

Primary Research

Primary and secondary research techniques are essential parts of preparing for a project. Primary research is done from firsthand experience. Data is collected through conducting questionnaires, surveys, interviews, and completing textual analyses of already existing products similar to the intended outcome of the project, in order to gain an idea of content that has been achievable and well received by an audience from acclaimed products, be they movie trailers, magazines or short films.

Advantages of Primary Audience Research

• When conducting questionnaires among focus groups, this gives the researcher an insight into the potential audience for their product. The questionnaires must be focused on people from your intended audience, be they teenagers, children, adults, people interested in certain topics, anything that would be relatable to the product. 

• This gives accurate data on your demographic and will also dictate the majority of the content in the product to be more accessible to the target audience. 

• It is a quick and easy way to get information from a focus group.

Disadvantages of Primary Audience Research

• The results are not always reliable, as only a few questions that can be interpreted in many different ways may not give a clear idea of what the audience really wants. 

• The fact that these are quick and easy, they are not always taken seriously by the audience, which may result in unreliable data.

Secondary Research

Secondary research is the type of research that involves acquiring and compiling data from external sources, most popularly the Internet. The research is done by looking up already existing data and using it to aid in the determining of your final product. Already existing research can include online polls to gauge audience opinion about a certain topic, online reviews for film, broadcast fiction, print, anything. 

Advantages of Secondary Research

• Secondary research is much easier to get ahold of than primary research, and a higher quantity can be collected in a shorter amount of time. 

• There is a wide variety of research can has been done on one detail of a production, which can be translated into your own product accordingly.

• Reviews, for example, are often very detailed, often pointing out exactly what was effective and/or ineffective about the product. This gives the researcher a clear idea of what the target audience is looking for, provided the review is for a similar product to yours.

Disadvantages of Secondary Research

• Secondary research can be very easily manipulated, and therefore may not be an accurate representation of audience opinion.

• The time at which the research was conducted is also very important, as research tends to be rendered outdated within only a few years. It's important to collect the most recently conducted research possible.

• As is the case with primary research, the questions can be interpreted in many different ways, which may result in inaccurate responses, which are a poor representation of the intended target audience, as well as the audience not taking responses seriously.

• As for online reviews, unless the reviewer's basic stats, such as age range, gender, location or any other defining data, one can never be certain exactly who is writing the review, and whether or not they are even included in the product's target audience.

Questionnaire - Primary Research

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The research I will be carrying out in this project will be primary audience research in the form of questionnaires, surveys and focus groups. I will be designing questionnaires to do with the concept of an Al Yasmina Mockumentary – a comedic style of documentary similar to projects such as Trailer Park Boys. The questionnaires will be carried out by devising several questions asking the intended target audience – 15-30 year olds – about their television viewing habits, their favorite television viewing format, whether it be TV or Internet, their favorite types of TV shows, which one is most similar to the format of this production, who their favorite characters have been in these particular television shows and at what time they watch them. These questionnaires will be designed for qualitative research. Surveys will be for quantitative research, which will be more like polls asking very specific questions. What time of the day they watch TV, their age range, their favorite television show from a provided list etc. This will all fall under the category of primary research.

In terms of secondary research, the Internet is your friend. It will be useful for looking up statistics of existing products of the same type – productions such as Trailer Park Boys, Middle Eastern Family etc. The viewing figures of these productions – age range, social backgrounds and social class, political backgrounds even. What time these productions are usually shown and the formats on which they exist, what kind of audience they target, where they are filmed and where the production team is from. (ie. Trailer Park Boys – Canadian, Middle Eastern Family – Arab American, An Idiot Abroad – British.)

Initial Idea No. 3 - Gaming Magazine [Analysis of Existing Products]

This idea features a cover and a double page spread of a gaming magazine, which covers a broad range of video game topics. This is congruent with magazines such as Game Informer, and quite different to others such as PC Gamer and Nintendo Power, which catered to specific focus groups, and as a result are no longer in print with the advent of the Internet. The cover will show screenshots of video games that will be featured in the magazine. These will include reviews, contests, sneak peeks and news about upcoming games. I believe that there will be a large and healthy market for a magazine of this variety. However since most modern gamers are online, the magazine may do better as an online rag.

The research that will go into this product is extensive and thorough. I will be investigating a range of existing products and conducting textual analyses on each and every aspect about them. I will be investigating why they work, why they are popular and what they do to cater to their target audience. Such gaming magazines that are similar to my final product include GameInformer, Nintendo Power and PC Gamer.

Audience research will need to be very extensive. It will include conducting personal and online surveys towards a focus group about what particular kinds of video games they would like to see in a product like this. I myself have a deep knowledge and understanding of the main aspects of gaming, and would be able to accommodate any result of the audience research. The language I will use will need to be specially catered to the target audience, using colloquialisms and informal terms specifically for the current generation, much like Nintendo Power did in the 80s and 90s with terms like ‘rad’ and ‘way cool’.

Other magazines, such as PC Gamer and GameInformer communicate with their older, teenage to adult target audience with more formal and technical language to describe the games they are featuring, rather than Nintendo Power, which was mostly geared towards children, and didn't go as deep into the technical aspects of the game as they did with selling the game as something they would want, as well as providing a hotspot for acquiring information such as reviews, cheats and secrets.

CASUAL GAME INSIDER

This is a cover of an issue of the gaming magazine Casual Game Insider. The cover features a very large screenshot of a graphic of a character from the game Flash Point: Fire Rescue. The cover is very ambiguous and unclear about what the game is about. We are unsure even what genre the game is, based on the title. Those who are familiar with the game will be able to identify with it instantly, as the text on the left side of the cover mentions an expansion pack in time for the holidays, meaning that this game has likely already been established and likely popular enough to be on the front cover of a magazine. However, for those who have never heard of it, this could cause them to feel alienated.

Upon further research, I have discovered that this magazine is in fact for board games, rather than video games, which would arguably be much less popular than video game magazines, as they are not as universally enjoyed. So, obviously the magazine caters to a much smaller and more specific target audience than a video game magazine.The cover art is taken straight from the game box itself, with little editing and innovation. The white colored text stands out from the background so it is easy to read, but it is not as eye-catching or distracting as the image on the right.

Something I have seen on very few other magazines is that the titles of the magazine sections tell the reader the specific page that this section is on, which makes it very helpful for the audience to pick up and read.

Casual Game Insider is a little known magazine that most people haven’t heard of, as it is relatively new, making it difficult to for readers to predict the language and reputation of such a small magazine, however, this gives the readers an opportunity to judge a new magazine from a fresh perspective, without their opinions being distorted by its reputation.

GAMEINFORMER

Front Cover Analysis

This is the cover of the March 2008 issue of Game Informer. The cover advertises the video game based on the 1986 sci-fi horror film Aliens. The font is easily recognizable as it is the same that was used for the film, as well as the Alien, as it was exactly the same design as in the film and merchandise since. The colors on the cover are all very dark and stylized; so that readers of the magazine unfamiliar with the franchise know what kind of genre the game may fall under. The dark colors and harsh lighting signify that the game is a sci-fi thriller/horror game based on the Alien franchise. The presence of the small sticker to the bottom right of the page lets the reader know some of the other features of the magazine beyond the focus on the Alien game.

Article Analysis

This is an analysis of a page from an issue of the American monthly gaming magazine “Game Informer”, which is a magazine that reviews video games and provides information for upcoming games and conventions such as E3. This particular page is a review of the video game “Star Wars: The Force Unleashed II”. Immediately, in bold green, appears a large number – 7.75. Anyone unfamiliar with the format of the magazine would assume this to be some sort of rating, though it is unclear what it actually means. The writing in the article is incredibly critical of the game features. Underneath the large banner picture showing graphics from the game itself is a small summary of the review, making readers want to read on to discover exactly why critics felt the way they did. The description is very detailed, scattered with technical jargon in order to relate the to readers of the magazine, who likely have a good understanding of it. Though there is also a large amount of description of the story and other elements, followed by an explanation of why they succeeded or failed. The background of the page is very calm and neutral so as not to distract the reader from the very large amount of text in front. The occasional screenshot is added as a visual aid, but they are not common, and only used to illustrate the appearance of the game.

Initial Idea No. 2 - Al Yasmina Mockumentary [Analysis of Existing Products]

This idea is something of a mockumentary, which is a documentary presented in a comedic and tongue-in-cheek style, which follows the adventures of a new high school student as he survives a new high school filled with everyone from the comically ridiculous to the idiotic. This would be similar to a short series I am familiar with called Middle Eastern Family, which is presented in much the same way, with characters that are comedically exaggerated and seems a professional production while having the appearance of an amateurish home video.

Research for this idea will include everything from textual analyses of other existing products, mainly other mockumentaries such as Trailer Park Boys and Middle Eastern Family, as well as conducting surveys about what kind of characters my audience would like to see in a production like this, to gain an idea of audience demand and commercial viability.
The research I will be carrying out will be done by researching a range of existing products similar to the genre of a mockumentary, which includes productions such as Trailer Park Boys, Modern Family, An Idiot Abroad, a Educating Essex. I will be analyzing what makes them popular; information I will gain from the questionnaires. There is a section at the very end of the questionnaire following a small list of mockumentary productions that are the most popular, asking what about it in particular they enjoyed. This will be immensely helpful in being able to figure out what makes these shows popular from a media perspective. Be it the filmography, humor, institution or simply the reputation they have. 
In addition to the specific type of research concerning the productions, I will be asking general questions including age range, gender, and their television viewing habits, in order to figure out the distribution format or television time slot.

Trailer Park Boys

Analysis of Opening Sequence

The Trailer Park Boys is a very interesting piece of broadcast fiction, which focuses on the lives of three guys; Ricky, Julian and Bubbles. It is presented in the style of a mockumentary rather than a traditional broadcast fiction with high production values. These men are well known in the show for committing crimes in an attempt to make money while avoiding the police and being sent to prison again.

The interesting thing about this show is that these kinds of people are usually presented in a negative light. People who are only interested in money and will attain it by any means necessary are usually presented in such a way that they disgust the main protagonists and even the audience. Though the antagonists named Jim Lahey and Randall are presented in a highly negative light, as the antagonists are the characters against the protagonists. The protagonists however, are not presented particularly positively either, as each of the characters are very quirky and strange to begin with, but throughout the show they are portrayed as lazy, uneducated and foul-mouthed, perhaps intentional by the creators to show the internal lifestyles of people who commit crimes regularly, which is further exemplified by the fact that the main characters have ended up back in jail multiple times throughout the series.

The opening sequence of this show is a very simple one, which is only a 40 second slideshow of clips of the trailer park in which these characters reside. The imagery shows children running towards something and laughing, as though they are playing and the ice-cream truck has just arrived. The whole opening sequence is edited in a particularly amateurish fashion, (perhaps to show the true realism of the show’s subject matter), rendered in a Windows Movie Maker sepia tone with non-diegetic easy-listening music in the background. The filmography is more advanced than amateurish; as there are some smooth establishing shots and Birdseye shots of the trailer park. There are a variety of diegetic sounds edited into the opening sequence, such as birds chirping, cats meowing and children playing. The entire opening sequence is presented as a commercial for a vacation home, with the iconography and the music. The opening sequence presents the trailer park as a very normal and child-friendly environment. The music and the sepia tone show it to be a very charming and safe place, inhabited by pleasant, friendly and law-abiding people, when it is in fact anything but. This was perhaps the intention of the directors, to present the trailer park in such a fashion that first time viewers are lulled into a false sense of security, expecting normal, pleasant everyday people who you would expect to find in a situation comedy from the 1950s like Leave It to Beaver.

There is no indication of institution anywhere to be found in the opening sequence, perhaps intentional, to give the impression that this is indeed a very amateurish, independently managed documentary. The lack of any institution allows the audience to become detached and separate the series from any existing corporation or network, which would normally give an idea of the quality of the series immediately. The lack of an institution allows the audience to judge the show solely on its own merits rather than the merits of an existing company. 

The Sopranos

Analysis of Opening Sequence

There are lots of very fast paced close ups and establishing shots of the highway between New York and New Jersey. This shows the environment the character is from. The driving sequence is shown initially from a POV, as if the audience was in the car driving through New York. The weather is gloomy and cloudy, and the buildings around the road are all industrial buildings: factories, power plants, and skyscrapers. Road signs to show where the show is set.

The imagery and facial expressions of the main character show that he is on top of such a large city. He is driving to New Jersey with no care in the world because he knows the area so well. This shows the division of the social classes, and how some are above others. This is exemplified by the shots of people on the street going about their business. Some work in a pizza shop, some drive jalopy cars and some work in industrial corporations. This man in a car, smoking a cigar is shown to be above all of this.

The main character is smoking a cigar, which has connotations of power and command over others. He is also driving a gas-guzzler and smoking a cigar, polluting the city even more, as though he doesn’t care because he owns the town.

The imagery shows New York City represented as a detached and impersonal city where no one cares about each other. All of the industrial work happening in the background, the commercial airlines and toll roads show how everyone is only interested in themselves, and don’t care if what they do harms others. As he drives into a more rural town area, with people walking around small businesses like butcher and pizza shops, it gets more personal. At the very end when he drives through secluded woods to a large house, it shows how is the ultimate in uncaring, as if the woods are all his. Again shows him to be on top of the social pyramid.

Although, some of the imagery is made to show that indeed this character is just the same as everyone else, and has to engage in the same everyday activities as normal people. This is shown for the first time when he is driving through the toll booth and reaches out to grab a ticket, showing that even people on the top of the social pyramids have to pay the toll to drive on the road.

The narrative is not clear just from the opening sequence as it only shows a man driving from New York City to a secluded woodland area in New Jersey. Though this could perhaps indicate that this is his regular life. The music in the background and the stylization of the title of the show make frequent mention of the word ‘gun’. While it is not explicitly shown in the opening sequence, we can understand that it has something to do with violence and gun crime. Perhaps this main character is the leader of a mob or gang. Showing lower Manhattan in the establishing shots may give the impression that this man is a regular working stiff like anyone else, but the gradual evolution into a more rural environment and finally a completely secluded home in the woods shows that this man is much more than that.

Based on the opening sequence, the show appears to be targeted towards adult males, with all of the imagery and iconography. It could also be geared to people who live in the United States tri-state area where the show is set, as people from this area would be more likely the understand the cultural references and lifestyle better than someone from California, or even England. Though, it’s not made exclusively for people that fall under this category, as it has to be relatable to as wide an audience as possible.

The series itself appears to be a crime drama, just from the imagery and music in the background, the audience guesses crime immediately, though the drama aspect is built up to gradually with the iconography and facial expressions of the main character. 

The show is broadcast on HBO, which is an American subscriber based cable television network. Cable television in the United States gives television shows full right to deal with much darker and especially more crass subject matter, with the open and frequent use of profanity normally frowned upon with normal satellite television. Other shows that have these kinds of creative privilege and also exist on cable networks are Game of Thrones, Six Feet Under and Dexter.