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Saturday 6 February 2010

"Breaking Bad" - technological convergence and exchange

This is not a film yet the cinematography, editing, mise-en-scenes and great acting sets this exceptional TV series apart from every other. You could do worse than analyse scenes from this series from YouTube for TV drama. British TV drama is light years away from the quality offered by Breaking Bad. The programme is also one of the darkest, funniest, strangest and most humane programmes ever to air.


Here, you can see an example of EXCHANGE in which YouTube's contributor, Politely Homicidal, has edited together extracts from the programme and scored it with a song which features in one of the episodes. Of course, anyone (with the necessary editing skills) could do this by using digital technology in a laptop with decent editing software, and then uploading the result through the Net in YouTube. This is one of the great upsides of technological convergence. Ironically, the song is very significant for Walter White (Bryan Cranston), a struggling high school chemistry teacher with many family issues because White turns to cooking crystal meths after he is diagnosed with terminal lung cancer. The song is by Mick Harvey and its called, "Out of Time Man".



Here's a good example from the series:


And another, although this one plays around with the part after the explosion:

2 comments:

mishari said...

Flattered to see you use my video as an example (presumably for your students?). I find it hard to understand why we here in the UK never seem to be able to come up with dramas that are as compelling as the best US examples (The Wire, Deadwood, The Sopranos et al).

I mean, it's not as if there's a lack of talent in the UK. Something to do with mind-set or the unwillingness of production companies to out on a limb?

Anyway, for what it's worth, I made another Breaking Bad video that might entertain you, here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hZvMz6DrWGo

Cordially, Mishari (AKA PolitelyHomicidal)...

Dogberry said...

Thanks for that, Mishari and for your excellent video. Yes, it's for my students.