Television

     2020 has brought about many interesting opportunities. One of these opportunities for myself has been maximized free time. Especially compared to what I had prior to the pandemic. It seemed that whenever I wasn’t working from home, all I ever did was eat… and watch TV. I don’t know about anyone else, but this gave me plenty of time to binge my favorite TV shows. One TV show that I am currently binging on Netflix is Designated Survivor. This show follows a fictional story of a man who is the designated survivor for the government. He is put in place in case of disaster and someone needs to take over control of the country. In an unparalleled turn of events, the U.S. capitol building is bombed during the state of the union and all of congress is killed. Immediately, the designated survivor is named President. This show has many different elements to it and I will be analyzing how it relates to previous types of media. Looking at the TV show, Designated Survivor, compared to theater. There are some comparisons to be made. In TV we get all sorts of angles and camera shots that in live theater you wouldn’t get. When there is commotion going on on screen, the camera can pan to close ups of what is most important at the time. As well as highlight other significant secondary moments. For example, when someone begins to shoot at the White House during a large event, the camera can pan to secret service surrounding the President and First Lady. It can cut to show the commotion happening around the room. More importantly, it can cut to outside shots of the building to show the actual shots being executed. In theater, you only get one scene and plane to work with in any given scene or situation. A situation like this may seem more like chaos on a live stage and may cause the viewer to miss important moments happening on the stage because their eye doesn’t know where to go. Next, looking at radio. Radio brought about changes because people could enjoy it from the comfort of their own home. It wasn’t as big of an ordeal as going to the theater. You could enjoy it 24 hours a day while also performing other tasks. However, radio does not include the visual element that theater and TV do. Many story lines can not be executed because anything that happens without words or sounds can not be conveyed. For instance, in Designated Survivor, when the President’s Chief of Staff and the President’s secretary share a kiss. A major plot point for this storyline that would be lost if only on radio. Moving on to the most similar form of media to TV, motion pictures. The biggest difference between TV and motion pictures is the lack of time that a motion picture allows. An average motion picture runs between 90 and 120 minutes. A whole season of TV could include 20 episodes with a run time of 40 minutes each. There is so much more character development and opportunity for storyline that TV provides. Like in Designated Survivor, we have multiple storylines happening at once. We have everything happening in the White House surrounding the President. Then, there’s a whole separate interwoven storyline of the FBI agents tasked with finding out who was behind the capitol bombing. Without the extended time that many episodes provides, they would have to condense this complex story thus making it not as interesting. The final comparison to be made is that of TV and comic books. The biggest difference between these two things is the dynamic that video and audio provide to a storyline. In a comic book, you only have visuals to work with. Therefore, you may be able to get across a complex storyline, but not necessarily with as much depth. You wouldn’t be able to feel the intensity when the President is undergoing surgery to remove bullet fragments or the magnitude of the President walking into the oval office for the first time while patriotic music plays. All in all, while all of these genres of media bring their own sets of advantages, TV does cover a wide variety of aspects that the others can’t. There are certain stories that would just done to justice without the complexity of a TV timeline and platform.