Friday, September 23, 2011

Narrative and Characters - Childrens Drama

Most of the episode is based around music, even one of the side stories.
At first it is Sabrina with her two friends and they have decided to compete in battle of the bands at their school but the problem is that they don’t even know how to play there instruments, also the cheerleaders for the school had entered the competition and were very good. When Sabrina realised
 how bad they were she decided to cheat to be good by creating bottled talent and all they had to do was drink a little of it to be good musicians.
When they won the competition they all stated acting like the typical rock star thinking that they can do anything they liked and had a lot of people (their fans) following them around. But they barley talked to each other and when they did it would be to complain or argue about music or their new look.
Salem, Sabrina’s cat then made her feel guilty for cheating to win the competition and beat the cheerleaders who had actual talent, Salem also tells Sabrina how to take away the talent that she gave her friends so that they go back to being normal, he also makes sure that she does it as well even though she think she isn’t affected by the talent.
When Sabrina tries to get her friends to get her friends to have the flat talent drink they give reason why they don’t want it and Sabrina had already had a bit of it. After she had some of the drink Dwayne Craft who runs a T.V show that helps out new bands talks to her telling her that the band would make a lot of money, as Sabrina goes to tell Valery and Harvey they have a drink of flat talent. The only way they won’t humiliate themselves on T.V is by getting the Libby one of the cheerleaders to sing for them and they pretend to play the instruments in the background.
The moral in this episode is that you shouldn’t cheat to try and win something that you should try to win the normal way.
With one of the side story’s Sabrina’s aunt Hilder is trying to get a job playing classical music but is unable to the only job she could get is at a Texas styled restraint but she doesn’t like the music. So she also decides to make all the people who eat at the restraint like classical music by using magic, after doing this she losses her job as none of the customers want to eat there.
With the second side story it is Sabrina’s other aunt Zelda, she is trying to get a formula of an old reveal who she embarrassed when she lost in a science competition. In the end she doesn’t get what she wanted, she was just teased by Dr Turdlington who she had embarrassed. There is also a moral to this story telling kids that it isn’t right to try and make someone feel bad if they won something and you didn’t.     
When looking at Tzventon Toderove’s theory of narrative I saw that his theory worked for the episode.
1.       It’s just a normal school day, Sabrina meets her friend’s.
2.       Her friend decides to sign them up for battle of the bands.
3.       They soon realise that they can’t play instruments so Sabrina decides to cheat. They win the contest.
4.       Sabrina takes away their talent, they get the cheerleader to sing for them.
5.       They go back to being friends without talent.
When trying to recognise who fit into Vladimir Propp’s character types I found that it wasn’t to hard with this child’s drama as it is slightly older that some and they might of tried to make some of the characters fit to the different types.
With Sabrina I think that she could be the hero as she tries to help her friends not embarrass themselves and when she noticed how much they had changed and that they becoming big headed she took away the talent she gave them.   
The villain could be the Vice Princable as he doesn’t want Sabrina’s band to be good and when they are he wants them to be the best and that they have no choice but to go on T.V when they had no talent.
Also the villain could be Libby as teases Sabrina and tries to upstage her and be a lot better and she is. Libby could also be a false villain as when Sabrina asks her for help she does help out so that they don’t look as bad as they would. 
Salem the cat fits the Donner as he tells Sabrina about the bottled talent and when everything went wrong he told her how to take their talent away again.
For the Princess I thought that it could be Sabrina and her two friends as they are picked on and bullied by the Vice Princable and Libby.
Throughout this episode they do not use very many camera angles. They use Mid shots and long shots the most and a lot of panning, There are a few mid close ups but no actual close ups. The long shot are just to show you were they are and when the character are talking they use mid shots.
There isn't that many special effects. The ones that are used are at the beginning you see a violin fly into the room and in the title sequence Sabrina's clothes changing instantly. Also when two of the characters are on the phone they show it in split screen. There is also one of the characters just appears


 

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