Analysis of episode 1 of The Bereavement club

I have chosen to analyse this particular episode of our series because this the one I had wrote the final draft for, In this episode we are introduced to all our characters. This episode in particular is based around rosemary and her most challenging session. The first thing that caught my eye in this episode was the first scene where Joel is speaking on the phone to his supervisor, I thought the first few shots which were used in this specific scene had introduced me to the character of Joel very well, firstly with the handheld of the chairs that pans to the right of Joel's walking direction, then into a close up of Joel, I like this shot more in particular because we get to see some dialogue which is revealing to us some short exposition into Joel as a character while maintaining a shot which allows other characters to enter the frame. Its was a good choice on behalf of Nial and James to add those particular shots because when I was writing the episode I was trying to envision how this scene would be setting up our characters because we also needed to introduce the ghost characters even though they didn't have any dialogue but I thought they did a very nice job with showing some of characters very early on.

Another thing I liked about the episode was the title sequence which introduced the character of
rosemary, I like this part because when I was writing this episode I was slightly worried about how we could develop the characters in an interesting way without having too much dialogue because of the short amount of time we had for each episode, but even though we don't actually really get any verbal character development, this sequence allows the audience get a short glimpse of the character that this episode will be focusing on for the majority of the run time. We get a long shot into a mid shot which shows Rosemary walking and quickly pausing before walking into the session, this shows the audience a tiny bit of exposition about the character through her body language, the action of her taking a deep breath before walking in shows to us the audience that she is uncomfortable with what she is about to proceed with. I think also that the titles that appear on the screen just as she walks off transitions well into the look of the scenery. I feel that this title sequence in particular helped us introduced our characters because it was quite difficult imagining ways we could develop these characters in the short amount of time we had and this allowed us to add short exposition into our characters.

 one feature which I didn't particularly like from a tonal perspective was ending scene where rosemary leaves after an outburst at Joel and the rest of the group, so the rest of the group decide to leave, when I wrote this scene the part where rosemary starts loosing it with the group I intended it to slightly serious but not totally as emotionally heavy as the choice of music and acting direction had as the on screen performance did. I wanted this scene to have some humour to in point where everyone

leaves, I wrote the lines in this scene in a humorous way that tried to convey the emotional weight but complimented it in a way that would give the audience some less dreary moments in the series. I appreciate the camera work and use of lighting used in this scene, all the characters are highlighted in the frame nicely side by side to each other and use of mid shots makes the dialogue exchange much more well presented. But the use of music and the dialogue which was cut out of the scene to me ruined it in a way with the fact we missed an opportunity to add some more humour into a quite miserable series which doesn't make the most of its comedic moments at times.

Another Element I thought that was handled well was the scene the moment where Jess and Melinda are arguing whilst rosemary is revealing her reason for being at the group what I liked about this scene was how well the recorded and mixed the sound was in this scene. This is because the sound is balanced so well that it fits the exact vision that script describes, when I was writing the screen directions for this, I wanted to make the directions clear that the exchange between Jess and Melinda would be hearing their whispers but having rosemary faintly in the background. The sound is recorded very precisely because it sounds extremely clear when we hear the dialogue exchange between Jess and Melinda because even though they ate basically whispering and we have noise already going in the background, we can hear it very clearly and the sound of rosemary speaking is very drained out but still clear and effective.