Conventions of Drama & Action!

By Shazmin Akthar

Conventions of Drama!• Deal with real life situations • Realistic characters, settings & stories• Portrays journeys of character development

throughout the film• Intense social interaction• Purpose of a dramatic storyline is to move the

audience dramatically • Audience relate to characters • Problems that end up to happy endings• Explores relationships and emotions

Setting Conventions• In a high school• At home• Shopping centres• Outside (parks)• The City/Countryside• Neighbourhoods

Conventional technical codes!

• Two Shot (Shows relationships)• Establishing shot (shows view)• Cross cutting (shows different

relationships) • Montage (shows passage of time)• Over the shoulder shot (when

characters talk)• Medium shot • Close up (Shows emotion)

Iconography• A happy ending is used in nearly every drama

film to believe that real life issues can be overcome.

• Storyline of drama are often told like a journey and story

• Because the genre of drama is dramatic, the sounds that are used are dramatic so the audience know how to feel.

• Props like mobile phones, special books/boxes, guns, alcohol etc.

Narrative

• Starts happy• Theres a problem• Conflict/ break in relationships• Make up and solve problem• Happy ending

Themes of Drama

• Crime drama and legal drama• Historical drama• Docudrama• Physcodrama• Comedy-drama• Melodrama• Romance• Tragedy

Conventions of action• Fighting• Weapons and guns• Outbreaks in windows, doors,

houses, walls• Goodies and badies • Explosions and crashes• Cars and motocycles• Always a motive• Heros • Upbeat, face paced sound/music

Setting conventions• The city• Motorways/roads• Underground• They are set in a stereotypical world of the not too

distant past e.g the 1930s, or the fictional world of storybook adventures e.g. The high seas of the 19th century.

• Exotic locations where the characters have to contend with extremes of climate, as well as evil forces.

• Action Adventure films are designed to create an action-filled, energetic experience for the audience who can live vicariously through the exotic locations, conquests, explorations, struggles and situations that confront the main characters.

• The aim is to please the audience by keeping them on the edge of their seats through a series of mind boggling chases, exotic locations and hair raising adventures in historically inaccurate but somehow elementally possible settings.

Iconography

Extreme long shot/ establishing shot (shows location)Fast paced editingHigh/ low anglesShort takePan/ tracking shot

Conventional technical codes

Narrative

• A main protagonist who is a recognisably normal guy, and who just happens to have amazing powers of endurance in the face of extreme danger, and is also very clever.

• There are always helpers who are a team of innocent characters who happen to get caught up in the action.

• The characters take the twist and turns of the plot very seriously as they are often in mortal danger from an assortment of unusual animals, machines and monsters orchestrated by an evil antagonist. 

Themes of action

• Dystopian• Fantasy • Comedy• Horror• Apocalypse