Childrens drama

For our college project we have been asked as a class to look at the codes and conventions of a childrens drama. To be precise, we were  asked to look at a certain childrens TV show. For example Tracy Beaker, MI High and The Queen's Nose etc. The one I have chosen is Tracy Beaker. It is a show which was shown on the BBC a few years ago. Tracy Beaker is about a girl called Tracy who is sent back to her childrens home after the woman who has been looking after her falls pregnant with her first child. When you watch the episode you don't know whether it is a boy or a girl and the episode doesn't even hint about the gender. When Tracy gets sent back to the childrens home also known as the 'dumping ground', within the first five minutes of the episode Tracy is already up to no good. Her old room has been taken by a girl called Justine Littlewood. While Tracy is looking around her old room she picks up a clock that Justine's dad has given to her but Tracy does not know this and breaks it by mistake. During the rest of the episode there is tension between Justine and Tracy. When you are watching a programme like Tracy Beaker there are a few things you are never going to see. One of these things is swearing. The reason for this is that it is set in a childrens home and you don't expect children to swear at such a young age. Plus it is before the nine o'clock watershed. Another thing you never see in Tracy Beaker is drug use because when you watch an episode of Tracy Beaker drugs are never mentioned. I think this is because Tracy Beaker is aimed for younger children who are too young to know about drugs and I could see the complaints flooding in. You would never see violence in Tracy Beaker, this is because it is before the watershed. When you watch Tracy Beaker though you might see some slapstick violence but none where they are punching and kicking each other. That would just never happen as parents would complain. There is no sex in Tracy Beaker. The reason for this is that the people at the BBC who make the show are working with child actors under the age of 16 and because they are under age it is illegal. It would be disturbing and the director could get into a lot of trouble. Another reason for the no sex is because when Jacqueline Wilson wrote the books for Tracy Beaker she does not even mention sex once and if the TV show did I can imagine the mass controversy it would cause with the bbc and the rest if the world who are watching the show. When you are doing a show like Tracy Beaker the production team would have to look at what life would be like in a childrens home and how they behave and act with other adults who are looking after them. I can picture the production team interviewing people who have been in and out of childrens homes and asking them what life has been like after leaving the childrens home and getting on with their normal life. Also they may interview some of the parents that had adopted children from the childrens home to get their point of view. With copyright issues people could use false identity and pretend to live the life of Tracy Beaker then have a story in here or other magazines or other tabloid newspapers magazine. They could say that they are the real Tracy Beaker and the stories were based on their real life rather than fiction. Other people could also merchandise goods with the Tracy Beaker name on to make money from the name. There are health and safety issues because they are working with child actors and because the whole series of Tracy Beaker is set in an enclosed home I can imagine that the young actors need a lot of looking after and they probably have a minder on the set. What I mean by minder is someone who watches out for certain actors on set and looking after them asking if they need anything. They would also need to carry on with their education and tutors to teach them. With the characters of Tracy Beaker we have Tracy Beaker as the main character of the show. We also have Justine Littlewood I would say personally that she is the backup main character of the show i.e. like the second main character to Tracy. We also have Michael 'Mike' Milligan he works in the childrens home. When you watch the show you can tell that him and Tracy have a close friendship andIi also think Mike is close witth the other children but has a special bond with Tracy. When you watch the first episode of the series Tracy tries to get Mike to foster her but fails. One of the last main characters to been seen in the show is Camilla 'Cam' Lawson. She is not in the first episode of the series which is the episode of the series that I looked at but later on on the series she plays a big part in Tracy's life and later on fosters Tracy. She also marries a guy called Garry who Tracy hated at first but after a while she got on better with him. Tracy Beaker has now become so popular that they made a film entitled 'Tracy Beaker The Movie of Me'. There are no new episodes of Tracy Beaker being made by the BBC at the present time. There are repeats on the BBC but as of now there is nothing being made to do with Tracy Beaker. I think the BBC should make something new to take the Tracy Beaker time slot after school.

The opening titles for Tracy Beaker are painful on the eyes and ears. The colours of red, green, blue and yellow are very bright. With the title sequence they have a frame shot of the children who star in the show but they are not altogether. What I mean is that they have no frame shot of Tracy Beaker then they will have a frame shot of another child actor who stars in the show and then next to that they add another frame of another child actor who also stars in the show. After that in big letters it says The Story of Tracy Beaker. With the music in the programme it is always very loud. When I watched the episode I was thinking throughout of drum and bass because that is just what it sounded like to me. I think it is there to keep young children watching so that they don’t get bored and want to change the channel. With the episode that I watched when they were dealing with a much more serious issue, the music would be very slow and calm and then after the serious bit of the show the music starts to pick up again to the drum and bass sound that the show is famous for. With the camera angles for the show there are a lot of close ups. They are used in the episodes when they are having a heart to heart with Tracy or if a character is upset or in pain. There are also a lot of midshots in the episode where they have everyone in the camera shot for the whole audience to see. They also use a lot of over the shoulder shots in the show and to be fair to the show, it works quite well. With the editing in the show it is one of the most painful bits of editing I have ever had to sit and watch. In Tracy Beaker with the editing when they are trying to be serious they jump cut into a really annoying animation scene I think they use this tactic to keep the younger children watching. After they use the annoying animation it goes back to live animation until they use the annoying animation jump cut effects again until the episode ends. I do think it works really well for younger viewers but people of my age with more mature tastes would find the TV remote and change the channel.