Photography and television series. Methodology for the analysis of the television visual style
Keywords:
Estilo cinematográfico, Estilo visual, Fotografía cinematográfica, Fotografía, Series de televisión, Metodología.Abstract
It is not a novelty the fact that television series –specially North American ones– have become serious competitors of feature films. Among the main causes of this, it stands out the narrative content quality, but also an increase of their formal or stylistic quality. In this latter sense, authors such as Bignell (2007: 160) consider that visual style is one of the key elements to understand the so-called “quality television”, mainly from the end of the eighties. Although the majority of the research is focused on the narrative content of audiovisual products, there exist other levels of narration –among we find visual style- that is used by other agents related to audiovisual production, such as cinematographers, to express a parallel story that supports the director’s point of view. The importance of visual style has its reflection upon its study –mainly in cinema- by the North American, the British and the French school. In Spain, although there are many publications devoted to technical aspects of cinematography, there is a scarce research based on the analysis of visual style, either in cinema or television series. Framed in the theory of cinema practice, the main objective of this paper is to present a methodological proposal for the analysis of television series visual style, showing the main elements that conform it. With this, it is an aspiration to import the interest in the study and reflection upon national or/and international television series visual style.
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