Coronation Street has changed over periods of time. I will be looking at the programme in 1961, 1979 and 2011.
From the extract in 1961 I can
see that the colours it is filmed in are very basic, they use black and white
with a slight green tint. In the shot seen there is very little glamour and the
shot used is a dynamic diagonal shot. All these features add to the mise en
scene. We can see from the extract that the street looks very cloudy, hazy and
bunched together. The attached houses show us the economical state they were in
as all the houses look very cramp and the long shot shows us that it stretches
on for miles connotes that there is no escape. The shots we see are not smooth
which shows the technology used is very budget. The first scene is set in a pub
which is code used in most soaps. In the second shot we see two women arguing
one women seems higher as they have used a low angle shot. The low angle
ironically reverses the hierarchy of the lower women as she has most of the
spoken dialogue and the people standing behind her create a sense of them taking
sides. The clothing used shows us the
time frame and also the women being ‘picked on’ is wearing a richer material
(silk) which creates a sense of singling out. A wide establishing shot is used
to show support for the character on the right. The scene then goes to a medium
shot of the crowd their reactions show they are attentive.
In 1979 technology has changed
in the shots we can see this as they have used an aerial shot to open the show,
this may also be a crane shot, the houses are still tightly packed like they
were in 1961. We can see from the opening shot that the tiles on the roofs are
grim and we can see flats in the back that overlook the street which give a
sense of escape. The houses give us the sense that people in the street are lost
in an economic stranglehold. In this scene compared to 1961 we can see that the
technology and colour has been improved which improved the mis en scene. In the
opening scene we can see flowers which go above the rooftops, the flowers are a
metaphor for people who rise out of the poverty. In the first scene a man enters
a house without permission, we can see this as there is silence which creates
tension. The character code works with code to create suspense, the character
code is the cigarette and leather jacket which is a metaphor for the ‘bad guy’
in films. The old man is sterotypicalls portrayed as he in pyjamas and the low
angle shot creates a sense of hierarchy as the old man is smaller than the ‘bad
guy’. All the items in the scene create an atmosphere as all the furinute is
mostly old fashioned and different shades of brown.
