Doing it live! Planning and preparing for a live drama episode – a case study of the “The Bill” (ITV, 2005)

Joanna Macdonnell

Doing it live! Planning and preparing for a live drama episode – a case study of the “The Bill” (ITV, 2005)

University of Brighton

Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review

Abstract

Over the last decade there has been a move towards live episodes of popular television dramas and soap operas in the UK being used to celebrate programme and channel anniversaries. This paper will focus on the ‘behind the scenes’ preparation and subsequent broadcast of the live episode of police drama “The Bill” on September 22nd 2005. This live episode became a landmark broadcast as it was the first time that dramatic stunt sequences had been performed live. This article will be supported with examples from the original planning documentation and rehearsal photographs and will examine the production culture in the planning and preparation of the episode. It will also reveal some of the trickery used to execute the stunts, will discuss the difficulties experienced during the live episode and how problems were overcome.

Original language	English
Pages (from-to)	27-44
Number of pages	18
Journal	View: Journal of European Television History and Culture
Volume	3
Publication status	Published - 1 Dec 2013

Bibliographical note

This work has been published under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 Netherlands License

Keywords

Live Television
Live Drama
Soap Opera
ITV
Television Production Culture

Access to Document

66-306-2-PB.pdfFinal published version, 3.51 MBLicence: CC BY-NC-ND

http://www.viewjournal.eu/index.php/view/article/view/JETHC042Licence: Unspecified

Cite this

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abstract = "Over the last decade there has been a move towards live episodes of popular television dramas and soap operas in the UK being used to celebrate programme and channel anniversaries. This paper will focus on the {\textquoteleft}behind the scenes{\textquoteright} preparation and subsequent broadcast of the live episode of police drama “The Bill” on September 22nd 2005. This live episode became a landmark broadcast as it was the first time that dramatic stunt sequences had been performed live. This article will be supported with examples from the original planning documentation and rehearsal photographs and will examine the production culture in the planning and preparation of the episode. It will also reveal some of the trickery used to execute the stunts, will discuss the difficulties experienced during the live episode and how problems were overcome.",

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N2 - Over the last decade there has been a move towards live episodes of popular television dramas and soap operas in the UK being used to celebrate programme and channel anniversaries. This paper will focus on the ‘behind the scenes’ preparation and subsequent broadcast of the live episode of police drama “The Bill” on September 22nd 2005. This live episode became a landmark broadcast as it was the first time that dramatic stunt sequences had been performed live. This article will be supported with examples from the original planning documentation and rehearsal photographs and will examine the production culture in the planning and preparation of the episode. It will also reveal some of the trickery used to execute the stunts, will discuss the difficulties experienced during the live episode and how problems were overcome.

AB - Over the last decade there has been a move towards live episodes of popular television dramas and soap operas in the UK being used to celebrate programme and channel anniversaries. This paper will focus on the ‘behind the scenes’ preparation and subsequent broadcast of the live episode of police drama “The Bill” on September 22nd 2005. This live episode became a landmark broadcast as it was the first time that dramatic stunt sequences had been performed live. This article will be supported with examples from the original planning documentation and rehearsal photographs and will examine the production culture in the planning and preparation of the episode. It will also reveal some of the trickery used to execute the stunts, will discuss the difficulties experienced during the live episode and how problems were overcome.

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JO - View: Journal of European Television History and Culture

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ER -

Doing it live! Planning and preparing for a live drama episode – a case study of the “The Bill” (ITV, 2005)

Abstract

Bibliographical note

Keywords

Access to Document

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