Q1

Q1 Format
Hard Referencing
Positive Points
Negative Points
How it links/helps with my hypoth

INTRO
For me to find a hypothesis, i had to choose one of the seven topics and then progress on, here i decided to work on TV Dramas as i have recently got interested in some shows and i have some knowledge of TV Dramas like Skins and Casualty. I arrived at my hypothesis shortly after which is "How much realism is there in tv dramas?"

Although the hypothesis is not very specific, i was mainly focusing on comparing 2 different medical/police dramas. The reasons being was that they are the most common type of drama series so researching them wouldn't be so difficult, i aimed to compare 2 of them, one from an American TV series and one from a UK series, so it would be interesting to find which nation has more realism in their program and i ended up choosing the CSI franchise (USA) and Casualty (UK)

INTERNET
My first way of researching was to go onto the Google search engine and type in the two TV series separately (i.e. "CSI" and "Casualty". I also typed in "Realism in TV Drama" which generated 166,000 results. Obviously i wasn't go to spend days looking at all of them, and i think most of the search results wouldn't be relevant but the first 2 pages did provide me with allot of secondary sources to decide on what is useful at what isn't. The first few pages weren't too helpful however.

Wikipedia is normally very reliable but none of the links that came up where to do with my hypothesis but instead talking about the the realism in TV dramas, it just talked about the dramas that were on programs like the BBC and where it originated from. When trying the same method which i did with Google, Both Casualty and CSI had their own pages. Both pages gave out brief overviews of the 2 shows, in CSI's criticism section, there was a bit about lack of realism when it came to police procedure.

POS: Found out about CSI's lack of realism comments made by a few different websites
NEG: Wikipedia normally helps alot with peoples research but didn't have much to say about my hypothesis
HYP: Was Useful, helped with the USA's side of realism.

On the second page, i found http://student.bmj.com/ which was a report done by student called Rebecca Chellaswamy who shared the same hypothesis as me but this is for her Medical Course in the University of Nottingham. She was fortunate enough to visit the Holby City set to talk to the actors and see what they do with prosthetics and how they make it look as realistic as it can be. This was most likely the best source that I had gotten because it was a bonus that she got to do the report on Holby City which is created by the same writers that made Casualty. So this almost completely covers the Casualty side because is that detailed about the standard and advanced procedures when dealing with emergancies.

POS: Pretty much said everything i needed to know about the cast and crew's strong attempt to show realism in Casualty
NEG: None, was a full very long report on Casualty.
HYP: Strongly helped with my hypothesis, almost completes the whole of one side of the argument

BOOKS
Other sources that i used were books, i found didn't really link to about realism between our modern day dramas but in Media Magazine i found a small article about realism in tv dramas and it mentioned about the "kitchen sink" dramas and how it showed life in the 1960s.

POS: Tells me about the tv dramas in the sixties which are all based on Social Realism and the Artistic Movement
NEG: As it was a small article, there wasn't much else to say about it
HYP: This does refer to my hypothesis but only really touches on it, as mine mainly focuses on finding differences between UK and American dramas.

NEWSPAPERS
The best source i got at this point from going through the newspapers and came across The Guardian asking the simple question "Where did it all go wrong for TV Dramas?" The person who written this (Ben Myers) explains the good things about the 1980's and 1990's with all the dramas out there and looks at the new 2000 era in the UK n sees the demise in all of the tv dramas.

POS: This is somebody who has written an article asking where did it go wrong for the TV dramas because of the demise in popularity over recent years
NEG: Only a one sided argument, there any still some good dramas around today, doesn't say too much about realism
HYP: This does refer to my hypothesis abit, doesn't say so much about realism,

LECTURE
I also attended a presentation by Christa van Raalte which focused on film and censorship debate. It was quite interesting to learn about reality and film, i.e. the Jamie Bulgar Case, the 7 different censorship categories and regulation.

POS: Interesting learning about regulations, good for my personal interest
NEG: Nothing really referred to my hypothesis
HYP: Nothing really referred to my hypothesis

TV
I decided to watch the CSI and Casualty myself, as well as a Wire In the Blood (UK) and ER (USA) so i could compare with a direct equivalent of the shows, as they are different types of drama. Shows that USA dramas have less realism but more action making it more entertainment and watch able, while the UK dramas are the opposite way round but equally coming up with catchy storylines.

POS: Got to see the shows myself and compare
NEG: None
HYP: This did help a lot in comparing the two shows of the same genre from UK and USA. Compares the differences between the two types of shows.