Television
Procedurals outlive prestige dramas for reasons that have nothing to do with quality
The case-of-the-week format is treated as the unambitious option. It is also the most durable structure television has ever…
Trisha Bhandari
Contributing writer, Hot Gupshup
Trisha writes about fandom and the strange durability of small communities.
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13 articles
Television
The bottle episode began as a budget measure and became a writing exercise
Confining an episode to standing sets with no guest cast saves money. What it did to television writing is far more interesting…
Television
A spin-off is not a sequel, and confusing them explains why so many fail
Taking a character out of a show and giving them their own removes the structure that made them work. What survives the transfer is…
How It Is Made
Why a film mix sounds wrong on a phone, and what the mixers were actually doing
A cinema mix is built for a specific room with a specific loudness. Every other playback situation is a compromise, and some of…
How It Is Made
The line nobody may cross: how screen direction keeps an audience oriented
There is an imaginary line running through every scene, and staying on one side of it is why you know who is looking at whom.…
How It Is Made
A location scout is looking for problems, not for beauty
Finding a place that looks right is the easy part. Whether it can hold a crew, a generator and a shooting day is what determines if…
How It Is Made
Building a crowd: what background performers are actually doing back there
The people behind the leads are following instructions, hitting timings and repeating actions exactly. A convincing crowd is…
How It Is Made
Rehearsal is where a scene is decided, and most productions cannot afford it
The work of finding what a scene actually is happens before the camera turns over. When there is no time for it, the discovery has…
Television
Audiences forgive a weak episode instantly and never forgive a weak season
Viewers are far more tolerant of a single misfire than the discourse suggests. What they do not tolerate is a stretch that makes…
How It Is Made
The work you are not supposed to notice is the work nobody argues about
Screen craft is designed to be invisible, and it succeeds. That success has a cost for the people doing it, and it shapes what…
How It Is Made
When audiences say something looks cheap, they are usually describing time rather than money
The judgement arrives instantly and is rarely about budget. Working out what actually triggers it explains a lot about how…
How It Is Made
Stories about difficult productions become part of the work and sometimes outlast it
How something was made frequently circulates more widely than the thing itself. Those accounts are compelling, partial, and hard to…
How It Is Made
Audiences read every constraint as a choice, because the screen gives them no way to tell
What ends up in a finished work is a mixture of intention and whatever was possible. Viewers see only the result and interpret all…