The Devil Wears Prada is a 2006 American comedy-drama starring Meryl Streep and Anne Hathaway as the two lead roles; it is an adaption of the book by Lauren Weisberger. We can see from the screenplay below that this film is
targeted at women, the film, set in New York, is about a woman called Andy, who
gets a job as an assistant to Miranda Priestly, the executive of Runway Fashion
Magazine, she is powerful and merciless, seen as a legend in the fashion
industry, Andy is just a journalist and nothing like the girls at Runway and
throughout the film we see the development of Andy’s character into one of the
fashion girls while having Miranda as her Boss. She struggles to balance her
work and home life and the job got between Andy and her boyfriend, she had
completely changed. It is a typical Rom-Com, and has all the conventions to be
one, the main character has to overcome a struggle, which damages relationships
and friendships along the way, however there is always a happy ending and it is
light-hearted, it would be classed as a ‘chick-flick’ as it is about fashion
and romance and women would be the targeted audience as men would be less
interested. Andy is a character that is very relatable, and so is the plot,
everybody does a job that they don’t particularly want to do, with a demanding
boss that you don’t like and find it hard to balance life and that’s why I
think the film was successful; people could relate to the situation.
Below is a screenshot of some of the script, the rest of the script is and a larger version is here: http://screenplayexplorer.com/wp-content/scripts/the-devil-wears-prada.pdf
The Big Bang Theory:
The Big Bang Theory is an American sitcom
created by Chuck Lorre and Bill Prady, it was first aired in 2007 and is presently on its 7th season, it’s
about 4 scientists and their ‘hot’ next-door neighbour. The Big Bang Theory’s
primary audience is teenagers, and this is who they target it at, you can see
this through the characters; Leonard who always says the wrong things but is a
loveable character, Sheldon who is rude and extremely clever, thinks he is
above everybody and he is witty yet weird, Howard who thinks he is the ‘love machine’
however he has a quirky style and has a weird relationship with his mother, Raj
who is Indian, is very funny and shy, he can’t talk to women and he has a crazy
dress sense and lastly Penny, the good looking next-door neighbour to Leonard
and Sheldon, an aspiring actress who is dumb but has an on/off relationship
with Leonard. These characters are an extravagated version of real life people
so teenagers (and of course adults) can relate to the characters and also some
of the situations, they feed off the emotions of the audience while acting, and
the audience connects as you can feel their emotions and understand their
humour, wit and sarcasm. I have said teenagers are the target audience for this
show, the constant humour and the fact it is a sitcom is more popular with
teenagers over adults as I don’t think adults could connect with the plot and
characters as much as teenagers and the jokes they make a teenager laughs at
whereas an adult could look at it as silly and not very funny. The diverse
range of characters means that there is a favourite character for everybody,
which humour they find most amusing etc. which I think helps a lot. The
timeslot it is usually on in the UK is between 6pm and 8pm, this will be when
teenagers are home from school and can relax whereas adults will still be at
work or cooking the dinner or busy doing other things, television isn’t a main
priority to them so I think that’s another reason it is more targeted at
teenagers. As you can see in the script below, there is a lot less instructions and setting details as The Devil Wears Prada one, it is also about half the size, showing the difference between a television sitcom script and a film script.
Below is a screenshot of a typical scene in the script but here is the link to read this script and a few more of the shows scripts: http://www.zen134237.zen.co.uk/Big_Bang_Theory/
The Archers:
The
Archers is the world’s longest running soap opera, starting in 1950, it is
still playing on Radio 4 for 12 minutes, 6 days a week, there is a colossal
17,201 episodes to date. The radio show is said to be a ‘contemporary drama in
a rural setting’ – it runs along many soap operas that are on television, with
similar ideas and plots and audiences. I believe the target audience for The
Archers is people aged 40 – 85, this is the typical audiences for similar shows
such as Eastenders, Emmerdale and Coronation Street however The Archers is on
the radio. Because it is such a long running show, people who listened since
the beginning would be attached to the characters and so are more likely to
listen on a regular basis, you can start listening to the show and get into it
but you may feel confused not knowing the story line which is why I believe the
target audience to be the older generation, as they would grow up listening to
it. I don’t think this kind of show interests the younger audiences either as
it’s a soap opera and unless you get into it, it’s not very good, it’s also not
funny like sitcoms are which are based at teenagers, it’s light-hearted not
serious, like soap operas are. Another reason why the target is adults and the
elderly is because it is a Radio Show, playing at 19:02 after the news, this
would convenience with drivers on the commute home, however all 6 episodes are
played omnibus on a Sunday morning. 5 million people listen in so it is a
popular show that many people can connect with and understand.
As
you can see in the screenshot of the script below, there is a line for each
characters speech, there is no setting description throughout, only at the beginning,
nor movements described as you will be able to hear these and the voice actors
won’t have to move, however what is described is any sounds that may occur, for
example, a door closing, as these are cues of the sounds they need to put in
after recording. So you can see Radio scripts are a very different format and set-up in
terms of what needs to be written compared to television and film scripts.
As
well as the script below, you can view scripts of other episodes of The Archers
here: http://www.bbc.co.uk/writersroom/scripts
Bibliography:
Simply Scripts, Screenplay explorer, BBC Writers Room, Google, Wikipedia.
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