Week 6: Melodramatic Media and Darker Decisions

This week our group discussed the parallels and divergences of film and television in terms of the superhero genre. While both deal with issues of adaptation and advertisement, the primary difference discussed is televisions need for melodrama. As we saw in the television series of Heroes, characters of melodrama require an essence of melodrama in order to maintain a constant connection with the audience. Contrastingly, film only requires a connection between character and audience lasting an hour or two, but this doesn’t take anything away, it’s just a difference caused by the techniques of each medium. Nonetheless, with this as our launching point, our group began to discuss the uses of melodrama, advertising, and the infamous DVD in terms of our adaptation of the graphic novel, Powers.  

            We can’t say there is much melodrama in our graphic novel; the issues of the characters in Powers are hardly brought down to the everyday as they are in Heroes. While characters in Heroes are frequently making decisions based on their concerns as friends, lovers, or as parents, the characters of Powers often wade through large questions of existence, death, and morals in terms of the world as a whole rather than in terms of family or other miniature societies. Of course, Powers is not completely void of any melodrama, the love story between the protagonist and Retro Girl fills this hole. However, our group agreed that this was oddly thrown in merely as a possible story line that could connect the novel’s series which, fittingly, is the purpose of melodrama in superhero television series such as Heroes and Smallville. Of course, this offers many implications in terms of our desire to create the contained world of Powers in our adaptation; our desire is to bring the audience into the world forcing them to be a voyeur of the world rather than simply the action. This effectively leaves space between the audience and our characters. This space allows them to be impartial, critical judges of the actions of our twisted, complicated characters rather than being drawn in based on sentimental reasoning that encapsulates melodrama. The sentimentality of melodrama simply has no place in the darkened world we wish to portray.

            Our group then began to discuss methods of advertising as well as the importance of the DVD as discussed in Rayna Denison’s article. The effectiveness of internet advertising for Heroes strongly intrigued our group. Moving beyond the fact that this blog itself is essentially advertisement, our group discussed the importance for advertisement to illustrate the overall feel of its product. As done with the campaign for Heroes which emphasized the melodramatic and interconnected interactions of the characters, we clearly need to distinguish the feel of our film which we previously noted to be a complete and darkened world. Denison sites Smallville for making use of interviews on their DVD to demonstrate the family atmosphere of the show existing upon the set as well. Denison explains that this is important for fans who may now feel a deeper connection with the show. This provoked an idea for us to present this in an advertising campaign; however, our campaign would be done as the world juxtaposed with the set rather than the characters with their actors. For example, we may film footage of the making of the set which showcases the construction of the skeletal structures followed up by shots that illustrate the final version complete with dark and looming atmosphere. Posting clips such as this on our blog would build audiences excitement to dive into the world we are giving them glimpses of. Moreover, expanded clips of these ads could be added to our box set DVD solidifying its collector’s artefact status as Denison suggests.

            That concludes our insight for this week. Until our next piece of advertisement, all of us here on the “Powers 1” team wish you a good break….no matter how sentimental that statement is.