Misfits Presentation

Misfits Joe and Steph

Job Roles

I have been looking at the TV show appropriately named ‘Misfits‘, which is aired on channel E4.
To produce TV shows, inevitably a lot of work goes into it from a various range of people including costume designers, script writers, directors and camera operators, which is the same for Misfits. In this blog post I will be detailing three people who specifically worked on Misfits, what certain jobs they had, and any particular qualifications and work experience they have and needed to join the crew on Misfits, and also acquire the job they have.

Firstly, I looked at the Misfits crew director; Tom Green.
Green has previously been the director of four titles, including the TV series ‘Blackout’, two short films named ‘Kid’ and ‘Brixton 85’, and obviously the show I’m researching ‘Misfits’.
Tom Green is also a script writer, writing for ‘Brixton 85’ and ‘Kid’, which he also directed for.

Directors need to work closely with all crew members, including the script writers as they can develop and create ideas for the product together. The name of the job role says it all, as directors direct people on set and instruct them what exactly to do and when. Directors make the majority of important decisions made, in pro-production, production and even post-production. Through all of these filming processes, directors must motivate the whole cast and crew to work to the best of their ability throughout the production course.

To be a director, no qualifications aren’t exactly necessary although there are a wide range of various directing courses to partake in, just having clear knowledge of directing and practical experience in the industry can help you to require this job. The work experience necessary and appropriate for this job would be being a Runner on a film set, or even in a production office. These are all steps which Tom Green would have taken himself to work his way up in the directing job role.

Secondly I checked the script writers for Misfits on IMDB.com and found Howard Overman, who was the writer for 19 episodes.
Previously working on 13 titles such as; Merlin, Vexed, Dirk Gently, Misfits, Harley Street, Spook: Code 9, Dis/Connected, Hotel Babylon, Moving Wallpaper, Perfect Day, New Tricks, Hustle, and In The Bathroom. (All TV Series)

Overman has also been a director (Misfits and Dirk Gently) and a producer.
The scriptwriters hold a massive responsibility, as the initial story comes from their creative writing. In their script, they must ensure that they have included exciting plot lines, interesting characters, and write it on a topic that people will be interested in and what will sell in the industry. While script writing, they need to work closely with all of the cast crew members to develop the script and ensure it is an appropriate story line to sell.
Checking Howards job role on SkillSet.org I discovered that before he acquired his present job, he wouldn’t necessarily need any specific qualifications for the role, but must have a deep understanding of story plots, narrative descriptions and must also have a creative imaginative mind.

I also looked at Misfits costume designer, Liza Bracey who designed the costumes for twenty-one episodes.
Bracey has been the costume designer for 9 titles, including: (from most recent, backdating) Ashes, Spike Island, Misfits, Thorne: Scardey Cat, FM (TV Series), and The Rain Horse (Short Film).
Before designing the costumes on these particular times, she was a costume supervisor on over 30 titles, including the popular teenage movie ‘Angus, Thongs, and Perfect Snogging‘, and the 2nd World War film ‘Boy in the Striped Pyjamas‘ and also ‘Love Actually‘.
Before any of these job roles, she firstly assisted in the wardrobe department for TV movie ‘Jane Eyre’ in 1997.

The role of a costume designer is very much a pre-production job, designing characters costumes, hiring certain attire for them, creating clothing and ensuring they fit all actors and extras. Throughout the process of these steps, they must keep to the financial budget set.

Qualifications required for this particular job are mainly in textiles, to have the general knowledge of designing and sewing, and generally have a creative mind.
Many costume designers will have studied fashion, costume design or performing arts and have a degree or a HND in them.
Following this, graduates will possibly get work experience in clothing shops dressing the mannequins in shop windows, working their way up from this career. Like Liza Bracey previously did, assist in wardrobe departments, working their way up building relationships in the industry and making contacts.

Spell check

Stereotypical Audience Member – Misfits

Following on from my primary and secondary research on TV shows, with my chosen show being the popular E4 series ‘Misfits’, I have drawn up a stereotypical person who would generally be expected to watch Misfits.

The general target-market for this particular TV show, in my opinion, would be a typical teenage to early adult hood male. The reason being that the genre of the show is science-fiction/comedy-drama show, featuring a fairly young group of adolescents to early twenty year old who are attending community service, during this they acquire ‘super natural powers’. This would largely appeal to young males, rather than middle-aged women, for instance.
Stereotypically, the social classes of the people who watch this show would typically be lower to middle class.
The audience wouldn’t typically be of a particular sexual orientation, because the show isn’t exactly aimed or themed on people’s sexuality, and the characters are of a various range of people, therefore appealing to all sexualities. This reason also goes for the audiences ethnicity, I think all ethnicities would watch this show as the characters have a wide range of ethnicities, so all backgrounds can relate.

I think that the reason it would appeal to a younger audience in these particular social classes is because they can extract parts of the characters lives and relate to them in some way or another. For example, taking the character of Nathan (played by actor Robert Sheehan) has been chucked out of his home, because of struggling with the idea of having a step-dad. Also, now using the character Simon (played by actor Iwan Rheon) widely struggled with being bullied by his peers, consequently not being able to fit in with them. I think the strong aspect of being able to relate in some way is one of the many reasons the show is so popular, and the audience continues to watch it every series.

Secondary Research & Viewing Figures

I am researching the popular E4 TV show titled ‘Misfits’. During my research I have found that the programme first aired on 12th of November, year of 2009. I came to know this information by visiting Wikipedia.  en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Misfits_(TV_series)
The first series of Misfits was made up of six episodes, each broadcasting for the duration, on average, fourty five minutes each. These six episodes were aired on the 12th, 19th, 26th November, 3rd, 10th, 17th December, 2009.

For these shows on these particular air dates, the total viewing figures were;
First Series:
Thursday 12th November 2009: 574,000 (episode one)
Thursday 19th November 2009: 569,000 (episode two)
Thursday 26th November 2009: 592,000 (episode three)
Thursday 3rd December 2009: 632,000 (episode four)
Thursday 10th December 2009: 598,000 (episode five)
Thursday 17th December 2009: 592,00 (episode six)
Second Series:
Thursday 11th November 2010: 1,185,000 (episode one)
Thursday 19th November 2010: 1,055,000 (episode two)
Third Series:
Sunday 30th October 2011: 1,471,000 (episode one)
Sunday 6th November 2011: 1,329,000 (episode two)
(figures found from www.barb.co.uk/report/weekly-top-programmes?)
As we can evidently see from these viewing figures, the audience numbers dramatically rose in the second series broadcasting of the show ‘Misfits’. Its almost nearly doubled in viewing figures, from episode one of series one to episode one of series two.

I found these viewing figures from the reliable website www.barb.co.uk. BARB (Broadcasters Audience Research Board) is an organisation which provides people with estimated calculation of audiences of TV shows, including what certain channels are being viewed when, by how many people, and where its is being aired/viewed. BARB acquires this estimated information by selecting a various range of households in the UK, which will represent a certain number of the population. A chosen household, once agreed to partake in this survey, will have their TV sets, DVDs and VCRs monitored by an electric meter which goes directly back to BARB, displaying what TV show they are viewing, thus adding the the total amount of viewing figures for the whole of the UK.

I found my results from BARB’s website by going onto their viewing figures and clicking the option ‘Top 10s’. Once on the page for viewing the top 10 shows, I selected the specific date my chosen show (E4 show Misfits) was aired on. From this, BARB showed me all of the information for each certain episode broadcast the viewing figures, and the exact time and date it was first aired, which I then noted down in this post.

Primary Research

In my research lesson, I carried out a tally survey to find out information on the audience of the TV show ‘Misfits’ which is aired (each series airing annually) on average seven episodes per series. The research I carried out is primary research, meaning that all of the information I’ve found out is original things I’ve found myself. Included in this I’ve used secondary research using the internet to find out when the TV show was aired. The data that I’ve found out is known as quantitative date as it is shown as a set of numbers, which is displayed in this certain case in a tally chart, but could be transformed into a graph or even a bar chart.
The research is not qualitative as we didn’t delve deeper into what people actually thought about the show in particular. The questions we asked were just simple yes and no questions, finding out further their age, gender and basic likes of the show been given.

In result I found out that out of fourteen of the people asked, 79% of the people asked liked the channel E4s show ‘Misfits’, leaving 21% that aren’t keen on it.
Included in this percentage, 64% of the asked audience were males, and the rest of the 36% are females. The majority of the people we asked were adolescents ages varying from 16-19, with 14% over 20.
With this information given, I would say that this particular type of research isn’t exactly reliable as I’ve only asked one age group on their opinions of the show. My results would have been much more accurate if I had asked people with different age ranges, equal sexual orientations.