Having watched Japanese dramas for so many years, I grew interested in how they are broadcasted in Japanese television. Their structure and arrangement is quite different from that of Singapore, mainly due to the tough competition for viewership ratings between various TV stations. Here are some of the major differences.
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SG: Dramas are usually 20 episodes long, sometimes 25, or 30 for larger productions. There are also occasional long-running dramas, which are usually aired during the prime-time 7pm slot. Generally, dramas are aired every weekday night. Thus an average 20-episode long drama will complete its run within 1 month.
JP: Dramas are aired by seasons. January to March will see winter dramas, April to June will see spring dramas, and so on. This means at the start of every season, a set of new dramas will be introduced. As prime-time dramas are aired on a weekly basis, this explains why they are usually 11 or 12 episodes long. The short-and-sweet factor is what makes Jdrama so attractive. The plot is presented in a more compact manner, with few draggy moments.
A unique characteristic of Jdramas is that the episodes can be watched separately. Sometimes the plot in one episode may have little relation to the previous episodes. This is to attract new viewers even at the 4th or 5th episode. For example in a police drama, each episode will cover a different crime case.
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SG: At the beginning of every drama there will be an introductory theme song, presenting various scenes extracted from the show. A short clip flashing the title of the drama signals the start and end of the commercial breaks. At the end of the drama, the scene will ‘freeze’ and credits will start rolling, while the theme or sub-theme song plays in the background.
JP: Show starts right away. No introductory theme song. No short clip to mark commercial breaks. This can be quite abrupt though. However there is still a short few seconds clip showing the title of the drama, followed by acknowledgment of the main sponsors. This usually appears about 10 minutes into the show. If you happen to miss it when watching the show for the first time, you will probably be clueless about the title of the drama for the rest of the episode.
There is still a main theme though, usually played with the credits a few minutes before the show ends. This is interesting, because the credits roll while the show is still going on, at the bottom of the screen. The challenge for the editor is to insert the credits as well as the main theme at the most suitable time, so as to match the mood of the scene. After all the credits have rolled, the show may end at any moment haha.
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SG: Chinese dramas carries English subtitles, and vice versa. Subtitles may spoil the suspense at critical moments.
JP: No subtitles at all. That’s why fansubbers (drama fans who add subtitles) have a very hard time. The production team has no time to add subtitles anyway. Reason will be mentioned later.
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SG: Most dramas are 1-hour long, with 4 commercial breaks in between. (3 in the past) Thus the effective drama duration is around 46 minutes. Those who often watch dramas online should be familiar with this ‘common’ duration.
JP: Dramas vary in duration. Possible lengths are 30 min, 45 min or 60 min. (effective length: 24, 35, 46 min). This brings to another point.
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SG: Dramas (as well as any programmes in general), start on the hour or half-hour mark.
JP: Dramas usually do not start exactly on the hour or half-hour mark. They can have irregular start times like 9.03 or 8:56, a few minutes before or after the hour mark. This is primarily due to viewership competition. When a programme ends early before the hour, viewers are likely to switch channels and settle on one that does not show commercials. Hence dramas that start early tend to attract such viewers. As for why dramas start a few minutes later, this is to accommodate for programmes that end past the hour. Viewers are not likely to continue watching a drama from another channel after they have missed the first few minutes. The psychology of attracting viewers can be rather complex here.
However this can be really confusing to people who wants to catch a particular drama! Wouldn’t a drama lose more viewers if they cannot remember the start time?
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SG: A drama is aired a few months after filming ends. Long-running drama is an exception.
JP: Airing and filming is carried out simultaneously. An episode is aired a few weeks after its filming. This way, the production team is able to gauge the viewers’ response and make necessary changes accordingly. If the response is overwhelming, the drama can be extended by a special episode. If viewership is hopeless, the drama may be cut short, or simply axed.
Simultaneous filming can be rather risky (and stressful as well), in a way that the pressing deadlines must be strictly adhered to. What if an actor or actress is unable to commit to filming due to injuries or other circumstances?
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Since Mediacorp monopolizes SG TV, I don’t think we need all these ‘extreme’ measures adopted by JP TV to attract viewers. After all the competition does not lie between different channels, but between local and foreign shows.
Tuesday, October 26, 2010
Wednesday, October 20, 2010
Idiot Box IV
As some of you may know, I enjoy watching game shows, and have been doing so from small. I’ve always wished that I could participate in some of them, but I don’t want to appear on TV haha. Furthermore for some really good game shows, audience would rather prefer to watch celebrities participate instead of the general public. These celebrities can boost the atmosphere of the show and attract more viewership, so the producers tend to set aside their resources for celebrities instead.
What to do if normal people like me wants to play as well? Design the game on my own lor haha. But the bad thing is the game creator often cannot play his own game. =(
Here are some of the memorable game shows I’ve watched when small. I prefer those where the audience can join in and ‘play along’ as well, rather than games which are only fun for the player but boring to the viewers.
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One of the best classic English word game (Actually till now I still enjoy playing casual word games like hangman and Chinese 文字游戏, but too bad I can’t find a suitable person as interested as me to play with T_T)
I don’t like how most phrases and sentences are American-based, which makes it hard for people from other countries to play along. This explains why I like the RSTLNE part – short and sweet and ‘globalized’.
And oh, the most memorable thing about the wheel is the black ‘Bankrupt’ piece, which comes with an amusing sound effect.
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This show used to come right after Wheel of Fortune. So I usually watched both at once.
Looks easy? Not really, given the stress and time factor, which will often block our minds from the “simple and obvious”. I realized for this kind of games, it may be better to take some time to think of a good clue that your partner can answer immediately, rather than to bombard many (poor) clues and hope one of them strikes. Saves saliva also haha.
The final challenge, where a player has to describe many examples and the other has to guess the question or category, is not easy IMO especially when it can be very specific.
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This physical game show made me realize how wild Japanese are. The participants were sporting and didn’t seem to mind being bashed, pushed into mud and water, and ‘bullied’ by the rules. The show starts off with 100 over players, and slowly eliminates bit by bit, until the final showdown where players engage in a water gun (or laser) war with the emperor and his merciless guards.
I like how the design of the games makes it interesting to watch for the audience, though they can’t play along. Some thrilling games really make one sit on the edge of the seat. One of my favourite is the honeycomb maze, where players have to navigate to the other end while avoiding the roaming ‘monsters’. It is pretty scary from the player’s perspective.
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Ooh. I love mazes! Especially life-sized ones. I can’t remember the rules much but I think players have to enter an ice maze while their partners guide them.
I vaguely remember a section where players have to assemble connecting pieces while holding out a moving wall. Is this from the same game show?
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黃金傳奇
Players go around cities performing various tasks. I think they went to Singapore once. It’s like a small scale Amazing Race, focusing on one region at a time. The key is to solve the clues given at each station. They look very difficult but the ‘genius’ players seem to be always able to solve them correctly. When stuck, they can choose to summon the genie-like ‘forgot-the-name’ person for help.
I can't find any videos or images for this show. Weird.
As mentioned earlier, game shows nowadays seem to be evolving towards celebrity participation, to attract viewership, at least for the case of Singapore. Probably because Singaporeans are less expressive and hysterical, which can make even an interesting game show look boring sometimes.
What to do if normal people like me wants to play as well? Design the game on my own lor haha. But the bad thing is the game creator often cannot play his own game. =(
Here are some of the memorable game shows I’ve watched when small. I prefer those where the audience can join in and ‘play along’ as well, rather than games which are only fun for the player but boring to the viewers.
---
One of the best classic English word game (Actually till now I still enjoy playing casual word games like hangman and Chinese 文字游戏, but too bad I can’t find a suitable person as interested as me to play with T_T)
I don’t like how most phrases and sentences are American-based, which makes it hard for people from other countries to play along. This explains why I like the RSTLNE part – short and sweet and ‘globalized’.
And oh, the most memorable thing about the wheel is the black ‘Bankrupt’ piece, which comes with an amusing sound effect.
---
This show used to come right after Wheel of Fortune. So I usually watched both at once.
Looks easy? Not really, given the stress and time factor, which will often block our minds from the “simple and obvious”. I realized for this kind of games, it may be better to take some time to think of a good clue that your partner can answer immediately, rather than to bombard many (poor) clues and hope one of them strikes. Saves saliva also haha.
The final challenge, where a player has to describe many examples and the other has to guess the question or category, is not easy IMO especially when it can be very specific.
---
This physical game show made me realize how wild Japanese are. The participants were sporting and didn’t seem to mind being bashed, pushed into mud and water, and ‘bullied’ by the rules. The show starts off with 100 over players, and slowly eliminates bit by bit, until the final showdown where players engage in a water gun (or laser) war with the emperor and his merciless guards.
I like how the design of the games makes it interesting to watch for the audience, though they can’t play along. Some thrilling games really make one sit on the edge of the seat. One of my favourite is the honeycomb maze, where players have to navigate to the other end while avoiding the roaming ‘monsters’. It is pretty scary from the player’s perspective.
---
Ooh. I love mazes! Especially life-sized ones. I can’t remember the rules much but I think players have to enter an ice maze while their partners guide them.
I vaguely remember a section where players have to assemble connecting pieces while holding out a moving wall. Is this from the same game show?
---
黃金傳奇
Players go around cities performing various tasks. I think they went to Singapore once. It’s like a small scale Amazing Race, focusing on one region at a time. The key is to solve the clues given at each station. They look very difficult but the ‘genius’ players seem to be always able to solve them correctly. When stuck, they can choose to summon the genie-like ‘forgot-the-name’ person for help.
I can't find any videos or images for this show. Weird.
As mentioned earlier, game shows nowadays seem to be evolving towards celebrity participation, to attract viewership, at least for the case of Singapore. Probably because Singaporeans are less expressive and hysterical, which can make even an interesting game show look boring sometimes.
Thursday, October 14, 2010
Toy Story II
Last entry I talked about boardgames. This time let’s backtrack a little and look at simpler games that I’ve played when I was younger.
Games Compendium (10-in-1 or 5-in-1)
A combination of many roll-and-move games, that came with pawns, chips and dice. The playing ‘boards’ were made of paper, so it was really budget. I remember how cheaply such sets were sold in provision stores. Games include the well-known snakes-and-ladders, racing game, star game, space game, chess (dumb) etc. These are the most basic boardgames I started off playing. The magnetic board version was also rather popular.
Othello (Reversi, or Black-White Chess)
The rules are pretty simple but the strategy may be complex. At one moment you might seem to be winning, and at another, the whole board can suddenly change colour. If the board is dominated by your colour at the early stage, it doesn’t mean it will continue as such. Placing of pieces at strategic spots is very important, and just trying to flip over as much of opponent’s colour every turn is not going to work. This game requires constant flipping, which can be quite a hassle, especially if it’s of miniature size and clumsy hands may mess up the whole setup. I used to confuse this with Weiqi (or Go), which also uses black and white pieces. Oh, there was once an arcade version (in big screens) and I liked watching how human players get trashed by the AI haha.
Chinese Chess
Up till this day I still don’t have a strategy in playing this game. I know how the pieces move, but I’ve totally no idea when is the best time, or what is the best way to move them. I used to enjoy watching others play, but I hate it when people take too long to make their moves =p. And my favourite phrase in this game is 双炮将死棋！
Mastermind
The procedure for each game is actually quite fixed, how fast you finish depends on your initial guess. Just like 933 醉心密码. Technically the game can be rather boring in this sense. Instead of playing the actual game, I always liked to play around with the colourful studs and create patterns out of them.
Pick-up Sticks
Another colourful game haha. You need a really steady hand to play this one. Unfortunately it gets boring pretty fast, without a clearly defined set of rules. At many occasions, I found myself unable to proceed with the game because the sticks cannot be simply picked without agitating the rest. I used to treat the sticks for other purposes, like toy joss sticks haha.
Uno
Other than the popular classic card game, Uno has many other variants like Uno Stacko, Uno Madness, Uno Dominos, etc. Uno Madness is my favourite, where you have to race against time to place the correct tiles before the entire board ‘pops’ up. Those with weak hearts may suffer a heart attack from playing this hahaa. Uno stacko is another tense game where you cannot afford to have butter fingers. Seeing (and hearing) the tower crash may be fun, but building the blocks from scratch is not. I was once a Uno fan and bought many related games, including a jumbo pack which consists of several Uno variants.
Misc Cardgames
Donkey, Old Maid, Happy Family, etc…who could ever forget these childhood games?
Popular games I’ve not played before
Battleship, Risk, Game of Life, Jenga, Twister etc.
Nowadays I see more kids playing with their handheld gadgets instead of these physical card/board/object games. Looks like such traditional games are gradually losing their appeal among the young. They might even not have heard about these games before. Hopefully these games, which have accompanied me through the joys of my childhood, will not just vanish into history in the near future.
Games Compendium (10-in-1 or 5-in-1)
A combination of many roll-and-move games, that came with pawns, chips and dice. The playing ‘boards’ were made of paper, so it was really budget. I remember how cheaply such sets were sold in provision stores. Games include the well-known snakes-and-ladders, racing game, star game, space game, chess (dumb) etc. These are the most basic boardgames I started off playing. The magnetic board version was also rather popular.
Othello (Reversi, or Black-White Chess)
The rules are pretty simple but the strategy may be complex. At one moment you might seem to be winning, and at another, the whole board can suddenly change colour. If the board is dominated by your colour at the early stage, it doesn’t mean it will continue as such. Placing of pieces at strategic spots is very important, and just trying to flip over as much of opponent’s colour every turn is not going to work. This game requires constant flipping, which can be quite a hassle, especially if it’s of miniature size and clumsy hands may mess up the whole setup. I used to confuse this with Weiqi (or Go), which also uses black and white pieces. Oh, there was once an arcade version (in big screens) and I liked watching how human players get trashed by the AI haha.
Chinese Chess
Up till this day I still don’t have a strategy in playing this game. I know how the pieces move, but I’ve totally no idea when is the best time, or what is the best way to move them. I used to enjoy watching others play, but I hate it when people take too long to make their moves =p. And my favourite phrase in this game is 双炮将死棋！
Mastermind
The procedure for each game is actually quite fixed, how fast you finish depends on your initial guess. Just like 933 醉心密码. Technically the game can be rather boring in this sense. Instead of playing the actual game, I always liked to play around with the colourful studs and create patterns out of them.
Pick-up Sticks
Another colourful game haha. You need a really steady hand to play this one. Unfortunately it gets boring pretty fast, without a clearly defined set of rules. At many occasions, I found myself unable to proceed with the game because the sticks cannot be simply picked without agitating the rest. I used to treat the sticks for other purposes, like toy joss sticks haha.
Uno
Other than the popular classic card game, Uno has many other variants like Uno Stacko, Uno Madness, Uno Dominos, etc. Uno Madness is my favourite, where you have to race against time to place the correct tiles before the entire board ‘pops’ up. Those with weak hearts may suffer a heart attack from playing this hahaa. Uno stacko is another tense game where you cannot afford to have butter fingers. Seeing (and hearing) the tower crash may be fun, but building the blocks from scratch is not. I was once a Uno fan and bought many related games, including a jumbo pack which consists of several Uno variants.
Misc Cardgames
Donkey, Old Maid, Happy Family, etc…who could ever forget these childhood games?
Popular games I’ve not played before
Battleship, Risk, Game of Life, Jenga, Twister etc.
Nowadays I see more kids playing with their handheld gadgets instead of these physical card/board/object games. Looks like such traditional games are gradually losing their appeal among the young. They might even not have heard about these games before. Hopefully these games, which have accompanied me through the joys of my childhood, will not just vanish into history in the near future.
Friday, October 08, 2010
Composition
Writing an essay is probably the toughest part of using a language. It is definitely not easy to organize our thoughts, which often spout out haphazardly in our minds, and pen them down in a smooth and coherent manner, while paying attention to grammar at the same time. The more we study a language and read widely, our proficiency improves and we are more likely to reproduce our ideas in words more accurately and fluently.
This brings me back to how we were taught to write compositions in primary and secondary school. To start off with the basics, we were told to write separate sentences, then group them together – thus the term ‘composition’. In response to a topic, for instance, “Describe your favourite food”, we could write the following sentences in this order:
1) I like to eat roti prata.
2) I eat roti prata for breakfast every morning.
3) Roti prata is an Indian food.
Somehow the flow of idea is not very perfect, or rather the level of introduction to the food seems to be inconsistent. It would be slightly better if Sentences 3 and 2 are swapped, though the difference is subtle. When the topic is narrow, this order may seem alright and acceptable. But when the topic is broad, such jumps in thoughts may appear significant and abrupt, which gives the impression that the writer is merely darting randomly about the topic, penning down directly what he thinks without much planning. For sensitive readers, this can be annoying too as they might find it difficult to follow the writer’s disordered train of thoughts.
In primary school, I do not recall learning how to arrange our sentences such that they read coherently. Forming a proper, relevant and grammatically correct sentence is already as hard as it is. Teachers usually do not correct them too. Either they find it taxing to read so deeply into the flow, or it is too complex to explain the differences to primary school kids. After all, the fundamentals should focus more on grammar, vocabulary, and correct use of words, rather than the context and readability, which is usually not a big concern at that learning stage.
One reason why organization of sentences is not emphasized in primary school is due to the type of compositions we write. From young, we are taught how to write short stories, or describe situations. The order of key sentences therefore comes naturally, since the incident happens in that order. The flow of the composition is based on how the story should develop, which is relatively easy to imagine and keep track of.
Even as we progressed to secondary school, things had not changed much. We were still told to write short stories, expanding on what we had learnt in primary school. The compositions we wrote were still pretty much descriptive. Teachers avoided spending time and effort teaching us how to write a proper argumentative or expository essay. We were strongly encouraged to write short stories in tests and examinations, with repeated warnings that we might fail badly should we not heed the advice and attempt to write argumentative or expository essays instead. This is precisely a vicious cycle. How can we improve if we are not taught how to? And who is the one failing our essays anyway? Consequently most of us graduated from secondary school without sufficient knowledge on how to write a proper argumentative essay. This left many struggling with GP in JC, and subsequently university essays and reports.
What is the purpose of honing our short stories writing skills when we hardly use it in our later education and future work? It is even more useless than learning sine and cosine functions, as what many math-haters have cited. Most of us are not going to be an author anyway. Furthermore many essays and passages around us, be it newspaper articles, commentary, descriptions and even blog entries, do not adopt the short story format of writing - introduce characters, develop plot, achieve climax, wrap up. Thus clinging on to writing short stories even in secondary school seems to be rather pointless. More effort could have been spent in equipping us with relevant skills in generating a proper argumentative or expository essay. Such knowledge can be further applied in our tertiary education and is definitely useful to our future jobs when writing reports becomes a norm.
I have lost touch with the secondary school syllabus for a long time and have no idea if such short stories strategy is still being adopted in the system. Bearing in mind that the ultimate aim of education is to obtain skills relevant to future applications, it would be better to leave behind short stories, which is hardly required anywhere. Introducing argumentative/expository writing at an early stage may help alleviate later fears towards essay/report-writing in one way or another.
This brings me back to how we were taught to write compositions in primary and secondary school. To start off with the basics, we were told to write separate sentences, then group them together – thus the term ‘composition’. In response to a topic, for instance, “Describe your favourite food”, we could write the following sentences in this order:
1) I like to eat roti prata.
2) I eat roti prata for breakfast every morning.
3) Roti prata is an Indian food.
Somehow the flow of idea is not very perfect, or rather the level of introduction to the food seems to be inconsistent. It would be slightly better if Sentences 3 and 2 are swapped, though the difference is subtle. When the topic is narrow, this order may seem alright and acceptable. But when the topic is broad, such jumps in thoughts may appear significant and abrupt, which gives the impression that the writer is merely darting randomly about the topic, penning down directly what he thinks without much planning. For sensitive readers, this can be annoying too as they might find it difficult to follow the writer’s disordered train of thoughts.
In primary school, I do not recall learning how to arrange our sentences such that they read coherently. Forming a proper, relevant and grammatically correct sentence is already as hard as it is. Teachers usually do not correct them too. Either they find it taxing to read so deeply into the flow, or it is too complex to explain the differences to primary school kids. After all, the fundamentals should focus more on grammar, vocabulary, and correct use of words, rather than the context and readability, which is usually not a big concern at that learning stage.
One reason why organization of sentences is not emphasized in primary school is due to the type of compositions we write. From young, we are taught how to write short stories, or describe situations. The order of key sentences therefore comes naturally, since the incident happens in that order. The flow of the composition is based on how the story should develop, which is relatively easy to imagine and keep track of.
Even as we progressed to secondary school, things had not changed much. We were still told to write short stories, expanding on what we had learnt in primary school. The compositions we wrote were still pretty much descriptive. Teachers avoided spending time and effort teaching us how to write a proper argumentative or expository essay. We were strongly encouraged to write short stories in tests and examinations, with repeated warnings that we might fail badly should we not heed the advice and attempt to write argumentative or expository essays instead. This is precisely a vicious cycle. How can we improve if we are not taught how to? And who is the one failing our essays anyway? Consequently most of us graduated from secondary school without sufficient knowledge on how to write a proper argumentative essay. This left many struggling with GP in JC, and subsequently university essays and reports.
What is the purpose of honing our short stories writing skills when we hardly use it in our later education and future work? It is even more useless than learning sine and cosine functions, as what many math-haters have cited. Most of us are not going to be an author anyway. Furthermore many essays and passages around us, be it newspaper articles, commentary, descriptions and even blog entries, do not adopt the short story format of writing - introduce characters, develop plot, achieve climax, wrap up. Thus clinging on to writing short stories even in secondary school seems to be rather pointless. More effort could have been spent in equipping us with relevant skills in generating a proper argumentative or expository essay. Such knowledge can be further applied in our tertiary education and is definitely useful to our future jobs when writing reports becomes a norm.
I have lost touch with the secondary school syllabus for a long time and have no idea if such short stories strategy is still being adopted in the system. Bearing in mind that the ultimate aim of education is to obtain skills relevant to future applications, it would be better to leave behind short stories, which is hardly required anywhere. Introducing argumentative/expository writing at an early stage may help alleviate later fears towards essay/report-writing in one way or another.
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