Spaces of television: Production, site and style

The project concerns television fiction produced in the UK from 1955-94. It will analyse how the material spaces of production (in TV studios and on location) conditioned the aesthetic forms of programmes, and how fictional spaces represented on screen negotiated the opportunities and constraints of studio and exterior space, film and video technologies, and liveness and recording. Specific foci for the research include BBC studios in London and the regions, the sound-stages at Elstree where programmes for ITV were made, and location shooting of drama series and serials in the period. Genres of programme studied include popular drama such as the police and adventure series, science fiction, period costume drama and sitcom.

The research will involve significant archival work, and will produce a historiography of production spaces in British television and connect this spatial and institutional history with a historiography of television style. Fictional space will be understood as a component of mise-en-scene, where the material space of production impacts on modes of performance, styles of camera work, and the significance of sound environments and visual design. Material spaces of production will be understood as a component of the economic, institutional and political histories of British television, where the availability of production space, its architectural design and resourcing, technologies of camera and sound, and the cultural meanings of these conditions of production changed over time and were negotiated among professional personnel in the television industry.

One strand of this research concerns the aesthetic specificity of television, in terms of its conventions of spatial representation. Since some of the technologies and practices of representing space were assimilated from cinema (e.g., using film studios, location shooting practices, cameras and directors) the research includes comparative work by one PhD student (Leicester) on the range of production practices and aesthetic codes of mise-en-scene in videotaped and filmed television, where televisual and cinematic conventions were negotiated and in dialogue with each other. The student will study the realisation and representation of space in telefantasy drama, a genre where representations of the alien and familiar, and the past, present and future have been aesthetically and materially significant. Studio-shot television fiction using video technologies was argued to have its own aesthetic, and this debate will be researched by one PhD student (Glamorgan) with a focus on how the changing uses of the studio impacted on the performance styles of actors. One PDRA (Smart, Reading) will trace the detail of resourcing and use of production spaces for programmes, their technologies, production practices and personnel, with a focus on directing practices. The other PDRA (Panos-Horritt, Reading) will focus on theoretical and historiographic debates about the aesthetics and histories of television space, conducting comparative studies across genres, production institutions and periods in order to develop the larger theoretical and methodological framework of the research by means of case studies. The research will include gathering testimony by TV production staff and performers about their experience of spatial opportunities and constraints.

The project's outcomes will include authoring and joint-authoring journal articles and book chapters. The postdoctoral researchers will be the lead editors of an edited collection of chapters, a journal special issue and the authors of several articles and chapters. The Investigators and PhD students will also publish in these outlets and elsewhere. Outcomes will also include two one-day symposia and one international conference, and engagement with appropriate resource holders and industry audiences. An existing network of academics and archivists (the Southern Broadcasting History Group) will advise on the project.

The research will be of value to practitioners and professionals working with broadcasting institutions. Whilst it is always difficult to predict the outcome of historical work, the investigators' previous experience of UK TV research projects is that there is often considerable interest amongst producers and makers of television programmes. Additionally, in analysing the evolving relationships between the material and stylistic spaces of production the research will seek to propose models that can be applied to other contexts and other periods.

This project is being proposed at a time of considerable disturbance to the ecology of UK television. With the digital switch-over imminent, the development of the technologies of delivery proceeding apace and the restructuring of broadcasting institutions in process, questions about the relationship between space, technology and dramatic form are especially urgent; in this context, learning from television's past is a good way of preparing for its future. There is evidence that broadcasters themselves are interested in a dialogue with academic researchers about both the history and current condition of television. To give one example: the annual conference of the Cyfrwng media research network in Wales is being hosted by BBC Wales in 2009 and is being addressed by its top executives (including the Controller of BBC Wales Cymru).

The research will be of interest to archivists, since in order to pursue its research questions much of the work will be conducted in archives and will be concerned with relating archival to other kinds of source material. There is emerging interest in opening up archives to researchers and the public. For example, Chapman is currently leading a project at Leicester that has just been awarded an AHRC collaborative doctoral scholarship in association with MACE (Media Archive of Central England) to research the history of ITV regional programming in the Midlands, from 2009-12 (principally news and current affairs).

The proposed project will seek to engage non-academic users in a range of ways. Where possible, researchers will interview and consult with television professionals involved in production during the period. These interviews will inform the research, but may also be made available as primary sources in their own right, electronically or in written form. The project team will also invite industry practitioners and archivists to its symposia and conference as delegates and participants, and aims to include their contributions in its published outcomes. Published research outcomes will be written to be accessible to industry practitioners as well as a broad academic readership. Timescales are difficult to predict, but the impact on participants and contributors to project events will hopefully be immediate; the impact of published outcomes will be longer term.

All project members, including PhD students, will be fully involved in the organisation of research events and the networking and organisational skills acquired will be of value in non-academic contexts.

Both the Principal Investigator and Co-Investigators have experience of running research projects which have engaged with television practitioners and broadcast institutions. An earlier AHRB research project co-directed by Bignell and Lacey which looked at the BBC Wednesday Play and post-War British Drama culminated in a major international conference addressed by some of the leading producers, writers and directors of UK television, many of whom contributed to a subsequent edited collection (Bignell, Lacey and Macmurraugh-Kavanagh 2000). Lacey is currently part of a team researching representations of Wales and 'Welshness' in contemporary BBC drama (especially Doctor Who and Torchwood) in collaboration with BBC Wales Trust. One outcome of the research will be a report to the Trust, wh