Contextual Studies - The Vampire Diaries

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I almost always choose to review CW The Vampire Diaries, not only because i absolutely love this magnificent show but it has a big variety of interesting camera shots and brilliant sound techniques.


One of the most initial aspects of this brilliant series that really stood out to me is the cinematography. Due to it being a supernatural the colour palette that is used within this series is very contrasted and usually dark. Most things that happen on the TV show is death and drama and the lighting is key to represent it all. Of course The Vampire Diaries uses its aesthetic from the novel series that it's based on written my L.J Smith in 1991, and the show is written and directed by Julie Plec. It's aired mostly in America on CW but appeared also in the UK on ITV, this happened to the popular demand of fans. In order to achieve such mystery and darkness within the show Julie Plec always referred to 'Dracula' of 1950s (Dracula 1958) as she explained how director Terence Fisher always used darkness and lighting to portray his vicious characters. She went on to say 'How can you film a supernatural with bright blue skies?' you have to create the atmosphere where the audience feels engaged within the actions. If a Vampire is ripping into someones neck, we are not going to see bright colours and long establishing shots. We are going to visually establish the darkness around them and the extreme close up's of the character ripping the victims neck. As the narrative's theme of the series is usually extremely dark due it never having a happy ending it usually consists of the protagonists battling their violence. However the show is not always dark, sometime we see Julie Plec include bright contrasted colours within the show when something good is about to happen to the protagonist such as him finally getting to beat his utter violence. Perhaps this starts to link with the 21st century where Julie Plec is forced to go out of her way and not follow the novel and make sure that something good happens within the series.  'The Vampire Diaries' links to the idea of a modern society, it's not so much Dracula in the 1950s but it expresses modern human beings being able to walk outside as vampires without the public knowing. This also makes Julie Plec think of ways to make sure that the series stays modern because audience will not watch something that was inspired from the 1950s and is basically the same.  The entire colour palette usually expresses the central theme of the series but also suggests to us that the society is modern going against the traditional conventions that we have of 'Vampires' and in general supernatural characters.

The cinematography in 'The Vampire Diaries' is very interested within itself, Julie Plec really likes to embrace extreme close ups on the characters to express their feelings. It's none-diegetic soundtrack is used from modern music these days that fits within the scene. Usually audiences love the soundtrack that is always used within the series because its modern and most people have heard it before. 


The Vampire Diaries never had a theme song, it always begins with an intriguing scene and then pays the title within a sound effect. Julie Plec likes to reference her soundtrack around Jazz compositions mostly as it really fits in with the time era. The Vampire Diaries always has a flash back to the 1900 and the 1800 as these Vampire characters that we are introduced with have been alive for more that 500 years. When Julie Plec flashes us back into these times, the sound track that we always hear is Jazz. But then again when we are in the modern society that 'The Vampire Diaries' is set in we hear modern music. It's very fascinating how she does this because it really puts us as the audience in that time era with them, not only with the music but also with the mise-en-scene and the costuming.
The clothing choices in 'The Vampire Diaries' reflects very heavily on the characters personalities and background within the series. We can see here in this picture that the Lady in the Red dress who is the mother of 2 powerful Vampires called Stefan and Damon comes from a wealthy family. The red dress really represents blood, as she herself is a powerful vampires and the black colouring on the dress represents her status and morality. On the other hand the other lady in the green dress represents a little bit of weakness due to her wearing a lime green dress, Julie Plec wanted to make sure that there is always a more powerful characters in the picture. And here it really stands out who that is. 
Overall, The Vampire Diaries combines elements of darkness and sometimes a surreal sense of postmodernism to create a very unsettling and confusing tone. This is always very evident through cinematography and the sound, in fact also the mise-on-scene expresses these facts. The soundtrack has always been very effective in adding massive tone to the show which really indulged us in the time era that Julie Plec wanted to set us in. Plec always referred back to the novel written by L.J Smith but knew that she couldn't recreate everything the way it was written.


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