The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air

In 1990’s a television show called ‘The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air was a very popular American Sitcom and is still now. The main part is focused on the character Will, a black teenager who comes from an urban area of Philadelphia to live with his very rich aunt’s family. The series is aimed at teenagers aged 15-17 because of many real situations and the problems which many teenagers face. But why do teenagers love to watch this program now days? I think it’s all because of the opening sequence which tells us about the life of Will and because of many camera shots, media techniques and storyline used.

In the first scene you see Will spinning around in a throne telling his story of how he became the fresh prince of Bel- Air. Here the camera spins around Will which makes the target audience feel that he is really the king of the world and he have some graffiti in his wall which makes us feel that he is in this room and he makes he make himself look really cool. Teenagers can identify with Will’s feeling and many teenagers want to be like him as well. In this opening sequence Will tell us his story by rap, which most of the teenagers likes and it appeals to the teenagers most, Will uses informal language like many teenagers do to be cool.

In the second scene the relationship between Will and the target audience is further developed as we see Will getting into trouble with a policeman. Here the lighting is notan which stops the scene form being scary and I a medium shot. When the policeman finds out that will is doing something wrong with the wall, Will instead of hiding the graffiti spray, he sprays it underneath his arm and acts like as if he haven’t done anything wrong. This makes the policeman look very confused and foolish. The target audience would like this because many teenagers would like to make figures of authority look ridiculous.

In the next scene you see Will playing basket ball with his friend and gets in trouble again. First of all he tries to look really cool by laying basket ball with his friends but he looks complete fool when he can’t even dribble the ball, and his friends also look silly when they jog around alike a monkey without getting the ball, he acts as if he is really good at basket ball but he looks really silly when he tries o shoot and score the ball but he misses it. The target audience like

the fact that Will is not good at anything because that in what many teenagers think about them, this means they are better able to identify with Will because he sees like one of us. Things gets worse when Will accidently hit the black gangsters sitting beside the court, they look really scary. The camera shot takes high angle shot and lighting uses chiaroscuro- to make the gangsters look even scarier. After Will gets beat up by the gangsters.

In the 4th scene we see Will’s mum nagging Will about the fight, she really gets worries about him (of course most of the mums

Worries for their child if they get on with some kind of fight), so Will’s mum orders him that from now onward Will is going too live with his rich aunties house in Bel- Air. Because this scene is from Wills point of view his mum looks hilarious with big glasses and her poor makeup. She looks even funnier due to the camera shot which is an extreme close up, so the target audience get same impression for their mums too. The camera angle makes it seem as if the audience has become Will smith and is being told off by his mother. This again helps to make the audience identify with Will.

This opening sequence is about 90 second; it tells us how Will gets into trouble from the first scene and at last tells himself the fresh prince of Bel-air. Just by watching the opening sequence we, the audience can tell what the story is going to be about. This show was a crossover hit. This series also proved that a sitcom with a predominately black cast would attract a strong following anyone white viewers as well.