Millionaire also shows that people can win. 2 people have reached a million, although one was thought to cheat!
Who wants to be a millionaire is a game show with 15 questions. Each question is worth money and when you get passed £1000, the money starts to double. The last question is worth 1 million pounds. But obviously the questions get harder and harder as it goes on. The contestant is given 3 chances, phone a friend, 50:50 and ask the audience.
The audience must not say anything although they can laugh at Chris Tarrants jokes. The studio is silent unless the contestant or Chris Tarrant speaks. This creates tension. The contestant in the seat has all eyes on them and can feel the tension. They know they have to get it right. There is music in the background like a heartbeat, which could put the contestant off and heighten the tension further.
At the beginning of the show Chris does a “Fastest finger first.” 10 contestants sit in a circle and Chris quickly introduces them to the viewers. He gets straight to the point asking a question and explaining the rules. The tension is up when everyone is competing to get the answer right first and finally Chris puts the winner on our screen. The winner joins Chris in the arch and the screen and chairs go up. As they walk down the walkway towards it, when they step the floor lights up. All eyes are on them. The tension is still high.
When they are seated, Chris tries to lighten the atmosphere by asking a couple of questions to the contestant, then the music goes and the audience know to be quiet. The tension is back but not as great as before.
The first questions are asked quickly, answered quickly and corrected quickly. The contestant starts to feel the adrenaline rush. This could make them more relaxed and also more sloppy.
When they reach £1000 the first safe point, Tarrant asks the contestant more personal questions.
“What would you spend the money on?”
Once again the tension drops and the contestant and audience are relaxed and the viewers at home wait patiently for the harder questions. Finally the music comes back on and the audience are quiet and everyone is excited and wondering, “Will they win a million pounds?”
Now the questions are harder so that’s when the three lifelines come into play. These make it enjoyable for the viewers at home when the contestant gets to answer wrong still using these or when the contestants uses all three lifelines in one question.
There is also high tension when the lifelines don’t help and the contestant is stuck.
The first lifeline is “Ask the audience.” It tallies everyone’s answer into a graph and percentage. The contestant can then see that most of the audience have decided on one answer. The problem with this is that at an easy question, the graph is defined and east to figure out the answer but at a question, which is worth a lot of money and is quite hard, the graph is less easy to decipher and the tallies are closer together e.g. 39% and 38%.
The next lifeline is 50:50 and is not really a favourite choice. Tarrant will usually ask which two the contestant thinks it is and then those two will be left. The tension is high as people wait too see which one will be chosen. The viewers at home enjoy the fact that the contestant needs to make a choice and is glued to the screen. Sometimes we have to wonder if 50:50 is deliberately there to misguide people.
The last lifeline is phone a friend. The contestant can call up a friend and has 30 seconds to ask them the question and get an answer. Phone a friend can really stir things up. Tarrant will try to put a bit of humour into a bad situation where the contestant is very nervous and apprehensive about whether they will get the question wrong or right.
The layout of the studio helps create a lot of tension. The stools in which the contestant and presenter sit in are very similar to the “mastermind” chairs and makes the contestant feel uneasy. The chairs are placed in the middle of the stage with the audience around the outside in a circle. It has the gladiatorial field because in the gladiatorial times, the spectators would sit on the outside in a circle and all eyes would be on the fight to death. In millionaire, all eyes are on the contestant waiting to see if they do well or not. Also the relative or friend is usually put behind the contestant as moral support and like they “have the persons back.”
On the start of the show, the same theme tune is played before and after every show. The theme tune is well recognised around the world and once you hear the theme tune, you know that the game show is going to start and there is light tension in the air.
On the first couple of questions the music is quite loud and doesn’t give a lot of tension but at the end, the music is quieter and produces more tension.
On “fastest finger first” and “phone a friend” there is a clock ticking in the background, which is off putting and adds a lot of tension to see if the right answer is given in the right time.
There is a heart beat effect sound in the background after £1000 mark because the money starts to double and get very high. The tension is up because everyone wonders if they will get the £1 million that is being offered.
A horn ends the show at suitable moments when they have to end the show. When that goes off it lightens the tension and everyone begins to relax. But in the filming it carries on before we get to see it sooner. The viewers at home get to wait until the next episode if the person on the chair doesn’t finish.
The camera shots are used to create aspects of tension. There are close up shots of the contestant when they are nervous to let the viewers begin to get the same amount of nervous anxiety too. The tension is high in the studio and in people’s houses.
There are close ups of Tarrant so we can see the expressions on his face when the answers are given and when peoples decisions are made.
The cameras close up on the cheques when the contestant gets to a safe point. To everyone watching it makes it real. Everyone can see they at least made it that far. The tension is up to see if the contestant will get further of whether they will end up with that amount of money.
There is a medium shot of the stage before the contestant takes a seat so that everyone can get a feel of the studio and what its like. A wide angle shot is used during ask the audience so they can see everyone at home. There is a low angle shot looking up at a nervous relative and people can see that there is already tension in the air.
The viewers at home see a nice quick easy to follow show but the audience see a different show probably full of more tension as more time is spent on the questions without the editing, which has been used, which manipulates viewers in making it look better.
The clever use of lighting throughout the show adds effectiveness and heightens tension throughout the show. When Chris Tarrant comes through the ‘tunnel’ it changes colour and everyone gets excited because the show is beginning and they wonder if the person who gets chosen will get the top amount of money. The tunnel is dark and stays dark when the questions are being asked. The light comes back on when the contestant finishes and they walk through it. This heightens the tension because it appears a hole and when the person goes through it or comes through it, it signifies that a new game is starting.
The lights shine on the audience at certain moments for example when its ask the audience the lights are shone onto the audience and there are some close ups. It shows the audience and how they are reacting to the question. During the questions the audience are blacked out so that everyone focuses on the contestant and not on members of the audience doing other things, which could draw the attention away. The spotlights flash onto the stage at the beginning of each question and there is also under floor lighting.
Who wants to be a millionaire is known for its slogans and catchphrases. For example, “We don’t want to give you that.” And there are very well known and people use them out of the show too. There are lots of phrases that people use because the show is so popular.
Chris Tarrant uses the following techniques to create tension. He used deception in things like 50:50 where he asks the two they would narrow it down to and then ‘coincidentally’ those two are usually left. He also uses deception when he tries to get them to question their own answers and think back to see if it’s right and make a bad mistake.
He used humour to try and lighten the tension at parts and humour to heighten the tension in others. For example when its phone a friend and the friend didn’t know the answer, Chris would make a joke about how useless it was and I don’t think that the contestant really was in the mood for a joke, especially if the question was worth a high amount of money and was their last hope!
When Tarrant cuts to advert breaks this heightens the tension especially when the contestant gives an answer that they really weren’t confident with and just wanted to get it over and done with. If the contestant was confidant then it wouldn’t make a difference if it was the break because everyone would know they was right.
The use of pauses and pace help create tension when Tarrant likes to take hard questions slow and easy questions fast. The audience all would wish he would hurry up and correct the question but he doesn’t and he likes to get the tension right up before he lets it go down again.
Tarrant also lets us believe that the show is live when he talks to the viewers at home even though there aren’t any. He talks about breaks too and it gives us all the impression that it is live.
There is also a lot of repetition, which drums things into our heads to make it so that we don’t forget things and this also heightens tension.
I think that “Who wants to be a millionaire?” has been hugely successful because it’s something for the older half of the population to watch and enjoy and its entertainment for people to watch. The show heightens tension and makes you glued to the screen because it’s very addictive and people like to see how far certain people can get and what they’d spend the money on and what mistakes they’d made. The show has a wide range of merchandise and has made the show popular and it’s also been used in other countries with different presenters and obviously different money. It also appeals to people because for a little bit of knowledge you get rewarded nice sums of money and that makes it popular for people to try to get on the show with and to watch.
In my opinion the show is ok. If the show is on then I will watch it but I don’t flick through and watch it everyday! That is probably because the show wasn’t made for teenagers and children because we don’t have nearly the same amount of knowledge that adults do and that is why it doesn’t appeal to us. We can’t answer the questions as easily as some people could and most of the time we just guess the answers. I think this is better than other quiz shows because the money is better, it’s easy to follow and it gives people a chance to do what they wouldn’t usually do!
I think that it is right that TV shows should offer such huge prize money. If someone is going on TV and maybe embarrassing themselves, they should get something out of it too. It’s showing that being knowledgeable can get you somewhere and can help with you being rich. If it didn’t have some sort of attraction to the show hardly anybody would try to get on the show in the first place because it wouldn’t be worth the time and effort and sometimes humiliation for little amount of money.