Initial Ideas On Our Own Soap Opera

I have started thinking about ideas for my groups so operas and in my head what I want it to be like. As our soap opera is going to be a brad new one I want to concentrate on more the first impression of the characters rather than the storyline. I have seen from the Student soap operas what I think works well and what doesn't, I like the idea of showing each family or group of friends individually first so you see them by there self and how they are, but I also like the idea of them all coming together at the end so our audience can see exactly what the characters are like in our soap. This is just the first idea in my head that I think is good but it doesn't mean it will defiantly happen as my group may have other ideas that will work. I am hoping our camera skills will work during filming our trailer as I think it's a crucial part of making it successful, also having good actors would benefit us because it makes the whole trailer flow a lot better, these things I will work on with my group further into our project and when we get together and all share our Ideas we will be able to think of something that we all like and all think will work.

Magazine Analysis

Poster Analysis

Soap Opera Trailer Analysis

soap analysis on Prezi

Soap Opera Trailer Timings

I was set the task to note down when soap opera trailers were shown on television so it would give me an idea of when the best time to show a trailer depending on what audience you wanted to target. I took my notes and put them into a trailer so you can clearly see what trailers I found and when. The soaps such as Emmerdale would show their trailer at an early time in the day because they want to hit an older audience who would be watching television at this time. Soaps such as Eastenders who want to hit a wide variety audience would show their trailer at "prime time" which is when most people watch TV because they are home from either work or school. Lastly soaps such as Hollyoaks who want to target the younger audience show their trailer late at night because the younger audience would still be awake by then and watching television. This task has helped me because when I am further into planning my actual soap, I will know my target audience so I will then know what time I would want my trailer to be shown.

The Purpose Of A Trailer

Advertising an event - Coronation street celebrated there 50th anniversary event with the tram crash and used a trailer.

To advertise the soap to audiences - So that current viewers know what's going on in the soap and if anything new is happening.

Characters and Storyline - If there is a specific storyline about one of the characters it can be advertised in the trailer.

Special episode - Christmas trailers for the soaps are usually shown every year for a special episode, (Eastenders when Archie is killed).

Feed information - If anything new is happening in the soap or if the time it's shown or channel is different they might use a trailer.

Introduce a new storyline - If an exciting new storyline is coming up, they will want to do a trailer so it can show the audience whats happening.

Attract more viewers - The soap could do a trailer to attract more viewers as the want the biggest audience as possible.

Sneak peak - To give the audience a sneak peak of whats about to happen in the soap so they want to watch more!

Some trailers take actually parts from the episode to give a sneak preview on what is about appear, this lets the audience know what will or is about to happen and gives them a guideline on the episode, they want to try and hook their target audience or even a new audience into watching the soap. You can see from this Eastenders trailer they have used parts of the episode and pieced them together into a trailer to give the audience a sneak peak at whats going to happen in this special episode.


Other trailers will create there own scenario stepping away form taken clips form the soap and just create there own. This still tells us the storyline but by not using the footage it will give the audience more of a hook to the soap because it creates more suspense, also it still tells you what the soap is going to contain but they just do it in a complete different format. This clip shoes Kat and Alfie arriving back to the square now you can tell this by the trailer so it does tell us the exact information but they have chosen to do a rather "western" setting and they have stepped away from using any footage from the episode.

Soap Opera History

Soap Opera History on Prezi

Student Film Analysis

I chose to analysis a past student Soap Opera trailer in order to help me with the planning of my soap trailer, this trailer was made 2 years ago called “Avenue Springs”.

Camera angles

The first mid shot of the clock timed “5:00” automatically makes the audience want to watch me, they are thinking “What’s happening at 5:00?” “Something important”, so from the first camera angle the audience are already engaged. The next mid shot is of a person lying in a bed with the clock next to them, the whole idea of suspicion is still carrying on as the audience are yet to find out what’s actually happening. I think this is a really good idea, they have engaged their audience but they still don’t know what is going on. At the start all the camera shots are in the dark, it makes the trailer seem creepy and eerie, it again shows the secret suspicion of the trailer. The low angle shot of the hooded person automatically makes me see them as intimidating and scary. The panning shot of the car moving is very clever because it seems as if someone is watching them, and when they pull the body out of the car they do have a reason for someone to be watching, as if they’ve been found out. The last shot which is an over the shoulder shot of a girl on the phone leaves the trailer on a real cliff hanger and to me this is really good because the audience want to watch more, so it is a successful trailer.

Mise

At the start of the trailer everything appears dark, it connotes that danger that is about the happen, it’s dark and creepy and the audience might even feel scared from watching it, I think this is what they wanted the audience to feel. The two males are both wearing dark clothing which again portrays them as dangerous characters and the black connotes darkness and death which after is proved by them bringing out the body bag so the clothing showed they were dangerous. The whole darkness makes the trailer seem mysterious and eerie but when the pills are shown (again showing death). As an audience member watching this I want to know how the person is dead in the body bag, were they killed or did they take the pills. It’s good that I’m questioning this after a trailer because it shows I’ve taken an interest and want to know more.

Sound

There is non-diegetic music played the whole way through the trailer and it represents the creepy, eerie mysterious mood, it makes me feel quite nervous watching because I’m expecting something to happen. I like the voiceover used to announce the soap, it still suits the dark mood and doesn’t distract my attention. At the end there is non-diegetic speech of a female asking “is it done”, again this makes me think how did the person in the body bag die, did she take pills or did this women plan it ? This again shows the cliffhanger that is left at the end of the soap.

Editing

The use of fade to blacks they used throughout the trailer is good because in a trailer it is a typical convention to use fade to blacks to split the story up. It also matched the mysteriousness that is the meaning of the trailer. The panning shots gives the audience the idea that something is watching them, as they are up to know good. I don’t think the continuity is right there because sometimes you get a bit lost as there is certain black outs, but this might have been the idea that the group wanted to portray to the audience of confusion.

Titles

The titles they used of “What if?”, and “Nothing is what it seems”, I think is really good, I like it because it helps to tell the story of a trailer, the taglines also make the audience question what is going on so you’re making them think. At the end they show the name time and channel of the soaps which is a vital part so they included all the right information.

This has helped me with the planning and research of my soap trailer, by watching this I can now see how someone in the same situation has put their soap together. I thought this was a really good trailer, the whole idea of it was very creative however to improve it they could of made the camera angles more clearer to make it a stronger trailer.

Real Media Texts - Soap Opera Episodes

I had the task of watching a few episodes of soaps and noting down the characters in the soap, the settings, the number of scenes and the story lines. I did this for two Coronation Street episodes and one Emmerdale. By doing this I have learnt more about Soap Characters, Settings and Story lines, and also a Soap Trailer is based normally on a specific episode so by doing this it tells me what I need to include in the trailer as I know what is involved in the whole episode. When it comes to thinking of ideas I can then look back at this at see what story lines soaps have, what characters and how many scenes it has, this will help because normally a soap trailer covers one special episode. My soap trailer however is a brand new soap so what ever trailer we did we would need to cover more story lines and characters because our audience wouldn't know a thing about our soap.

Specific Knowledge Of Soaps.

From creating my first mind map I have then moved on to a second one which is more specific, this mind map looks more detailed into soap operas looking at their target audiences, characters, typical settings and places found. I will have to do much more research on these headings so this will start me of with what I already know, this will help me decide what I want my setting, characters and target audience I want for my soap opera.

Knowledge Of Soaps.

The first task I have done is create this mind map, it shows my basic knowledge of soaps from the start of this project. I have a lot to learn about Soap operas and how they work but by doing this it will start me off and show me what I need to learn. By the end of this project all my research and planning will give me a much wider knowledge of Soap operas as I will know exactly how they work and the typical conventions involved.