When I decided to create a TV Trailer introducing a new soap opera, I knew exactly what I wanted to do for it. I took inspiration from the TV soap opera ‘Hollyoaks’ as I think it’s very creative and modern compared to other soap opera’s such as ‘Eastenders’ and ‘Coronation Street’. I decided to make a story board where the first half of the trailer would all be in slow motion showing all the characters and giving away a few story lines such as Ashley and Marley’s engagement, a possible suspect of the murder story line (Alan) and also to intrigue the teenage audience as the teenage audience is my main demographic. I wanted to make this trailer appealing to a teenage audience by showing the student characters in the local pub drinking and having a good time as I also had some inspiration from the TV series ‘Skins’. I knew I wanted the first half of my trailer to have a soundtrack of the song ‘When the Lights Go Out’ by the Black Keys as it had a slow tempo as I also wanted the first half to all be in slow motion. For my second half I wanted to change the song to ‘Promises’ by Nero as the lyrics fitted in with the story lines of Kristi cheating on Steve with his best friend Ricky and also the story line of Grace’s dads murder. This was also a more upbeat song as I wanted the second half to be a lot faster and interesting.
The most important way to attract an audience in a soap
opera trailer is to show the story lines included but also to not give
everything a way and to leave the audience wanting to watch the soap opera and
find out what happens in the story lines. For example, every week Hollyoaks has
a new trailer which shows the story line which will be happening through-out
that week. The trailer’s always leave the audience wanting to find out the end
result.
When it came to choosing my story lines, I did a poll on my
blog asking what people preferred in a soap opera, the options where ‘Social
Standing’, ‘Teenage Audience’, ‘Historic’ or ‘Region’. The most popular options
where the social standing and the teenage audience therefore I set my mind on
having a pregnancy, as this needed to be more dramatic for a soap opera I knew
I wanted the pregnancy to be the result of an affair between Kristi, Steve and
Ricky. I then decided on a murder. During researching soap opera trailers I
came across a Coronation Street trailer for who killed Frank which stood out
for me giving loads of suspects. I wanted to do a similar theme by showing
close ups of suspects however unfortunately I could not find actors of an older
age. I decided instead to create another story line for the daughter (Grace) of
the man who had been murdered. This story line involved an alcohol and drug
addiction due to depression. In the trailer I also wanted to show that Grace is
determined to find out who killed her father. I decided three story lines
weren’t enough so I included another but did not want to confuse my audience
with lots of story lines so decided on focusing less on my last one. I decided
on an engagement of two students which gives the audience a ‘will they won’t
they?’ decision.
I decided that I wanted to include dialogue in my trailer
because even though I thought the first half of my trailer in slow motion was
effective I wanted to keep my audience interested and give them a taste of what
the soap would be like by showing them a promo of the soap. Instead of writing
a script, I wrote speech bubbles on my story board and wrote down what I had in
mind I wanted my characters to say.
Non Diegetic Sound can also be used in the form of a voice over.
A suggestion by one of my teachers when I asked for feedback of my original
draft was that a voice over should be considered as the scenes were all mixed
together, causing confusion, and a voice over would allow the audience to be
more aware of exactly what is going on. I decided against using a voice over,
as I didn’t want any speaking involved in the final product, which is why I
chose to add titles in between scenes instead so it was more 'audience
friendly'. I asked my teacher for feedback on my draft and he suggested that
instead of having Kristi tell Grace she is pregnant and the music change to
fast music that I have a heart beat sound effect in between and show a close up
of a pregnancy test or a mobile phone. I decided to use a close up of Kristi
texting somebody ‘I’m pregnant’ as it made the two songs fit better together
and was a more significant way of showing this story line.
I decided I also wanted to show some establishing shots for
my trailer as this is a key convention of a soap opera. For example, Coronation
Street is set in Manchester, Hollyoaks is set in Chester and Eastenders is set
in the East end of London. To make my soap opera realistic I knew I needed to
show the audience where this soap would be set. Having a key location is vital
in a soap opera and also so are the meeting points. For example, every soap
opera has a local pub. As you can see below, I used an establishing shot of the
Humber Bridge to show my audience this soap opera is set in Hull, Yorkshire. I
also used other establishing shots of significant meeting points. I used Wyke
College to show where the students go to college. This will be appealing to my
demographic as most of my teenage audience would go to a school/college and be
interested to see what this is like. I included a local pub called Blue Bell to
show another important convention of a soap opera.
One of the most important
conventions of a soap opera is the characters. My characters need to be
recognisable and to do this I used stereotypes, for example Grace, the punk
rock girl who’s grieving over her father’s murder turns to alcohol and drugs
and Alan the mysterious man who could be a possible suspect of the murder. If I
was to have a website for my soap opera and advertise more I would use Web 2.0
and have a ‘Meet the Characters’ with character profiles. I would also include
individual videos of my actors talking about their character and what we can
expect to see in the soap opera from them. This would be a good way to sell the
soap opera as the internet is used on a day to day basis within our generation.
The content of a soap opera is a crucial convention because all soap operas are
made to be family friendly. However, as I took most my inspiration from
Hollyoaks and wanted to use elements of the TV series ‘Skins’ I would also
maybe do what Hollyoaks do where every couple of months they create a
‘Hollyoaks Later’ which featured on a night time. This allowed adult themed
story lines.
For my poster I created 6
drafts. I made one draft landscape as I liked the idea of the poster being in a
double page spread. 3 of portrait drafts are bright and colourful, for this
technique I used Adobe Photoshop CS5 and turned up the Vibrance, Brightness and
Contrast and the Exposure because I wanted my poster to stand out and be full
of colour. My other two posters where turned down by Brightness and Exposure as
I wanted to make the story line with the characters on the poster come across
dark. I used minimal text as this was also a convention. When researching there
is not much text seen on posters for soap operas or TV series’ in general. I
wanted the image to speak for itself. The three posters I would include are
the:
-
The
landscape poster
-
The
portrait poster of Daisy, Kristi and Steve
-
The gloomy
dark poster of Steve and Kristi
For
the front cover of my magazine, I used a different image from my posters. I
included the conventions of a soap opera magazine front cover by using a bold
masthead at the top of the page in the left corner in red to make it stand out
to the public. I used a street sign of the name of my soap opera ‘Newland’.
This became my main sell-line to introduce the soap opera. I made this my main
image to promote the soap and grab reader’s attention. I used thumbnail images
and sub sell-lines (Anchor Stories) as this would make a wider demographic buy
this magazine for people who watch Coronation Street and Eastenders, they will
buy this magazine and want to find out what’s happening in them soap operas.
This could interest them in reading about ‘Newland’ and maybe encourage them to
watch this soap. I included a barcode and a price. This is a good way to sell
the magazine as I made it fairly cheap at £1.99. By making it cheap it makes
the magazine good value and a good competitor for other soap opera magazines
that are more expensive. I also included the issue and date on the barcode as
it’s also a convention of a magazine front cover. The main image is an
important convention of a magazine front cover as it promotes a biggest new
‘thing’. I chose a photo from Newland as it is the best way to tell the public
about the new soap. Instead of using a sky line I included a promotional slogan
as it would beat the competition by having 2 weeks revealed instead of one. As
another main convention of magazine front cover I included a barcode in the
bottom right hand corner.
4) How did you use
new media technologies in the construction and research, planning and
evaluation stages?
The first website I used when I began my research was
YouTube. I already knew I wanted my soap opera to be similar to Hollyoaks more
than soap like Coronation Street so I began by watching previous Hollyoaks
trailers. This gave me my greatest inspiration. I did a story board of this
trailer and wrote down the shots and what I wanted to include in mine (For
example, the slow motion and cutting the scenes instead of using fades)
To create my trailers, I used a software programme called
Adobe Premier Pro. I had no experience of this software or editing at all. At
the beginning I found it difficult to understand but as time went on and I
experimented I was comfortable with using the programme. I tried experimenting
with effects in my first draft which I decided I didn’t like and to keep it as
realistic as possible as it showed clips from what would be in the actual soap
opera, I kept the footage customary. The titles I used in my soap opera trailer
are exactly like how I imagined and drew in my story board. At first it was
confusing to create the title I wanted but got them to look how I wanted them
to look. I decided to use one word in each title to stand out more to the
viewer.
Adobe Premier Pro is the editing software that college
provided us with that allows us to edit and produce our video. When I first
began editing, I had no previous experience of video editing so I became quite
confused about what each tool did and what each effect did. As time progressed
though, I became more comfortable with using the programme, especially after
experimenting with the different tools and layer etc. What have you learned from
your audience feedback?
I used the programme Adobe Photoshop CS5 for all my posters
and magazine front covers as I had experience in using this software from my AS
year. I used the editing skills I had gained last year to help make my images
look more professional and to make them stand out more. By using the
adjustments tool bar I could make my images brighter and more colourful. I used
an outer glow for the text on my posters to make the text stand out and catch
my audience’s eyes.
1) How effective is the combination of your
main product and ancillary texts?
In my main product, I used the colour white in all of my
texts with a colour in the background. I did this to stand out to my audience.
I used one word in each title continuously to stand out more. The colours in
the background fit in with the words such as red for ‘desire’ to symbolise lust
and black for ‘murder’ to symbolise death. Soap Operas are all about raising
awareness to the public audience as well as entertaining them. Soap operas all
include story lines that people could have possibly been through and at the end
of each episode they show a help line number to contact if a viewer has been
through one of the story lines in a similar way. Soap operas can help people
have the confidence to ring the help line after the show and come forward about
what they have been through. In my main product and ancillary texts I have
endeavoured to relate to a teenage audience who get into a habit of alcohol and
drugs. I wanted my products to stand out to a crowd and for them to watch the
trailer and look at the posters and think the soap opera will be similar to
their lives as in today’s generation, showing drinking and drugs is an
important way to show a teenage audience that it comes across cool but can get
you in trouble. The songs I chose to add into my trailer are very recent and I
think would attract my demographic.
Here
are the five questions I asked people in interviews which you can see the
videos below.
After watching the trailers, would you want to watch the
actual soap?
What story lines could you understand from watching my
trailer?
Do you think there were too many story lines? Did you get
confused at all?
Do you think an audience would be able to relate to this
type of soap opera?
Do you think the posters and magazine front cover could
interest you in watching the soap?
From asking these questions, the general feedback I got was
that this soap opera is very relatable to an audience even though it is
slightly exaggerated which is a good thing as that is a key convention of soap
operas (Being more exaggerated then real life to keep the audience interested).
Most of the feedback understand my story lines but gave me advice that If I was
to improve, to show more of the engagement story line and also to improve on
making the ‘Who killed Pete?’ story line. To do this, I would add dialogue for
the engagement and show the narrative more for the murder. The majority of my
interviews for my audience feedback have positive comments and the only
negative are that I could improve two story lines.
