2. Planning
Lots of characters allowing Different
parallel narratives and for ages, sexualities and
characters storylines to genders to appeal to a
come together, keeping wider audience
audience interest
Run continuously,
characters
Use camera as fourth storylines overlap
wall (interior shots) to
maintain
Soap Opera forms each other
realism, audience feel and conventions
that they are there
Point of view shots Lots of close ups
(exterior shots) to to show emotions
maintain Soaps tend to be aimed of characters
realism, audience feel at female
that they are there audiences, affecting
scheduling and
storylines
3. I uploaded all my planning and my final products
to my blog allowing people who saw them to
leave comments. This meant that all my work was
in one place and so to was any audience feedback
http://jamieclarkea2mediacourseworkbl.blogs
pot.com/
4. Characters
There are eight characters in my Soap:
Max (Matt) Tyson (Alex)
Sophie (Ellen)
Clare (Laura) Craig (Jamie)
Charlotte (Frankie)
James (Dean) Jack (Ash)
5. Story Lines
The trailer can be split up into three different storylines, which all link together through
Max’s car crash:
Jack is Charlottes boyfriend but one day goes round to her house to find her cheating
on him with Craig. In the trailer we only get to see Jack walking in on Charlotte and
Craig saying goodbye, so the audience will want to watch the programme to see the
full story.
James tries to con drug dealer Tyson by running off without paying for the drugs but is
caught by Tyson before he can get away.
At the start of the trailer, Sophie tell Max (her boyfriend) that she is pregnant. As the
trailer goes on we see the aftermath of car crash involving the death of Max, leaving
Sophie with the prospect of being a single Mother.
As well as these three man storylines, from the trailer we can see that some of the
characters have plotted together to kill Max. We see a man being paid and then
tampering with Max’s car, the trailer ends with an unknown character receiving a text
saying ‘It’s done’. This storyline is the one that links all characters together.
6. Q1. In what ways does your product
USE, DEVELOP or CHALLENGE forms and
conventions of existing media products.
The soundtrack chosen goes well with the storyline as it helps make the audience feel
the emotion of the soap. Rather than being an upbeat song it is quite sad and starts
off with a slow tempo but gets faster as the trailer goes on and the story unfolds.
Also, I feel the lyrics link well with the story," You rip it from my hands” links with the
death of Ellen's (Sophie's) boyfriend, Matt (Max); also Dean (James) stealing the
drugs.
The mixture of fast and slow paced editing conveys
the mixture of emotions from each character. One
character has the excitement of having a baby but
then is devastated by the death of her boyfriend. This
is shown as during the phone call, the images of the
car crash go in to slow motion and the editing is
slowed down as if Ellen's (Sophie's) life is gradually
slowing to a stop . However, in the scenes with Frankie
(Charlotte), Ash (Jack) and Jamie (Craig) the editing
becomes more fast paced to make the audience
realise what is happening and that it is building up to
something big.
7. The combination of slow motion
shots and the non-diegetic voice
over of the police telephone call
shows that we are showing a
flashback and something tragic
has happened.
The fake blood enforces the fact
that it is a soap and it has some
hard hitting story lines.
Similar convention to Hollyoaks.
Close up and emphasis of the
blood.
8. For the drug deal scene we did it down an
alley way to make it look more shifty, and
dressed Alex (Tyson) all in black to make
him look a bit dodgy as well. We used a long
shot to show the full scene with both
characters and the two walls to show them
in the confined space. We also shot the
scene a bit behind the wall as if we are
spying on what is happening.
For the sequence where Frankie () is
cheating on Ash () we shot Ash between
Frankie and Jamie to show the fact that
there are three people stuck in this
complicated relationship and that
maybe Ash is stood in the way of Frankie
and Jamie.
In this shot you don't actually see the
characters face to enforce the secret and
creating an enigma. This makes it
necessary for the audience to watch the
programme to find out what happens.
9. We made sure that the two people
in the relationship were from a
same sub-culture to make it more
realistic, rather than creating a
relationship that hard to believe
existed.
We shot this scene outside as it
seems normal in actual Soap
Operas for couples to be shot
talking outside.
