Friday 3 May 2013

Evaluation

1) In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

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)
 I also researched into Coronation Street trailers which gave me my inspiration for including a story line for a murder. As I couldn’t find an older actor to play the character ‘Pete’ who was murdered I thought about adding a shot of a grave. As I was unable to do this I used dialogue instead between Grace and Grace’s brother. I used a shot reverse shot to make my trailer look more realistic as this is a prime convention in soap operas.
In research, almost all Hollyoaks trailers included a close up or medium close up shot to show the audience how the characters emotions. As you can see in this picture, I used this convention as I wanted my trailer to come across as realistic as possible. I used Kristi for my close ups to show her true feelings about her pregnancy as in the soap opera she would come across to be selfish and not very caring due to the fact she is having an affair with her boyfriend’s best friend.


To gain more research, I also used Blogger which is a part of modern media technology. I used this by including on the right hand side of the screen a poll for the public to answer. This helped find out opinions from all types of people however I tried to promote people to answer my poll but not many people did. As you can see, the form of soap opera most people liked was the teenage audience, this encouraged me even more to show the story lines of the students in the soap opera.

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.
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.
 What have you learned from your audience feedback?
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.


 

Wednesday 17 April 2013

Final Drafts

Final Trailer

'Whos the Daddy?' Trailer

'Who Killed Pete?' Trailer

Behind the Scenes

Monday 15 April 2013

Photo Shoot

 
 
 I wasn't happy with the photo I chose for my soap opera magazine front cover so decided to do another photo shoot with more than one person. Here are the photos I will decide between for my soap opera magazine front cover and my A4 Poster.