Evaluation

In what ways does your soap trailer use develop or challenge the forms and conventions of its genre?

My soap trailer is very different to many current and previous existing soap opera trailers. This is firstly because we are introducing a new soap opera into the market. This means we cannot use certain genre conventions within our for example the Eastenders’ trailer of Kat and Alfie returning presented in a western theme, because the theme connotes the idea of trouble being back in town, and the characters are ironically known for being loud and argumentative especially Kat Moon. When we were planning our soap we had to take these conventions into account. Our trailer is similar to the opening montage within soaps like Coronation Street; however this has been developed as our trailer introduces issues which will be explored in episodes as the soap develops and our audience acknowledge the characters in the soap. Our trailer uses a narrative ellipsis as it explores the parallel scenes, bringing different storylines in with one another. These scenes show a representation of youth being unruly as one of the characters is stealing alcohol, and connotes the idea of the Hollyoaks theme of younger generation soap. When thinking of production we had to be careful in the way we produced the characters, as Hollyoaks and Coronation Street are two separate soaps. Our characters in our soap are similar to those in Hollyoaks, therefore are more likely to be less mature than most characters in Coronation Street however as more are living alone they are more likely to be more mature than teenagers in soaps such as Coronation Street.

How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary text?

My main product combined with my ancillary text work extremely well together. I feel this is because the poster gives more of a drama series effect; this is why I inputted the text ‘hottest soap in town’ because the audience would have been oblivious to it being a soap opera. I have chosen to have my characters in character for my poster; my reason for this was because the audience will be more interested in the character profiles and storylines. If I had chosen to make a poster of snap shots of all the characters, it would not have a professional approach and would not have a unique selling point which attracts the target audience. This is why I have chosen to use the same photograph as used on my TV magazine cover, which is stating that Jess is pregnant. This combines with the trailer because the second to last shot is of Jess sat down staring at a pregnancy text. This is a storyline which automatically grabs our target audience’s attention because it is dealing with current affairs of teenage pregnancies. As our soap targets all audiences but we expect that more of a younger generation will watch, we chose to show our soap on channel four which is also stated on the poster. I feel this will make our soap very competitive with Hollyoaks as it is also shown every evening. When creating we had to consider the competition with other soaps which have been around for longer however attracting a broader audience because of the new storylines and plots they are producing. On the poster and the trailer we said that our soap will be shown at 8oclock, this is just for the first episode. The times will vary on nights that the soap Eastenders is on, to attract our target audience to also watch the soap. To finalize what has been said, I feel strongly that my poster backs up our trailer and our trailer supports my poster.

What have you learnt from audience feedback?




During our editing processes we had to explore what different ages of our target audience felt about the trailer. I produced burned edits after each structural production and showed them to my audiences. I produced a short questionnaire for them which asked questions about if they felt like it was a soap opera trailer and not a drama, what they liked and disliked, what they thought could be improved, and if they understood the narrative. After the first edit we found that some shots needed reshooting because of poor lighting and the situation being unlikely in a soap opera. We also found that the narrative structure was not clear as to what was happening and who was who. From the second edit we found that the soap trailer made much more sense however we found that some scenes were too long to explore what was happening in the narrative, which lost their attention. We also included a voiceover at the end of the soap, which was too long and inappropriate; however this idea could be explored and still used however re done to seem more professional and realistic. From the third audience feedback it was noted that there was no channel logo or writing on the final voiceover, this had to be changed before the final copy being released as it is unprofessional and would not happen in the real world. We also discovered that our audience felt that the introduction of the Browns family was too short, this could mean reshooting. After the fourth edit being produced we found things like the transitions needed to look more professional to appear to the audience and that the kitchen scene was to brief. I feel that giving our target audience the opportunity to do this really helped because it meant that we could improve our trailer to the best of our ability. I chose a realistic target audience to do this for me as they would be the people watching the soap opera. The audience feedback meant that our trailer had the most professional approach possible, and it helped us know what would be successful.

How did you use new media technologies in the construction research and planning and the evaluation stages?


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Over the past two years I have learnt many skills in the media industry. From filming in a professional style to creating my own TV listings cover. I had a very vague knowledge of video editing however I have learnt how to use two new video editing programs, this being Adobe Premier Elements and I movie (which is designed specifically for Apple Mac computers). I have developed the skills and learnt how to make an opening scene of a horror movie to producing a trailer for a soap opera. I now have a wider understanding of the media industry and learnt how hard it is to make something be successful in the media. I have learnt that you have to think about portraying characters and if they are a stereotype what are they representing and how the audience choose to receive this within its genre, year twelve this was about creating a realistic horror film and in my second year creating a whole new soap opera basis and then creating a trailer which would sum up just some of the things which would happen within the soap. This was not the easiest of tasks to complete as we were trying to create a very competitive genre, therefore had to understand all the conventions of a soap opera as a genre, as I had more personal experience I generally knew the families and their stereotypes however I had to research this thoroughly to explore the impact it has on a broader audience. I also engaged with my brief by responding appropriately. I was constantly getting audience feedback on my soap opera to help it reach its potential. I feel that I definitely developed my skills over the two years as two years ago I would not have even thought about the research that has to go in and the knowledge about each genre convention required for creating a successful media product. For my ancillary texts for A2 I learnt a whole new package which made it much easier to create a professional style TV listings cover. This is a skill I will use later on in life if I wish to pursue a career in the I.T profession, I had no previous experience with this and believed it would be much easier, however I had to carry out research and analyze current magazines for my product to reach its potential. I feel that evaluating edits of my product and getting my target audience to evaluate them was a key in making my product successful, this is because my target audience are already aware of the soap operas that are already out there, therefore they know what they are looking for and what they would like to see.