Ancillary Two

This is the magazine front cover that we made for our soap trailer. We researched real magazine front covers, and used the conventions that we already knew to create a cover that looked both genuine, and used all the conventions correctly. Our previous knowledge of creating magazine front covers from AS media and the research projects from earlier in the year helped us get it done quickly and effectively. We already knew how to use the programs required to make it, such as publisher, from all the ancillary work.

Ancillary One

This was the poster we made for our soap trailer. We used the conventions we knew from our research into soap trailers, and included several things that we thought necessary. We got pictures of all the characters by doing a 'photo shoot' with the green screen. We then edited out the backgrounds of the images using photoshop, making them individual pictures of the characters with nothing else on the picture. The pictures were then ready to put into our poster and move around as we pleased. We got the E4 logo and purple tape from the E4 style guide, which is available online. We chose to use a brick-wall backdrop because of the connotations of this, such as living in suburbia, somewhere posh and up market.

One problem I have with this poster, is that the E4 brand logo and the purple sellotape is slightly pixelated around the edges. This makes it look a little less professional. There is also a lot of unused space at the top of the poster which could have been utilized better.

soap trailer

This is the final cut for my soap trailer, although I tweaked and changed rough cuts of it, unfortunately I don't have any of them saved to analyse. I did however change several things, including the order of clips, the song choice and editing the sound slightly to make dialogue more audible. I did these things due to audience feedback from students in my class. I changed the order of some of the clips to make the narrative more clear, and so that the intertwining stories made sense and were in chronological order.

We all took turns doing camera work and filming, as we all had used the cameras before during preliminary work. All of our group featured in the soap, and the planning and scripts proved to be extremely useful. We all edited the footage independently.

One problem we encountered as a group was when we came back to college to upload our footage, there was a bit of confusion involving the cameras and our footage got deleted by accident. We went out and filmed it all again the next day so it wasn't as much of a set back as we initially thought.

I edited the footage in the Mac Suite at college, and although I didn't have much experience using iMovie and the Macs, I had enough to suit my soap trailer. I took the soundtrack from a youtube video and edited that in. The lyrics to the song are 'You're such a bug to me man; You're such a drag on everyone'. These lyrics apply to Jakes character in the soap, since he is the antagonist. I think they suit his character well.

This was the outline for our TV magazine part of the coursework, research was done into pre existing TV magazines, and ours is quite similar to some of them. The colour scheme is bright, cheerful and eye catching, the headline is large with an exclamation mark to draw attention to it, there are tabs for the colour coded sections of the magazine, and the price is low with a button saying how much it is.

Deconstruction Of A Pre-Existing Billboard

This is a billboard poster advertisement for the show 'The Ibetweeners'. The poster itself is clever and the characters are positioned in a particular way to create meaning. The four main characters are positioned down the center of the school the school photo, 'inbetween' everyone, this shows how the characters are segregated from everyone, and how they don't quite fit in. They're uniforms are also different which makes them stand out and makes them seem a lower class to the rest of the students. The headmaster is also looking over at the four students, suggesting that he is concerned about them. I think that this poster is effective because it establishes instantly what the main characters are like, and who they are.

Made In Chelsea

I have chosen 'Made In Chelsea' as an already existing soap trailer to analyse, as it is aimed at a very similar target audience to mine (16-24 year olds), and the storylines are moderately similar due to this. I found this trailer by doing a bit of research using youtube, several trailers came up but I felt as though this one was most similar to mine. Made In Chelsea follows the lives of people that all live in the same area, and know each other. Their individual storylines are interwoven, like in my trailer.

The trailer itself is edited in a way that I wanted my trailer to look. Their is a non diegetic sound track behind the diegetic dialogue. The trailer features many quick cuts, and is edited together at a fast pace. The title cards make use of modern culture to appeal to their audience, with clear branding.

The trailer features many over the shoulder shots and establishing shots, and many of the quick cuts are simply of a characters expression on their face and one liners. This is where my soap trailer will differ from this trailer, it wont be at such a fast pace. The fast paced storylines and emotions in this trailer means it would be edited much faster than mine, although some of the storylines remain similar to the ones in my trailer. This trailer helped to highlight soap conventions necessary for a soap trailer.

Soap Opera Notes

• Originated 1920’s America
• Broadcast radio
• Advertise soap powder to American housewives
• Soap is a feminine genre. The genre is primarily aimed at women
• This affects scheduling because traditional female roles and based in the home soaps are aired after mealtimes when there is a lull in the day.
• Target audiences also affects the storylines, narrative perspectives, characterisation, settings, costume.
• Soap operas run continuously, in the same times slots, on the same days, broadcast by the same institutions, for years. Because they are repeated so often, they become part of the cultural psyche. They become part of who ‘we’ are.
• The characters become ‘people’.
• Storylines are relatable, audiences can watch and understand what is happening, and empathise with characters. Or hate them.
• Some stroylines can be outrageous, e.g. baby swapping in Eastenders
• Most soaps have between 10-15 main characters, with overlapping, interweaving storylines
• Storylines overlap to keep audiences interested. Different strands can run alongside each other but develop at different times
• Catharsis: emotional cleansing. The purging of negative emotions by watching another person go through something similar/worse.
• Soap becomes therapy when it is cathartic- people deal with their problems vicariously.
• Soap operas become a form of escapism for certain audiences.