Soap Final Draft

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gdIbmvdpwPo&context=C44ce58eADvjVQa1PpcFMpu7iUPQgQFslMmBTSsiYx72vsTanhAbQ=

Ancillary Text - My Soap Poster

Similar to my previous post, I also completed my soap trailer poster. I improved on it from the previous draft, as I decided the tag line text should synergise with the E4 banner, as well as brighten up the rest of the dark poster. I did this by making the text 'How would you survive a new life?' white with a purple outer glow, similar to the purple of the banner. The text still didn't look right, so I also gave the text a black drop shadow to blend in with the rest of the poster.

The image I used as a background is one of my own, and I picked it because of how dark and shadowed the buildings are, creating a depressing mood, but which is lightened by the sky. This is pathetic fallacy as the character at the front isn't happy, her mood reflecting the background. I cut out the image of the blonde girl using the magnetic lasso tool on photoshop and added her in my poster because I also used her in the magazine, so the synergy means that people would be able to make a connection between the characters and hopefully make people more likely to watch it.

Ancillary Text - My Soap Magazine Cover

This is the final draft of my television magazine cover. To make it look as professional as possible, I used different conventions of television magazines. I included a masthead to draw the audience's immediate attention so they know which magazine they're reading, pugs to break up the images and text as well as making it more exciting, a stapline to let the audience know what is included within the magazine and a website and barcode for realism.

The main images I included are of two characters included in my soap, and both are involved in a love triangle story line. The story would likely be one of the biggest within my soap, so I felt it was important for them to be the main focus. The blonde girl is the character in the middle of the love triangle, so I had her as the largest image. Her boyfriend is oblivious to her cheating ways, so having a niave, smiling image of him in the background reflects the storyline. I also took a still frame from my soap trailer as one of the sub stories because I wanted more than one reference to my trailer. 

Since my previous magazine, I recreated the 'TV Today' title as the previous one looked basic, and I wanted a background behind the lettering, and the drop shadow wasn't working well enough. I went online and found a website http://cooltext.com/Buttons which let me personalise a button and text, as well as including shadow to make it 3D, and I believe it looks more realistic.

The font I used in it is Berlin Sans. Berlin Sans works well as the text is quite curvy and more attractive compared to the standard straight and blocky text of Arial or Times New Roman. This takes away the seriousness of the magazine and therefore more appealing to our younger target audience. I also changed up the text colouring, removing the pink and replacing it with the colours from the star pug in the top right corner. I felt synergising the colours would balance out the layout, as well as the reduction of pink to make it look less feminine and therefore attract a wider audience.

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

Compared to my foundation portfolio last year, during the creation of my sap trailer and ancillery texts, my use of technology and understanding of conventions has greatly improved. This time, I used more programmes and software, made use of web 2.0, used higher quality filming equipment and more advanced editing equipment. The image to the left is a photograph of myself in the process of filming one of our scenes, using a Sony HD camera to capture the footage. These cameras allowed us to record in 1080p, meaning the quailty and resolution of the footage was much higher than the Canon cameras we used to record last year, in essence making our soap trailer look much more professional and authentic. Not only is this because of it being HD and the higher number of megapixels, but also because the HD cameras used SD cards, allowing us to easily upload our footage to the memory stick without converting the the file. Last year, the canon had even more problems as the film was recorded onto tape, and so we couldn't rewind our footage for fear that we would overide our previous footage when we came to film again.

After the filming process, we used Apple Mac computers and imported our film into the programme Final Cut Pro 10. The image on the left is a screengrab from the programme. Familiarising ourselves with Final Cut was our first task, as up until now we had been using Adobe Premiere. Adobe Premiere is also editing software, althought a lot older than Final Cut. The screengrab shows the many transitions and effects available in the bottom right corner, and the professional contrast between the programmes are evident as the basic Adobe Premiere didn't provide you with these kinds of technology and tools.

Photoshop was essential to creating our soap trailer poster and television magazine front covers. The magnetic lasso tool was something I used regularly, as it made cutting out images easy, without having to make the area around the image transparent manually. Another plus with the tool is that you don't miss bits out, so when you paste it onto the poster and magazine background it wouldn't look messy, unlike how I used to do it.

Although I had only had little experience with Photoshop, and that was mainly cutting out the characters, it was also needed for the soap trailer itself. As we decided, through research, to promote our soap trailer on the E4 channel, we needed to create a banner for it to make it as realistic as possible. We found the image, and used the clone tool to cover the original text by blending the purple over it and making it look consistant.

To the left is an image of the recording device Esi Rekord M. I had only used it once previously, but due to that little experience, I knew how to use it effectively. We used this device to record our voiceovers for our soap and in our previous evaluation task, and we found it was much more useful than recording our voices with a video camera and seperating the video from the sound as background noise could interfere with it. We found the Esi Rekord M to be much better and clearer, and by holding it away from your mouth when speaking or by placing it on a table in front of you, you got the best results. 

As a way of research, I used Youtube to examine a variety of different trailers of the storylines in Eastenders, Coronation Street and Hollyoaks that were shared online. Doing this allowed me to broaden my understanding of soap conventions, such as camera shots and characters, and therefore making my soap trailer look much more professional. Using Web 2.0, we could also share our first draft and finished trailer on various websites and reciever feedback from friends, family, and even strangers who would give honest opinions.

Similarly, I uploaded the videos to Facebook as well. I felt this was important because I could immediately advertise the video to my friends and family, asking for their feedback. As social networks are so popular as of the moment, posting the video on facebook meant that we could get a lot more responses and age wise, the people who would see it would be around the age of our target audience.

To plan a lot of my tasks, I used Microsoft Office, and in particular Word. Word was essential as it meant we could plan and write our speech for our evauluation voiceover and colour code it so it was easier to read. Having all my basi cplanning on word was useful as I could keep it all together and go back and refer to it. Blogger was another website I used, and its essential purpose was to document all of my research and devlopment. Similar to Word, I could keep all my research in one place, but it was easier to access and the way I displayed my work was interesting and colourful.

What have you learnt from your audience feedback?

After completing the first draft of our soap trailer, the next step was to get audience feedback. Audience feedback would be useful to us as a way of people giving us their opinions about the trailer; what they found to work well, and what didn't work well. To do this, we uploaded our video on Web 2.0 as a way of connecting with people. Facebook and Youtube were the main ones we uploaded to as these social networks meant that friends, family and even strangers could give us feedback.

The AS media class were asked to watch our trailer in class and respond to a set of ten yes or no questions provided. They were also doing a similar project to us, creating a film trailer and using the same skills, so their input would be very useful. The questions they were asked are as follows:

1. After watching the trailer, would you say the trailer is advertising the soap genre?

All of our feedback for this question was positive, with the students answering 'yes'. This shows that the genre of our trailer is quite obvious, and therefore, while some improvements still need to be made, so far we are successful.
2. Would you watch the soap after watching the trailer?
The majority of answers to this question were yes, other than one which said 'maybe'. I believe that because of this, we must have done well with the pacing and music to make it exciting.
3. Is the music appropriate?
Most people felt that the music was appropriate however some were unsure. In the end we decided to keep this music the same as the made our video choppier, and many said that the music suited it better after.
4. Should there be text with the voice-over?
The feedback for this question was about half and half with 'yes' and 'no'. We therefore decided to use text but not directly linked with the voice over.
5. Is the trailer the right length?
All but one felt that our trailer was the right length, but we felt it was too long in comparison to other trailers and decided to cut quite a few seconds out.
6. Are there enough stereotypical characters?
Every person answered yes, showing that we had done well in introducing our characters and what they represent.
7. Is there a variety of shot types?
Once again, 'yes' was answered for this question. This shows that we had managed to portray soap conventions by using typical shots, as well as adding in some unusual shots to make it a little different and exciting The shots were also used to portray the characters emotions.
8. Is there anything that could be improved?
The main feedback was that the voice-overs couldn't be heard very easily so to resolve this we simply turned them up slightly and 'dipped' the music whilst the non-diagetic speech was playing. Whilst others said that nothing needed to be improved.
9. What works well?
We were told that our use of shots and editing worked well, that we used appropriate effects and that the storyline was easy to follow.  Acting skills and the use of diverse characters was something that a few also mentioned.
10. Is the editing appropriate?
All answered 'yes' to this question, showing to us that not only had our camera work improved from last year, but also our editing skills.

Friends and family were an important audience to get feedback from because they could provide useful insight, as most of our friends were within the age brackets of our target audience. To recieved this feedback, we uploaded our trailer onto web 2.0 public sharing and messaging sites, such as facebook and youtube.

Overall, the feedback was positive, however there were some constructive criticism after our first draft, such as:

- Too long for a trailer, needs to be choppier to add pace.
- Make the on screen text larger.
- Keep text on screen for longer.
- Music starts off too slowly at the beginning, cut to further in the song, also adding to the pace.
- Move the speech of the 'black haired girl' to make it seem less non-diagetic.

After recieving this feedback, we went back and looked at our trailer and understood what they had said. The text was too small and didn't stay on screen for very long, but we hadn't realised this since we had watched it through so many times. There was also the issue that the music worked well, but the actual video wasn't fast paced enough to work well with it, and so we went back and changed this too.
We also received comments saying that it was 'really good' and that after watching our trailer they would be interested in watching the soap.

The audience feedback has been extremely helpful, especially the feedback from our target audience, as it has allowed me to understand what an audience would want out of a soap and what they find appealing. Through their constructive criticism, I began to see parts that were inconsistant and possibly didn't fit in with the soap conventions we had layed out. After we went back and made the changes, we uploaded another draft, our final draft, and again asked for feedback. This time, the feedback was very positive and not much constructive criticism was given, and so I believe this means that there 2was a great improvement thanks to the feedback.

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

As a way of explaining the conventions of our product and our ancillery texts and our use of synergy between them, we combined the three and recorded a voiceover. Helen and I took it in turns to talk about our soap trailer, and seperately to explain about our individual posters and magazine front covers.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=6UlU1hS-U2I

Helen - For our A2 coursework we planned and filmed a conventional soap trailer as well as our two ancillary texts; a poster and a television magazine front cover. We decided on the name ‘Conway’ for our soap, after getting inspiration from local road signs, as most soaps are named after and based on real places. 

Rowen - Our tag line, ‘How would you survive a new life’, reflects the fact that it is a new soap and promotes the idea of real life struggles and controversial story lines which our audience can relate to.  This tag line was also included on our posters, showing the use of synergy.

Helen - Our soap trailer starts out with the character playing a pregnant girl.  We used her at the beginning, as well as on our poster, as this makes the soap easily recognisable for the audience continuing the use of synergy.  We also used the male character, who biked past in the first and last scene, to create a connection between the characters and linking them together within the new area.

Rowen - We chose the setting of the second scene to be a train station as one of our recurring theme was for people to be arriving at different destinations, as a way of a new start, and this synergy again promotes the idea of the soap being new. 

Helen - The characters are stereotypical with teenage pregnancies and young mums at an all time high.  I focused on this controversial issue by making the image the main focus point of my magazine. In my poster I chose to use only one character as it reflects her isolation, as young mums can sometimes feel alone and not accepted within society.  My idea was that there would be more than one poster, with different characters, reflecting each individual story however I chose to create one with this character as I feel her storyline is particularly dramatic and relatable for the target audience as it is a contemporary issue. 

Rowen - My poster is similar, with the background of the poster being dark and isolated, showing pathetic fallacy as the pregnant character looks upset. I included two other characters in the background as they weren’t the main focus, but I felt that their stories and issues were the most dramatic. We also addressed the issue of bisexuality, slowing down the pace of our footage at the crucial point of rejection, showing that it is something which is not always accepted within society.  Similarly, I used images of these characters in this contemporary situation because the storyline would be interesting to our target audience. 

Helen - Originally we were planning to broadcast our trailer on BBC1 however; we changed to E4 as we felt that it was better suited because of our younger target audience.  To make our E4 logo look authentic to the channel we added a ‘wipe’ and ‘peel’ transition, which is something that is similarly used by E4 itself. 

Rowen - At the end, we have the character Ricky, dressed in a stereotypical ‘hoody’ fashion, looking directly down the camera in a sinister and threatening way. This relates to our tag line ‘How would you survive a new life?’ as it is hinting at the audience that he will be causing trouble and making everyone else’s lives difficult.

Helen - We used a low angle shot, to emphasise the characters exit, once again relating to the new start.  Different shots are important for our magazine cover and poster as we need close ups of their faces to make them recognisable, and allows the characters to express their emotions for the audience to see. We both researched conventional television magazine front covers in order to make ours as realistic as possible, using a light blue background as to not distract any attention from the foreground images and text. 

Rowen - As well as our main image, we included other images of our characters as sub stories. ‘Playing it… straight?’ was the caption of the main story, and I believed this would be affective as it confronts a contemporary issue and is also word play for a popular television programme at the moment.

Helen - Throughout this project we have learnt how to effectively use soap conventions and believe this allowed us to be able to combine our soap trailer with our ancillary tasks through the use of synergy and relevant editing, creating a recognisable soap for our audience.

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

1 - The first shot introduces our use of synergy throughout the trailer and media products, as the man on the bicycle is seen in the first scene biking past one of the characters, and then again in the last scene cycling down the road. This synergy links the characters and the scenes in our soap together, as he appears to be involved with their lives. I feel that this is important as it supports conventional soaps as characters all usually know each other and their storylines are intertwined. The synergy also continues over to my ancillary texts - the magazine and poster - as I include him and other characters so that the audience can make a connection.

2 - The over the shoulder camera shot is a commonly used conventional camera shot in soaps. Emotion is something all actors have to portray, and I believe that this camera shot allows the audience to see the emotion portrayed by one person, while showing that the other person is listening to them, creating a feeling of a real conversation. Realism is an important part of soaps as the audience has to be able to relate to the settings, characters and stroylines, and face to face interaction is a common occurance in real life.

3 - The third shot shows the setting of one of our scenes, the train station. Scenes from typical soaps like Eastenders and Hollyoaks are usually set in places like pubs or a busy high street, but we decided to challenge this convention as we believed that a train station would be more relevent to the storyline and interesting for the audience as it's somewhere different. A train station is still a busy, public place so it would be possible for many different storylines to come from a setting such as this. Similar to Hollyoaks, it challenges some conventions and by doing so creates a more modern feeling, appealing to a younger audience. It also reflects the kind of activities our target audience does, so they would find it relatable. 

4 - Although my main target audience is 15 - 24, this shot shows that the soap also caters for a younger and older audience. There is a mixture of ages within my soap trailer, because as well as the teenagers included, there is also grandparents and children. We made sure to use a variety of stereotypical characters within our trailer as the audience would be able to give the audience something to relate to, and the characters are similar to those the audience usually see in other soap operas, so they can recognise and link characters for a better understanding.

5 - This image shows a low angle camera shot, where a girl is picking up a bag off the floor. We made sure to use a variety of camera shots and angles throughout our trailer as soaps usually have a lot of different close ups, mid shots and long shots. As well as these types of camera shots, we also decided to use a few non conventional shots like the low angle and high angle shots. This changes up the range of shots and makes it more interesting and exciting for the audience, as they get to see more than just the characters.

6 - This image is of a sonogram of a baby, with the text on screen saying 'New Life'. This relates to our recurring them of 'new', which signifies the soap is a new soap. The text on screen relates to the the theme as well as the many storylines, and so it creates a type of synergy by linking all of the stories together. This also develops on the conventional Hollyoaks title screens, as the text usually appears seperate to the video, but we felt that having the text over the video meant that it would be easier to relate what was happening in the trailer to the text, and also meant more time for the trailer and therefore we could develop the story more.

7 - In this image, there is a young woman holding a child. This image shows the controversial storylines that appear within our soap trailer. Controversy is something that other soaps use conventionally, and will usually attract audiences and catch their attention, so we believed having stereotypical characters would be good, but also having some not so typical characters would cause a lot of talk and debate which in turn would promote the soap. There is the controversy of young teenage mothers, and also a lesbian relationship.

8 - The image is of one of the transitions we used, 'zoom and pan'. This empahsizes how we wanted our trailer in this way to not follow all conventions, and by doing this hopefully making it more modern and exciting. Not a lot of soaps typically use transitions, but I felt that the transition would make the trailer flow better instead of breaking it up with text like soap adverts usually do. However, I felt that the way we edited our trailer kept it fast paced and choppy, as trailers conventionally are. This means that the audiences attention is immediately grabbed and the shorts scenes keep the audience from getting bored.

9 - The last image is of the end sequence, where the channel logo and voiceover appear. Soap operas typically appear on the main channels such as BBC 1, 2, ITV 1 and Channel 4, but we decided to challenge this and so broadcast our soap on the E4 Channel. We felt this would be more appealing to our target audience since teenagers and young adults typically watch comedy programmes and those broadcast on E4, and so we felt this would be a way to capture their attention. Also, we took a type of E4 banner and recreated it to advertise our logo, so in this way we kept the colours and look of the channel.

Still frames from Conway