Our Final Soap Trailer.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gBhxAQ4ypFc&feature=youtu.be

My Soap Poster.

This is my soap poster for my soap 'Conway'.

My Soap Magazine Front Cover.

This is my magazine front cover for my soap 'Conway'.

What have you learned from your audience feedback?

Throughout the making out my soap opera I have had lots of feedback from mainly my target audience. Although, I have had feedback from much younger audience as well as older. I created a questionnaire for other a-level students and younger students to answer so that I could improve my soap opera trailer. Lauren also uploaded out soap trailer onto Facebook, the social networking site, so the we could get other feedback from different people who were unable to see our trailer. Therefore we had a wider audience feedback from different age groups and we could analysis how we could improve our soap trailer.

The first draft of my soap opera trailer, we found that our trailer needed to be improve a lot more than we thought. Here is a link to my first draft of my soap opera trailer - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u6ghpbzKsIY&feature=youtu.be

The results from the questionnaire stated that we need to improve on:
- My music didn't fit the trailer and wasn't fast enough.
- My trailer was too long for a soap trailer.
- The story lines weren't very clear.
- The voice overs were too quiet, therefore they needed turning up.

The things that worked well from my feedback were:
- I had used conventional soap opera characters well.
- The effect that I used were appropriate to my soap opera trailer and made it look professional.
- My transitions also worked well and created a fast pace effect which made the trailer exciting.
- I used a variation of camera shots and angles.

After this feedback there were many adjustments made to improve my soap opera trailer.
- Using Final Cut Pro X I turned the voice overs up as well as the music as that they could be heard better and more clearly.
- I cut my soap trailer to 1 minute which has had the trailer faster and smoother. It also improves the pace so it is more exciting for the audience. My soap trailer was 1 minute 41 seconds and I managed to cut it down to 1 minute, therefore it makes it more conventional to a real media product.
- I also changed the music. Re-considering all of the choice we had we decided to have Joman-Epedemic (Neucore Mix) -  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_uo9T8iI1ao
This has made my soap trailer more upbeat, faster and catchy to the audience which will make them want to watch the soap. It is also more suitable to the target audience than our other song.
- I also decided to add title screens which suited each individual characters story line. It also made the audience understand the soap opera trailer more clearly. For my title screens they all start with the word 'New' which draws in the audience as they see that this is a new soap and the trailer shows story line's to the characters lives. For example, the screen shot below shows Aleisha and Charlie at the train station with the title screens saying 'New Beginnings' implies to the audience that it this is a new start for Aleisha and Charlie and the audience will want to know more about their lives.

- I have also noticed that my soap opera trailer has not shown what channel it will be broadcasted on, therefore the audience will not know which channel to go to when it is broadcasted. I have added 'BBC' onto the beginning of my soap opera trailer at the bottom to that it helps to promote the BBC channel. It is also one of the conventions of real media products.

 

After I had made these changes the soap trailer was uploaded onto Facebook. I had better feedback from this, such as:

• "It's good but there's like 10 minutes of nothing too"
• 3 people 'liked' my soap trailer.
• "Very good, I like the music"
• "That's sick. I well like it"

 

After this feedback I went back to Final Pro Cut X and got rid of the 10 minutes of nothing that was on there. Overall from my audience feedback, my soap trailer is now good and has positive feedback. The new positive feedback I received was that:

- The music fits the soap and is fast and catchy.

- The soap opera trailer makes me want to watch the soap to find out more about the characters.

- The story lines are more clear.

- It all fits in together for a real media product.

- The demographic that it is targeted to find it exciting and want to watch it.

- The soap opera trailer also fits the soap genre.

- They like the title screens as it makes it more interesting and makes the story lines clear.

- They can now hear the voice overs and music more clearly.

This is my final soap opera trailer - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gBhxAQ4ypFc&feature=youtu.be

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

Below are some new media technologies that I have used to help construct, research, plan and evaluate stages throughout my media product. They have helped me to improve my skills using these technologies and it given me the best ideas and outcomes for my media product. Below is some screen shots of these technologies with an explanation and examples of how I used the and how they have helped me to create my product.

I have 4 screen grabs below which show all of the websites I have used to help me through my evaluation stages. The first screen grab is of the social networking site, Facebook. I used Facebook to get some feedback from my friends and family about my soap opera trailer. As different age group use Facebook I was able to get a mixture of opinions from different ages. As my friends on Facebook are my demographic for my soap trailer I was able to get opinions and feedback about my soap opera trailer and whether I could improve it and if so how.

My next screen shot is of Blogger. Blogger helps me to document all of my information I research, my plans and documents in one place where I can easily access them. People can view my blog and give me comments on my posts. Therefore, my teachers were able to track my work and my class mates could also view my work and can comment on my posts. If I wanted to edit, add or delete a post or some information in a post it was easy for me to do so. Blogger keeps all of my work together and helps me to be organised for my media product as I can keep research, website links, photo's and more information that is need for me to complete my soap opera trailer.

My third screen shot is of Google. Google is very useful for researching soap opera's and real media products which helped me to complete my soap opera trailer. I have used Google to research real media products, trailer, posters, magazines and also been able to get idea's about props, costumes, characters, mise-en-scene and all of the conventions of the soap genre.

My final screen shot here is of YouTube. YouTube is where I have uploaded my first and second draft of my soap opera trailer. By doing this I could receive feedback from members of the public. This has given me a chance to link the trailers to my blog so that it is easier to find and view. I have also linked one of my evaluations to YouTube so that it is easy to access and watch as I found the files where too big for blogger and therefore I would have had to convert it. Although I found that linking these video's to YouTube gives the audience a better and more clearer view. It is also quicker and easy to use. I also used YouTube to find some uncopyrighted music that I could use for my soap trailer. I was able to research other soap trailers which would show me the conventions of real media products and give me ideas for my soap trailer.

The first screen shot below is of Adobe Photoshop. Adobe Photoshop has given me the ability to construct my ancillary texts; front cover magazine and soap opera poster. I have gained many skills whilst using this program and they have improved over the years of using Adobe Photoshop. This gives my ancillary texts a professional and effective finish. I have learned how to used Adobe Photoshop quicker and was able to complete it with perfection. I am now able to use the magnetic tool which allows me to cut out characters carefully. I can now do this in a short amount of time whereas before it took me longer to complete one character. Adobe Photoshop also gave my ancillary texts a professional finish and had many conventions of real media products.

The second screen shot is of Paint. Paint has allowed me to save screen shots and put screen shots together, as I have done below. I am able to separate my screen shots and images to upload them onto my blog into different or the same posts as many times as I would like. It allowed my to save screen shots of my video and show the effects and transitions I had used in my soap opera trailer. Paint also allows me to save a file as a JPEG so that I could upload it to my blog. This is easy, quick and simple to do with these files and allow people to view them on my blog.

My last screen shot below is of Final Cut Pro X. This was the first time I had used this program and I found it had more effects, transitions and title screens so that I could edit my footage. I found after playing around with this program for a while it was real easy and simple to use. It allowed me to cut visual and audio out, add effects, transitions, add title screens into my trailer and I could choose to slow down or speed up some of my footage. This makes the trailer more exciting and suits our demographic well.

 

The technologies that I have used have helped to create my media product. The first image is of a voice recorder that we used to record the voice overs for our soap trailer. It allowed us to record what we needed efficiently and quickly, it is also simple to use. It was easy to transfer the voice overs onto our product via the USB. We then imported them into Final Cut Pro X to add them into our soap trailer. As it is small and easy to use I was able to take this voice recorder home to record someone who appeared in our soap opera trailer. We also used this for one of our evaluation stages.

The second image is of the Panasonic HD video camera. This allows us to film our footage in HD which gives the audience a better image than the Mini DV camera's that we used for AS level. This HD camera is light and easy to use and also gave us a high quality outcome. This also had an micro card so all the footage is saved straight to this card which is more productive than the tapes that are used for the Mini DV camera's. I also used a tripod which helped me to film still shots and conventional soap genre camera shots which are shots such as mid shots, long shots and shot reverse shots.

The mobile phone was useful for communication between our group. For example, as we live in different places of the town we was able to communicate through technology and this helped us to let everyone in the group know what was happening, where we was filming and when etc. We could also arrange meetings to talk about our ideas and planning, as well as constructing out media product and if there was any worries in the group this was easily sorted out with the use of communication through our mobile phones. We could also use them as a camera to put photo's onto the computer if we needed them.

The next image is the digital camera. We used this to take pictures whilst filming as we could document and have evidence of us filming our media product. We also used the digital camera to take pictures of possible locations, characters and ideas for our soap name. For example, we went for a walk around our town and took some photo's of street sign posts which influenced us for our soap opera name. 

The last new technology which we used whilst constructing, researching, planning and evaluating our media product was the new Mac computers. These had the program for Final Cut Pro X which we used to edit our soap trailer. This computer was useful as without it we would have used Adobe Premiere Pro. Although Adobe Premiere Pro is good, we found that we had more choices as well as better and efficient effects, title screen and transitions to improve our media product. 

Here are some pictures to show evidence of us filming and using some of these technologies.

 

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

1 - My first image is taken from my introduction and first scene of my soap opera trailer. It immediately introduces the channel that my media product will be broadcasted on, as it say 'BBC' at the bottom in this introduction. This is for the audience to know that which channel this soap will be broadcasted on straight away and they will remember the channel. Soap opera's are always recognised by which channel they are on, for example, people know that Eastenders is on BBC one and Emmerdale is on ITV 1. The audience recognise this and therefore remember that the soap will be broadcasted on this channel. This also makes my trailer appear to be real as real soap opera trailers also have the channel on them so therefore I have used a convention of soap trailers within the first few seconds of my trailer. In order for the audience to remember the logo of 'BBC', I have placed it at the beginning for a few seconds and also at the end when we have a voice over which says 'Conway coming soon to BBC one'. This will be refreshed in the audiences' minds after they have watched the soap trailer. It also gives them the soap opera's name as well as the channel that it will be broadcasted on.

2 - My second screen shot is also taken from the beginning of my soap opera trailer which shows the mise-en-scene. I decided to use a train station in my soap opera trailer as it is a conventional setting for a soap opera and also represents realism. Mise-en-scene is a key convention that we need to use throughout our soap trailer as it is what real life soaps use. In real life soap opera's, mise-en-scene are often repeated throughout the program as it helps the audience understand the story line of this character(s) and their journey. For example, in my soap opera trailer the girl is obviously been seen as a young mother with her child and a suitcase which can show that the girl has ran away. This leaves the audience intrigued in her story and they will want to know more about her and her life. Therefore, my mise-en-scene in my soap opera trailer has the conventions of real soap opera's.

3 - My third shot is an example of the titles screens I added into my soap opera trailer. This is to help the audience understand the characters story lines more clearly. I have emphasised the word 'New' throughout the majority of these titles screens. This is because I want the audience to know that this is a new TV soap and it is exciting. They will want to see the story lines of the characters lives. Also, the emphasis on the word 'New' shows that their are new beginning, endings, choices and events that are happening and will occur during this soap trailer. This will attach the audience's attention as they will want to see the realism of each character's lives throughout this soap which the audience may be able to relate to which will make the audience feel involved with this new soap opera. In my soap trailer I have five titles screens overall which are connected to each of the individual characters as they are introduced throughout the trailer. This photo shows a teenage who has made or has to make a new choice as she is pregnant. This is shown by the title screen which shows, 'New Choices'. This titles screen in particular represents the new choice of a a young teenager having a baby. There are people within the target audience who will go through this in real life situations which they can therefore relate to this character in my soap opera trailer. New choices, however, could be any new choice that a person has to make within their lives, which the audience will relate to. All of my titles screens start with the word 'new' as it will also show the audience that this is a new soap opera. These titles screens are all conventions of real media products and has a sense of realism with this.

4 - My fourth shot is to show the effects I used when editing my soap opera trailer. With the use of Apple Mac PC's, I have a wide range of effects and transitions that I can use to editing my soap trailer whereas I didn't have these when using Adobe to edit. The effect I have used on this particular long shot is called a radial effect which makes the screen appear like a fish-eye view. Using effects and transitions made my soap opera trailer's pace faster and the soap trailer more exciting, which is a convention of a real media product that we have used. This shot and effect connotes a sense of confusion as this shot shows the story line of two girls who are lesbians although as the trailer goes on the confusion of the love triangle appears. This could relate to some of the audience as they could be confused with who they are in love with as well as these characters in the soap trailer.

5 - My fifth image represents a sense of realism within my soap opera trailer. With the couple Mark and Toni having an argument about an issue that has occurred connotes realism and gives the audience this as it happens in real life and real media products. This is also a shot of our love triangle between two young girls and a young boy who has just discovered this love triangle. This is conventional of real media products and real life issues which deals with social issues. These issues are issues such as sexual identity, young love, peer pressure, which the audience can relate to. To add to my mise-en-scene, this scene is filmed outside a pub. Soap opera's often have pubs in them and this is usually a place where people gather, gossip or where some drama happens, for example, fights, arguments like this scene in my soap trailer. This is also conventional of a real media product.

6 - Shot 6 shows the variations of camera shots that I used throughout my media product. This shot of Eva picking up her bag shows that we varied our camera shots. This shot is a love angle shot that we used which is a convention of real media products. Real media products usually use these low angle shots to make a person appear small, endangered or vulnerable. It shows that the bag is an important part of this characters story as she is running away. This shot also shows the audience more mise-en-scene which allows them to receive more information about this character and this scene.

7 - In shot 7 I wanted to show a variation of age with the Grandparents and their grandchild getting out of the car. Even though this soap is targeted to the younger generation, I wanted to have a variation of ages within our characters as our soap could therefore be appealing to other ages and a wider audience. It is important for the audience to be able to relate to some stereotypical characters in my soap trailer. Therefore, having a mixture of age widens the range of audience and the soap opera also has the conventions of real media products with these characters.

8 - This shot shows a stereotypical character. A convention of characters is shows throughout my trailer, for example, this is the stereotypical bad man character. The audience can relate to the characters in the soap opera trailer which gives the audience a sense of realism throughout the soap trailer. Using stereotypical characters makes this soap seem more realistic and is more conventional of real media products.



9 - The end sequence is one of the main conventions of media products. With this end sequence it gives the audience information about my soap opera trailer and makes this media product seem more realistic. Having this end sequence appearing like a real media product gives the audience a sense of realism. Changing the colour from the stereotypical BBC one's red to blue makes the soap different and shows the audience that it is brand new. This will make the audience want to watch this new soap as it shows it is new and exciting.

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

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

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ylCsE7BvT6M&feature=youtu.be


Planning My Soap Magazine Front Cover.

Here is a rough draft of my front cover magazine.

Planning My Soap Poster.

Here is a quick draft of my soap poster.

Researching TV Magazines.

These are examples of existing soap opera posters from Eastenders and Hollyoaks. They appear to have no conventions as soap opera posters are quite rare. Normally soap operas will use magazine front covers and television to advertise their programme. However, the mise-en-scene is often important to soap opera posters as they represent the narrative of the soap as well as a bricolage to envelop the viewers interest. Soap opera posters often use enigmatic characters to excite the viewer.

Researching Soap Posters.

Editing our soap trailer: Changes Made.

From our audience feedback we was told that the music did not fit, therefore we decided to change our music. We re-considered all of our music choices that we had at the beginning and chose a upbeat and catchy song. This type of music will appeal to our target audience as it is a faster past to our previous. Our new song was Joman-Epedemic (Neucore Mix) -  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_uo9T8iI1ao 

We also edited our soap trailer to make it shorter as the audience feedback thought it was too long for a soap trailer. Therefore we cut our soap trailer from 1 minute 41 seconds to 1 minute. This made our soap trailer faster and flow through smoothly.

We also decided to add titles to each individual character sections as we wanted to make the trailer easier for the audience to understand. The audience can also understand the story lines more clearly with these titles.

Audience Feedback.

We got audience feedback from our teachers, students from different year groups and members of our families.
The positive feedback for our soap trailers were:

• Good voice overs.
• Variety of different characters.
• Good variety of camera angles.

The negative feedback we received were:

• Music - wasn't fast enough for the trailer.
• - didn't fit the soap trailer as well as it could.
• Our trailer was too long to be a soap trailer.
• Some character's story line's were not as clear as others.

Audience Feedback - Questionnaire.

We made a questionnaire and asked teachers, other a-level students and younger students to fill our feedback questionnaire's in. The questions were:


1-After watching the trailer would you say the trailer is advertising the soap genre?
2-Would you watch the soap after watching this trailer?
3-Is the music appropriate?
4-Should there be text with the voice-overs?
5-Is the trailer the right length?
6-Are there enough stereotypical characters for a soap?
7-Is there a variety of shot types?
8-Is there anything that could be improved?
9-What works well?
10-Is the editing appropriate?


The answers we received were as follows:
1- 7 out of 10 said yes.
2- 5 out of 10 said yes.
3- 8 out of 10 said yes.
4- 2 out of 10 said yes.
5- 9 out of 10 said yes.
6- 8 out of 10 said yes.
7- 9 out of 10 said yes.
8- Students said:
    *length
    *improve voice-overs
    *make story-line clearer
9- Students said:
    *shot types
    *transitions
10- 9 out of 10 said yes. 

First Draft Of Our Soap Trailer.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u6ghpbzKsIY&feature=youtu.be

Editing our soap trailer: Visual Effects

We chose to use these visual effect:

• Shake - This effect made the camera visually move. This effect made the audience feel involved or experience what the characters are going through. We used the shake effect when Mark pushed/shook his girlfriend away.
• Slow Motion - We used this effect for emphasising significant parts of our soap trailer to make them stand out to the audience. Slow motion was used to exaggerate the fight in the soap trailer and make this action more powerful to the audience.

We used a few transitions in our soap trailer as well, which were;

• Blur
• Cross Dissolve
• Directional Angle

Using transitions and effects makes our soap trailer visually exciting and the pace helps to move make the trailer 'flow' and fit together. They make the trailer's pace fast, intriguing and exciting for the audience and this will appeal to our target audience. 

Editing our soap trailer: Title Screen.

As we was researching different soap trailers, we found that they all had a title screen at the end or beginning of their soaps which would advertise the soap name and which channel the soap would be on.We looked at the traditional BBC title screen as this is the channel that we decided we want our soap to be broadcasted on:

As we wanted to appeal to the younger audience we decided to change the traditional title screen. We also thought this would stand out from the other programs that are our competition on BBC one. Therefore, we decided to change the layout of the writing and the colour. We changed the colour from the traditional red to blue.

Our music

Our music ideas for our soap trailer:

• 4String - Take Me Away (Neucore Mix) - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BsKGeE5Awc8
• Joman - Epedemic (Neucore Mix) - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_uo9T8iI1ao
• Un-copyrighted Music Songs - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k0PcBzNRrdg
• Non-Copyrighted Music Part 1 - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uMIDONPtCUE 

As our soap is aimed at the younger audience we wanted a song to be quite modern but also a song that is catchy and will draw the audience to watch the trailer. We wanted this to get the audience 'hooked' and intriguing to watch this soap because the music is upbeat and catchy. Although we found that some modern music didn't fit the soap trailer.

From 'Non-Copyrighted Music Part 1', we decided to chose the 4th song - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uMIDONPtCUE

Evidence of filming.

These photo's show evidence of filming. We took as couple at each location we went to.





These photo's show how we used different types of shots and angles. It also shows how we set up the equipment effectively to get the best footage we could.





These images also so some of the characters in our soap trailer and us filming the characters.

Props.

We used a few props whilst we filmed our soap trailer. These were:

• Baby scan picture.
• Bike.
• Bag. 
• Suitcase.
• Car.
• Mobile Phone.

Locations

Characters.

We had a range of characters for our soap trailer. Here are pictures of the characters we used.

Grandparents and grandaughter.

Young mother with her child.

Ricky, the bad guy.

Helen, going through teenage pregnancy.

Rowen, Toni and Mark, the love triange.

Equipment needed.

In able for us to produce our soap, the equipment we used were:

• HD Video Camera
• Tripod
• Digital Camera (We used this to capture photo's to show evidence of us filming)

Script for individual voice overs.

This is our script for our soap opera trailer which the audience can relate to.

• "Looks like it's a new start baby"

This is Aleisha's voice over when she arrives at the train station with Charlie which implies to the audience that she has ran away and her and Charlie are going to start a new life in a different place together.

• "Ohhh!"

This is Helen's voice over when she realises that there is a problem with the baby she is carrying which implies to the audience that there is some kind of danger or trouble with this young mum to be and her baby.-

• "What is this?!"

This is Mark's voice over when he receives a picture of his girlfriend cheating on him with another woman and a text about this affair which implies to the audience that he is upset, angry and confused as to why he has been betrayed.

• "Is this it?"

This is Cara's voice over when she arrives at her new home with her grandparents which implies to the audience that there may be some disappointment.  

• "I can't deal with this anymore"

This is Eva's voice over when she runs away from home implies that she may be having trouble and has had enough of her family, friends or that she may be being bullied and there could be many issue to why she is running away. 

BBC institutional information

The BBC is the largest broadcasting organisation in the world. The programs broadcasted on this channel give the audience information, education and entertain. It was established by a Royal Charter and funded by the licence fee that is paid by UK households.

The BBC uses the income from the licence fee to provide services including 8 national TV channels plus regional programming, 10 national radio stations, 40 local radio stations and an extensive website.

Michael Grade was responsible for introducing stripped and stranded schedules to BBC television in his role as controller of BBC 1: from 18 February 1985 onward the schedule has consisted entirely of half-hour or one-hour programmes starting on the hour, or half hour (the BBC channels do not carry spot advertising).

typical narratives

Typical narratives in soap opera's are quite stereotypical of certain characters. For example, in Eastenders people know this family to be a low class, 'chavy' family which many issues, such as money, single parent.



There's always a good guy that is the 'hero'.



Also there's a 'bad guy' or the tough family. For example, the Mitchell family.

Soap Titles.

For soap titles we decided to go for a walk and look at different sign posts to get some idea's. We looked at a few street names and finally decided to take a street name. We chose 'Conway road' as we thought that 'Conway' was the one that was the most catchy and had a ring to it. Below are a few of the posts that we found.

Production Schedule.

Tuesday 29th November.
Film Aleisha and Charlie at the train station. With Ricky biking by.
Film Helen and Ricky biking again down an alley.


Sunday 4th December.
Film Grandparents and their grand-daughter getting out the car, with Ricky biking again.


Friday 9th December.
Film Eva at a house, running away from home.


Monday 12th December.
Film a love triangle with two girls and one guy which involves different sexuality.

Potential location photo's.

Below are some photo's of our potential location photo's.