Planning: Location Photos

Part of planning the soap is understanding the setting that would reflect our characters and plots. As of such we needed to find a dark area of town to film in to reflect the atmosphere of our Soap, and therefore establish a plausible setting.
Below are the photos of our locations with a description of how it'll play out in the film.

This is the road sign we will close the commercial on. As the Soap is called Avenue, we figured it would be appropriate if the street name managed to incorporate the name of the soap in one way or other. This find was very fortunate in that sense.

This is a florist where we're planning for the love sick teen to come out with some flowers. These flowers will then be thrown to the ground when he sees his love interest with another man. This is an event we're hoping some people would be able to relate to, or sympathise to, and therefore add to the show's appeal.

This courtyard is where we're planning a scene in which drugs are sold, or someone is mugged. Even though we're uncertain of the nature of the crime, filming it here will add to the realism, of the soap's events.

This dry cleaners is where we're planning to have our businessman come out with a fresh clean suit, at which point something would be spilled on it, or it would get ruined in some way. This will show a level of realism in the street life and also suggest that that character would have a short temper, as he will get very angry at his suit being ruined fresh from the cleaners.

This is another potential location for the street crime scene, being dark and secluded also.

This church tower is something we're hoping we can incorporate into the trailer somehow, as it is very symbolic for the town we're filming in, and an instantly recognisable landmark. This would add to the town's appeal, and also potentially add to the shock value of its resident's shady activities.

This shot features a polish supermarket and also a hair salon. This, if incorporated into the trailer, will show the town's ethnic diversity and also a vast variety of businesses available in the town.

This shot features the area's local pub. This is a location that is common amongst all soaps and we're hoping can act as our character's social hub.

Finally, this is a shot of a scenic bridge spanning the river. This can act as a scenic location in our trailer, should we choose to include it.

Media Planning Storyboard

 The planning was crucial for the soap trailer as we needed a clearly defined structure to help us stay on track on the filming. Without proper storyboard planning, we would not have been able to book filming times with the local businesses thus crippling our organisation.

From the very start, we had a clearly defined storyboard in our heads. We decided to start the film with the shot of David Bangs in the pub drinking his shot as shown from this early story board sketch. Referring to the Todorovian theory model, the alpha male then leaves the pub with a tracking shot, drunk.

We then cut to a scene that tackles a contemporary teenage issue; drug abuse. By showing teen drunkeness and also teen drug abuse, we are able to shift the focus of the soap trailer to modern teenage issues and hopefully give the audience characters to relate to thus engaging the core of our demographic.
The next two shots offer a context and background to our characters and the town, as the two characters shown are homosexual lovers. As they are walking, the alpha, still drunk, barges into them on purpose, making the couple sit down and ponder whether or not their romance is worth the amount of abuse they get, insinuating that the other characters also treat them with hostility.

The next shots feature our second main character portrayed by Josh. This is the love-struck teen who is in love with another main character, portrayed by Emily. This character is buying flowers to impress her, when across the street he sees his love interest and a new boyfriend on a date. Heartbroken, he throws his flowers to the floor and leaves. This is where our geek character, played by me, comes in to study the flowers as a potential botanist or just as an odd hobby, suggesting that this socially awkward character has some peculiar traits or ambitions. This is shown by a non-diegetic voiceover of a teenage girl stating that if he "didn't spend so much time focusing on flowers, people might like" him.

The shot ends with the geek character leaving with the flowers walking past the heartbroken teen. We then jump cut to all of our characters standing around the signpost to avenue road -- the signpost that gave us the inspiration for our Soap title. A non-diegetic voiceover states that "there are two sides to every story" which is our tagline and suggests that everything shown in the trailer has multiple perspectives that will be analysed further in the show itself.

The trailer then closes.

Soap Planning: Coursework Characters and Audience

Our media group has spent the past week planning for our soap coursework trailer based on what we've been covering in lessons, such as characters, settings and themes.
From the beginning, we've known that we'd want to film a more dramatic soap that will be driven on character development, and to show this we came up with the concept of stories having multiple angles, this would then emerge as our show's tagline "each story has two sides".
In late September, Ed came up with the idea of having a character walking through a street observing characters, in different lights - with them being a good citizen at one moment, and then suddenly shifting into a darker personality. Josh, then came up with the tagline "each story has two sides" and from that I wrote up an early draft of a screenplay, which envolves the character walking through the street making non diegetic observations and commentaries on life in the town the soap would be set in, eventually walking to look the camera head on, and as he finishes his trail of thought, a gunshot would echo, at which point the tagline would come in. However, we decided that this would be too dark for a soap, and also too linear from a character viewpoint, focusing the trailer mainly on one individual rather than the community. So this initial screenplay was scrapped.

When we officially began planning, we were a step ahead, having already decided the script's content, and so we went about planning the nature of the show, deciding that the theme of the soap would apply more to a young demographic, like Hollyoaks' demographic. Therefore we decided that everything involved would need to be contemporary. From this, Josh was able to find a suitable track to play during the trailer, which was from the contemporary genre fo dubstep, thus appealing to the youth demographic.

We also had to plan the characters that would be involved. We all pitched in various ideas for the characters, basing our ideas on stock characters that are common in each soap, ranging across all ages and social classes in order to reflect realism of living in a commune. Additionally, we would need to have multiple types of people so audience members would be able to relate to a character in the show, the characters we came up with varied accordingly, by class, age, gender, ethnicity and even social backgrounds.

Various typical characters in a soap were quick, and easy to suggest, with my suggestions of rebellious teens, business people, and a dog to reflect realistic settings. Other characters shown were also quick to decide due to our planning prior, and also having done considerable research on characters commonly apperaing on many soaps, thus allowing us to quickly and efficiently plan out our soap characters.
Once we had planned the characters, it was then time to plan possible plots.

Soap Trailer Comparisons

Due to the nature of our coursework, a large amount of the year has been spent planning a Soap trailer for a "new soap" we as students were creating. Most of the research to this point has been on general conventions of soaps, including characters, settings and themes (see previous posts)
The next part of the research was observing trailers for the two shows in our case study; Hollyoaks and EastEnders, both of which focus on different age demographics and as of such, reflect this in their trailers.
Firstly we have EastEnders' trailer which shows a street in London, a narrator states in a non-diegetic voice over "the EastEnders are coming to BBC one", the theme is then whistled over the end of the trailer as an outline of the River Thames (shown in the intro and now synonymous with the show) is shown on the side of a van.

The soap is targeting a non specifc demographic in the trailer and so the content is simple. It depicts a casual day in London, with an iconic red double decker bus. This represents the show's content as it takes place in an everyday suburb of London, following the lives of it's residents. Additionally, this would also be one of the first times the famous drum beats were shown to the general public, setting up the interpellation between this show and the theme.

The advert in itself is quite minimalistic, showing that the soap may not necessarily need to make reference to contemporary issues at the time or win the audience with flashy gimmicks, and simply instead draws the audience in by stating "The EastEnders are coming to BBC one".

This trailer is deliberately simple and non-detailed to establish the settings and plot of the show, and draw the audience in by playing to their interests and piquing their curiosity over the show itself.

The Hollyoaks trailer, however, plays to a much younger audience, and it shows in the presentation of the trailer itself.

The trailer begins with the characters in the soap introducing themselves in low, suggestive voices, it is accompanied with soft key beat. This establishes the nature of the show, as it is marketing to a teen-young adult demographic, and therefore can get away with being more more risque than the EastEnders trailer.

The trailer then displays a post-modernist twist when one of the characters messes up a line, thus breaking the verisimilitude of the show as the characters are aware they're actors in a show. The actor then argues about the role that she plays, allowing the group to engage in banter "it's only a small role" "so I've heard".
This establishes a youth audience also as it is shown more tongue in cheek, thus allowing the audience to relate to the characters more as they display a more youthful nature than established soap characters possibly will.

Institution study: BBC.

The British Broadcasting Corporation is a government funded institution founded on the first of January 1927 and was the world's first national broadcasting system. Originally the BBC was a privately owned organisation which was founded by a group of six independent broadcasting companies on the 18th October 1922 and was known then as the British Broadcasting Company LTD. 

Throughout the history of the company, it's most notable period in history was during World War 2, during which they had broadcast news and informational services.

Since the company was founded, it has maintained a simple mission statement, which is "To enrich people's lives with programmes and services that inform, educate and entertain."

The BBC started TV broadcasting in 1932 using experimental electromechanical 30 line system and begun broadcasting regularly in 1934 and in 1936 their main TV service launched from Alexandra Palace, and lasting until 1956, with News being broadcast exclusively from there.

The BBC also remained the only TV broadcaster in the UK until 1955 when the ITV was launched.

Finally, BBC produced and broadcast programmes for the open university until they moved to a specially built studio in 1981.

Since then, the BBC has been widely known for it's services and shows, and is the most well respected and recognised national service in the world.

Soap Characters

Popular settings and memorable theme tunes in soaps are common conventions but the Soaps themselves cannot possibly work without memorable characters also, and this is also a common convention shared among the soaps.
The characters are typically reminiscent of Vladimir Propp's theory on characters, in which each story has a set character representing a typical archetype to keep the stories moving.
These character types generally consist of:
1) The Villain. This character typically creates the drive for the plot, either by causing trouble or antagonising the other characters.
2) The Hero. This character usually helps the victim or princess, who may have been mistreated by the villain.
3) The victim/princess. This character is usually wronged by the villain, and "rescued" by the hero throughout the storyline.
However, to keep the plot dynamic, the soap writers often shift the roles around, in order to keep the format fresh and engage the viewer's interest. This also reflects reality, as nobody acts in a single characteristic throughout their life.
Communities in soaps also represent typical communities in reality also, with character families, friends and others.
Characters in soaps can also challenge contemporary taboos, which, in turn, keep the stories up to date and more dramatic. An example of this is Colin Russell, who made his début on EastEnders in 1986, and was the first homosexual character in the soap.

Much of the story's narrative throughout his time on the show focused around his sexual preferences and his acceptance into the community.