Song Selection

Now the basic premise for our video has been decided its time for the details. The first thing we need to tackle is the background music.

Choices

First of all we discussed have a dramatic instrumental in the background, as we thought that lyrics may confuse the audience away from the narrative of the advert.
We discussed and after some research we found this song on YouTube:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ait-4080MxU

Although I liked the idea of the an instrumental, after vigorous searching I could not find the up-tempo music I was looking for they would successfully convey the suspense, drama and revelation that we intend to convey.

So we looked at other options. It then came to mind that we had already sent the copyright letter to Universal records regarding the Amy Winehouse song "you know I'm no good" :


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vm41ptw_Hfs

It then seemed like the perfect idea to use this song for our main video also, especially after closer inspection of the chorus lyrics ...

I Cheated Myself
Like I knew I would
I told you, I was Trouble
You Know that I'm no good

These lyrics seem extremely fitting for the situation that our main character is in, torn between two men. The beginning of the song also has a very catchy and upbeat instrumental that we could use, incorporating our initial idea.

Ideas just keep coming!

Above is a mock up of what we want our front cover to eventually look like.

I drew the picture to represent where we will place our images on the page, showing the different sized images as well as accompanying text.

Challenge Conventions?

So far the modern soap adverts we have analysed have had a surreal theme to it, we are looking to make our advert a cross between this elements but to add more realism. I highly enjoy the adverts that I have analysed but as the brief states that it is for a new soap I feel that we need to convey the characters in much more depth, whilst combining the lighter elements of the existing adverts.

By doing this in some way we will be challenging the conventions of modern soap ads, but focus on plot and characters will hopefully entice audiences more then an advert which glamorises and particular storyline, which the existing ones seem to do.

Remake Advert Update

So our remake advert is filmed - its a very rough cut as it is just a practise but am quite proud as we had hardly any idea how to use the editing software adobe premier elements:



I am very proud of the little knowledge we had about Adobe premiere meant we were complete amatures, but the video does indeed capture the same elements that the Eastenders original did. There are some major errors on reflection though. Upon completion of the video, playing in back we realised the clip when I say "three" in my countdown does not have the speech on it. We then realised that we had filmed different versions from different angles and this particular one I did not say "three" as I should. By now though the other clips had been deleted and this is what we were left with. It did however teach me some valuable lessons including keeping a backup usb with your files AND not deleting anything till I am 100% sure that its not needed!

Character Profiles

We have decided on having two possible fathers in our video and we now have the decision to make upon who we ask to play these roles. Since characters are vital for any soap we are going to attempt to portray the characters as clearly as possible, as the only dialogue is me talking to the screen, the two possible fathers are going to have to have their personality displayed through other mediums, largely their clothing and the setting in which we film them in. Here's who we chose:

Potential Father One:
Tom Darwin



Tom is to play the first potential father, possibly portraying a rougher character in contrast to father two. We are going to ask him to wear a hoody and film in a cheap looking location to convey to audiences through mise-en-scene his lower class background. Its going to be difficult in a 45 second advert but it is vital that character set up is achieved if our audience is going to be engaged.













Potential Father Two:

Simon Edie







Simon's character is going to be much more upper-class then Tom's. We have asked that he wears a
suit and am looking into possible restaurants that
we can film in to convey his wealth and our relationship compared to mine and Tom's.








Pregnant Character

Beckie Smith (Me!!)







I am going to play the role of the pregnant protagonist character in our video and also in our two ancillary task. I am going to have to wear two contrasting outfits in my scenes with the two boys to differentiate between the two characters. I am also going to have to less made-up during the scenes when I return, to convey my emotional distress at what I have to tell them.

I am happy to feature in our video as I can fully control the emotions that need to be conveyed!

All Change!

After long discussions on whether the teenage pregnancy storyline will be effective we have changed our minds completley. Upon remembering the recent Eastender's storyline featuring Heather Trott, who was pregnant with a selection of possible fathers and the positive reaction it got we thought that it may be more effective for us to convey.

The new idea is that the advert is now going to focus of me being pregnant and there is two possible fathers. I am coming back to the location of the soap to tell them which one is the dad! This new idea is very exciting and leaves us with a much larger scope for character development.

Copyright Letter

Above is the letter that we sent to universal records requesting the use of the Amy Winehouse single "You know I'm no good". We are going to use this song in the background of our remake video, just as in the original Eastenders clip. It is needed to ask their permission to use the song, as it is copyrighted and would therefore be illegal to use otherwise.

Main Advert Ideas

Since the teenage pregnancy idea Zara and I have been trying to focus our attention on whether this will be possible to convey. We thought the advert should perhaps revolve around me trying to tell my parents the truth or trying to conceal it from other characters in the soap. This would mean featuring either Zara or my parents in the video, which will take a lot of convincing! I volunteered to be in the video for the main part and Zara and I film between us when possible.

In the large part soap opera adverts are a relatively idea. All the adverts we could find on the Internet have been from the past 5 years. We therefore have no advert of Sarah-Lou's storyline to draw inspiration from.

The storyline was very controversial however and gained a lot of audience attention, a shocking storyline like this may gain us a lot of audience interest.

Diagram and Further Discussions

The first step before creating our advert is to decide what the main storyline that we are going to follow is going to be. To do this we created a diagram naming all the possible storylines that could realistically be followed. Zara and I both watch a lot of Soaps ourselves so the process was not that hard, we found that there was a limited number of storylines that are actually carried out, the same ideas are just reacted through different characters, we wrote down when this is the case on our diagram also.

(Click for a clearer image)


We had a discussion and both agreed that as media consumers ourselves we both enjoyed storylines involving romantic involvement, affairs and general dramatic irony. This narrowed our originally wide selection down!

After further talks about specific soap storylines we had watched ourselves we both remembered the success of the Coronation Street stryline featuring Sarah-Louise Platt became pregnant and the age of 13. Being teenagers ourselves we already had the main cast member and so our idea was born!

Remake Advert

Upon discovering that the exam board is allowing copyright (with permission) within our coursework we have decided to remake an existing soap advert for our preliminary task instead of creating one completely on our own. This way we will understand conventions of existing adverts, that will help with our actually final coursework piece, whilst also learning how to deal with the camera equipment. After searching on you tube we have found the following advert that we feel would help us to remake.

Remake Advert - Eastenders




We have decided to use this clip as the main role in the advert is a woman and we are planning to use a woman in the main role in our own ad. I also like the close up shots, and focus angles that will be helpful to practise with. There is simple editing between the shots of the character "Sam" and clips of her family, that we can again practise using our new editing software with. Soap story lines are often dramatic, as this one is featuring the return of a sexually provocative character and therefore we have decided to include a controversial storyline. Although not compulsory we both thought it would be helpful for our filming skills to practise! I'll keep you updated with our progress!

More Analysis

At first when searching for soap opera adverts my search was dominated by modern, glamorised adverts, like the Eastenders Bianca Jackson one I looked at. I was then highly pleased when I came across this advert for the Eastenders Christmas special in 2004. It was much closer to the realism we wanted to portray. In the video the clips of the characters Zoe and Sharon are lifted from the actual film of the soap and editing together with a dip to black effect. I highly enjoy seeing the clips from the actual soap rather then an additional scripted advert which does not give much clue of the plot. I am therefore going to use this advert for a lot of inspiration.

Existing Adverts

As media consumers of soap operas ourselves Zara and I already know some of the key conventions that we are going to use in our advert, these include:

The same characters being consistent throughout the soap
Set in the same limited number of locations
Realistic storylines

We need to however watch existing adverts to draw some inspiration and also pick up on some more conventions.


Advert 1 - Eastenders



The above video was shown on BBC1 prior to the return of Bianca Jackson and her family onto the programme. The video shows Bianca's children on the square, with boxes appearing with each of their names as each their mother calls them. The first thing that intrigued me about this video is the music. The catchy ABC by the Jackson 5 (chosen because of the name relation obviously) instantly gains viewer attention. The advert is set in the Eastenders square itself, being instantly recognisable for viewers most audience members would already know what programme is being advertised with around 10 seconds. The advert then breaks with what is conventionally associated with soap genre and breaks into Bianca singing the lyrics to the background song of ABC. This unpredictable act also immediately grabs audience attention as it is not expected for a soap advert to feature a character singing. Other recognisable characters of the soap can be seen in the background and are sometimes focused on including the character of Gary and Peggy, this has shown me and Zara that we may need to have extras in the background of some of our scenes. The soap also features a lot of different camera angles, some featuring all the main characters others just focusing on the main character of Bianca.

Advert 2 - Coronation Street



This Coronation Street advert is a lot darker and more serious than the Eastenders one above, focusing on murderer Tony's double persona. The advert is alike the Eastenders one set in the Coronation Street set and is soon reconisable. There is no non-digetic music in this advert, it instead calls on special effects to capture audience attention. The close ups of Tony's face really convey the evil on one of his personsa. I do not really like this video as it does not encourage me to watch the soap as Tony's character has already been developed in the prgramme and does not need an advert to promote it. I think that soap opera adverts should be foucsed to the narrative of the plot.


Although I enjoy both of these adverts I do not want our advert to convey the same sence of glamour, created by special effects and music. I am instead going to portray a more realistic portryal of soap life.

Soap Opera

'chance meetings, coincidences, missed meetings, sudden conversions, last-minute rescues and revelations, deus ex machina endings.'"
Steve Neal, author of book Genre and Hollywood, on Soap Operas.

A soap opera, often shortened to just Soap is a major part of British culture. Soap operas are one of the most frequently followed programmes on terrestrial television. They focus on the characters in the programme leaving a basic everyday location and props. The extreme high viewing figures and fellowship can be said to be down to the audiences ability to relate to these characters. Their popularity was shown during the peak viewing which occurred during the Christmas day episode of Eastenders in 1986, it was watched by 30.15 million viewers over two days. This indicates that for our soap opera we must try to connect to the audience and convey the feelings of the characters involved, as it is clear to me that character empathy is key for the successful viewing.

Key characteristics and conventions:

Tend to focus on everyday characters and situations
Frequently set in working class environments
Sometimes feature comedic aspect
Stereotyped characters (the gossip, the sexually promiscuous, the handsome male character ect)

The main two soaps are Eastenders, broadcasted on BBC1 since 1985 and Coronation Street, broadcasted on ITV1 since 1960. I am therefore going to focus my research into these two soaps. They both deal with issues that face normal media consumers in everyday life including relationship issues, financial problems and death. It is vital that Zara and I incorporate a realistic storyline throughout our coursework. We are going to try and make our advert as realistic as possible.

First Post!

So that time has come again ...
It is time to choose the brief that is going to be our coursework for the year.

Tgether with my partner Zara St-Clair Pearce we chose the 5h brief which is:

A promotion package for a new soap opera, to include a TV trailer, together with two of the following options:
1. A listings magazine front cover featuring the new soap;
2. Two hyperlinked webpages (with video extract) for the soap’s website;
3. A poster for the soap

We have chosen this brief because we feel that soap adverts are a form of media which we come into contact with daily and therefore know a lot of conventions.

The two options we have chosen are option 1 and 2 as we have more experience in designing print media, from our AS course and we have no previous experience in designing websites.

I am going to research existing soap opera adverts, in order to gain valuable conventions from them. Although we have not decided to main plot to base our coursework on I am hoping to gain some ideas through watching other soaps interesting features.