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.
Tuesday, 29 September 2009
Friday, 25 September 2009
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.
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.
Sunday, 20 September 2009
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.
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.
Friday, 18 September 2009
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.
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.
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