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.