From the beginning I wanted my soap trailer to have a fluid fast-paced structure but still introducing enough characters and show their personalities for just enough time to entertain and intrigue the audience making them want to watch on to discover the characters and learn their stories. I aimed for my soap trailer to be as conventional as possible, remaining realistic, dramatic and entertaining. I looked at other soap trailers and soap dramas including Coronation Street, Eastenders and Hollyoaks. I am going to discuss how I used conventions throughout my trailer, keeping a focus on the nine screenshots I have listed above.
The first shot I'm going to discuss is one in the first scene set in a bar. Luckily one of my group members (Michael Walters) had got permission from a pub to allow us to film inside before opening hours. Filming in a pub was essential if we wanted the trailer to remain conventional to the soap genre, in all the soaps we studied all had a local pub or bar where the cast would often meet and socialise such as Coronation street's 'Rovers Return'. The 'pub' is often where secrets are revealed, because of this it is known as the soap's heart, seen with pubs In Eastenders for example the owner of the pub often connotes the main characters or king of the soap which is seen with famous characters such as 'Peggie Mitchell'.
We also got an older barmaid to be in this scene as an extra and also show more age variation. Along with the pub being conventional it also gave more dynamics to our trailer as the rest of it is set outside.
This scene focuses on our 'thug' character, he is down on his luck and lost his child as seen with the picture. We chose to include this to show depth to his character,showing the audience his back-story and why he behaves the way he does as seen further on. His character can be compared to characters such as Phil Mitchell from Eastenders, although on a younger scale to fit with our target audience, we didn't want a duplicate character either. Both have lost their children, and behave as 'thugs' because of it. The 'thug' character is often portrayed to be a powerful/fearsome character stereotypical to every soap.
Our thug character (David Bangs) also appeals to our target audience and remains realistic as well by incorporating teenage dilemmas such as teen pregnancy, alcoholism and 'thuggish behaviour, although stereotypical views on a teenager they are also seen in dramas like skins and Hollyoaks so we felt they fitted appropriately in our trailer.
When I started to write the story for the trailer I wasn't sure how to include a range of characters but then after being inspired by the 'Eddie Moon introduction trailer' and the 'Strictly Come Dancing trailer' (found earlier on in my blog) I thought of ways to interlink them all. This scene is the first where two different characters meet, having already been briefly introduced to the homosexual couple and the scene with our 'thug' character we see them meet here. I felt characters from different scenes interacting with each other was a good way to emphasise each character's personality to the audience by putting them in awkward situations. Although I haven't seen this structure done with a soap before I wanted to be somewhat original also. Despite my inspiration coming from a Strictly Come Dancing trailer which maybe argued unconventional I thought it suited my soap and was the most efficient way of having the cast interact.
In this seen we see our homosexual couple being walked into by the 'Thug' character, we see the 'thug' being angry and one of the couple beginning to be upset by the situation (both stereotypical reactions). We used a long-shot in this scene despite this not being quite conventional to Soap drama I've learnt that Soap trailers have a small list of conventions which can be seen with the great differences between Hollyoaks and Eastender's premiering trailers. We felt using this shot was a good option as it was more original much like what soap trailers are today, seen with Alfie and Kat's return also shown on my blog.
We used sub-headings to summarise each scene of our soap, here for example we have the line "never accepted" which is what one is crying about, this is also emphasised when Anthony questions if their relationship is worth the abuse. We used voice overs as we felt they worked well and didn't disrupt our background music. We don't here any more about these characters after Anthony delivers this line which supports my idea that leaving story lines on cliffhangers like this encourage an audience to watch, in relation to Todorov i've begun each story given it a problem but haven't resolved it which should encourage an audience to watch and see what happens next to their favourite character.
The homosexual couple are contemporary characters which is why they were included into the trailer. In teen dramas such as Skins there are often characters struggling to come to terms with their sexuality, and it isn't even aimed at teenagers always, soaps today often always have a homosexual couple, this is seen with Eastender's Syed and Christian, Coronation street's Sian and Sophie and Emmerdale's Aaron. So including such a couple is both conventional and contemporary. In terms of the mise-en-scene the characters dress codes are quite stylish and flamboingant as seen with my shirt and blazer and Anthony's high-key pink colours. We did this to connote homesexuality and to be as stereotypical as possible for the trailer.
The lighting like all the way through the trailer is naturalistic to connote realism which is a general soap convention.
Here I used a dutch tilt to once again show variation in our trailer, also aiding it's contemporay values. We used a buisnnes man here being shoved by an inconsiderate teen whom knocks his freshly cleaned suit onto the pavement. We used this character to show a range of age groups, that our soap is not purely aimed at teenagers but an older audience as well. His character also shows a range of class, being the richest character established so far. This scene also represents the contemporary issue of uncivil teenagers to their elders, the teenager being hooded again a stereotype. To shoot this scene we had to get permission from the dry-cleaners to shoot him coming out of the door and also be using one of their covers. We thought we needed a place of business in the soap and this was it, much like the laundrette in Eastenders the dry cleaners would be one of the many small businesses often featured in soap drama.
We set this scene to be in an alleyway as it's conventional to a scene where 'dodgy dealings' occur. In the scene one character steals drugs from another holding him against a wall, we dressed his character in a 'hoody' as it is stereotypical for a drug dealer or 'no-good' teenager.
Although the scene may appear darker it is simply natural darkness as we did not want to ruin the realism of the soap. As forebode by the sub-heading the ambiance of the trailer begins to become darker and more threatening as shown by the physical violence where Jonathon's character holds the dealer up against the wall choking him. We used a close up to show the characters fear as well.
The music of the trailer also begins to develop to show the anger in the scene as it increase in speed. Our trailer is clearly non-diegetic and so are the voice-overs, although it's unconventional to have non-diegetic music in a soap we thought otherwise for our trailer. Hollyoaks for example often uses music in their trailers allowing them to be contemporary and attract their similar savvy audience. We wanted our music to be contemporary so we choose dub-step as it is popular with our savvy audience so will appreciate it in our trailer. The music often matches certain scenes also such as where the 'thug' character is drinking our trailer says "sooth your pain".
This is another scene where we see two characters interact (Josh Spoelstra from the love-triangle scene) and Michael Walters portraying the 'nerd'. The Bouquet acted like a catalyst for this scene by being the focus of two character's storylines much like the football I used in my AS horror opening.
I thought a nerd character was a good choice as there is often one in a soap such as Tamwar in Eastenders but despite this soaps do not often focus on this type of character so I wanted to change this and develop a character like this. I also wanted to show that just because he may not have a superb social life (stereotypically as connoted for his love of flowers) he does have problems shown by the voice-over "You're such a freak!" which establishes society's opinions on him. I also used a range of unusual camerawork for his scene to subconsciously imply his 'geekish' attributes' which such a variety of shot types.
I used this as the final shot to show the main cast all together although not all of them could make it we still managed to accumulate the majority. I felt this scene to be important as it brings all the cast together standing in particular poses and wearing certain attire to emphasise their personality,sexuality etc as well as their class, how their standing also shows their relationships with respective members. The street sign 'Avenue Road' is also shown and much like Coronation Street's it will act as a important piece in the soap and feature in it's theme tune. I also felt having the name on the sign was also effective in installing realism. Having the cast standing together also summaries the events of the trailer once again for any whom forgot.
We choose this screenshot with an overplaying voiceover as it looks very similar to the BBC's title sequence (our broadcast channel) Although being told to avoid the "coming soon" and instead put a date we ignored this as The BBC rarely puts dates for new shows and simply says "coming soon" so this is why we stayed with it.
Overall I feel like our soap is conventional while still being somewhat original through narrative and camerawork.
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