I took nine different screen shots of my soap trailer which I felt displayed the use of developing or challenging forms and conventions of a real media product.
1 - The first image displays our continuous use of synergy throughout the trailer as the male character on the bike appears in the beginning scene of the soap, biking past one of the other characters in the town. This joins together all the other scenes, as he is then seen at the very end, showing that all the characters are in the same new area. Synergy is a key convention of a real media product as it allows the audience to make clear connections. This is why I used screen shots from our trailer for my poster as well as including one on my magazine front cover, as it easily allows the audience to identify the soap.
2 - In this photo you can see grandparents arriving at their new location with their granddaughter. Although our target audience is that of the younger generations, we made sure there was also a variety of ages amongst our characters so that our soap could still appeal to different ages. It is also important for a soap to have stereotypical characters to give the audience something to relate to as well as making the characters recognisable.
3 - As our trailer was advertising a brand new soap, we decided to have a 'new' theme running throughout, as shown in the screen grab. 'New life...' relates to the characters situation but also emphasises the fact that it is a new soap. Although most soap trailers don't on screen include text, we decided that it was relevant to portray the continuous message throughout. We also didn't want to use a blank screen between the footage for our text as we felt that it would break up our story line too much and that the footage wouldn't flow in the way that we wanted it to, as it went from the different locations of the characters.
4 - This forth image emphasises the fact that we wanted our trailer to be modern and exciting. We helped to achieve this by using effects and transitions, such as the 'zoom and pan' shown in the screen grab. Even though effects like this are not widely used within trailers, we wanted to challenge what is seen as a stereotypical trailer and make ours different in order to capture out target audience with something new and interesting.
5 - This image shows one of the settings we chose to film at, the train station. In most soaps they use classic settings, such as the pub or market square, however we chose to use some more modern locations as well, to reflect our target audience. By using real life locations around our own town, it allowed us to achieve a sense of realism within our trailer. The use of different locations, but in the same town, was key to our trailer as it was about all the characters coming from different places and all wanting a new start for different reasons. We tried to give a small insight into the characters reasons for wanting new starts, however didn't want to give too much away, but just enough to entice them into watching the soap.
6 - We ensured that a range of camera shots were used to make the trailer as visually interesting as possible as well as portraying the characters emotions to the audience. This is something typical in trailers and they are short so must therefore catch the audiences interest as quickly as possible, however we tried to give ours more of a 'Hollyoaks' feel as we wanted it to be more quirky and less of a classic trailer, targeting our young adult/teenage audience.
7 - This photo shows a low angle shot and, as previously spoken about with photo number 2, shows our variety of camera work to make the trailer as attention grabbing as possible. This shot also shows the audience the mise en scene, allowing them to get some more information about the particular character in the scene. A shot like this is typically used in real media products as it is focusing on a key aspect of the action, the bag, showing the audience that it has a relevance to the storyline. In this particular storyline it signifies the girl running away to a new start. Being a low angle shot, it also gives the audience the view of looking down on the character, making them appear small and insignificant, reflecting the characters emotions and feelings.
8 - To make our soap relatable and modern we used controversial story lines for our characters, such as the young mum and baby in the screen grab. This was because we wanted to make our soap exciting and 'now'. We also used a 'love triangle' situation, including a straight guy, lesbian, and another girl confused about her sexuality and feelings. This kind of situation is something which many teens face, therefore would find interesting and be able to relate to it, as well as others being able to learn from it and possibly change their perspective of certain views they have on different current matters.
9 - In order to give our trailer a feeling of realism, we edited and used an E4 banner for the end, as this is something which E4 uses itself. The channel logo is a key aspect of a trailer as it must be clearly advertised for the audience, otherwise they won't know which channel it's being broadcast on.
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