1. In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

Our soap trailer used, developed and challenged the forms and conventions of real media products.
A soap trailer almost always features continuous story lines, narratives, dealing with domestic themes and personal or family relationships. We predominantly adhered to these conventions as we imagine that our soap will have have these features, in addition, our trailer followed many dramatic story lines through one point of view. Secondly, British soaps most often feature common, ordinary, working class characters in which we also did as our main character came from a working class background. Additionally, just like real soaps we aimed for realism in order to maintain a believable tone to our trailer. Furthermore, it will it will undoubtedly end with a cliff hanger with a tense and suspenseful, unfinished piece of dialogue or action. We also followed this convention as we ended the trailer in a zoom in to a traumatised face.

Despite following these conventions, we also developed a few, for example, special effects are not used in soaps in order to maintain realism, however we use transitions to manipulate time, which we thought was essential as it effectively engaged the audience and created a division.

Our camera work challenged conventions of camera work in soap trailers as they mainly keep the camera work simple in order to keep it realistic. However, we used camera work to portray authority, for example, when the teacher is shouting at the vulnerable character we used a high angle shot to give the teacher a powerful, judgemental position, whereas the student is seen as weak and insecure.

British soaps tend to have a strong regional identity to attract viewers from that area and often are deeply community based. Our genre was an urban soap opera trailer, so we set it in west London, which connotes a grimy dangerous location. It was also set in school which is where the "community" is based.

British soaps deal with controversial issues such as drugs, teenage pregnancies and racism, however our issues were not that extreme as it discussed issues that represent teenage struggles like bullying.

Conventions create expectations from the audience, they expect to see real issues and familiar locations, if these are broken then the audience are disappointed or shocked therefore we occasionally subverted these conventions to keep the audience engaged.
Our trailer followed conventions as it consisted of multiple narratives and a non linear structure. However, unlike the Eastenders trailer it was not hyper-dramatised, Roxy and Ronnies' arrival was exaggerated to make them seem more appealing to the audience which could be argued to be misleading. We did not use this aspect of conventions because we did not want to create a false narrative because our storyline was already complex and we felt that we did not need to make it better because it was already very engaging. In addition, in the Eastenders trailer there was a sense of self parody when Stacey is portrayed as a cleaner, though we decided not to mock our characters so that the audience takes the characters seriously and make the trailer more realistic.

Overall , our trailer consisted of characters that we feel represented west London well and were conventional of existing soap trailers.

In terms of existing TV magazines, we think we predominantly followed the conventions as we agreed that the TV magazines we analysed were very successful in term of engaging the audience. Therefore, we decided to have a very similar layout to the one we studied. Our cover was dominated by photographic images of the three main protagonists, this attracts the audience attention and help gain any potential viewers. Existing TV mags use bright colours, bold font and large images on their covers, with vivid shapes consisting of eye-catching phrases. We used these effective methods in order to create a similar tone to our magazine and hence adhered to the conventions of TV magazines.

Soap posters are fairly uncommon however there are many TV drama posters in which we thought were successful. We felt that the posters we analysed portrayed urban London through colours and effects; they used a grey background which reflects the show. We felt that this was exceptionally effective so we also decided to give our poster this effect.

2. How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary texts?

We felt that our main product and the ancillary tasks worked well together, simply because they consist of the same characters.

Even though in the ancillary tasks the "evil" characters' picture is larger than the others; to demonstrate her threatening and intimidating role, where as in the main task we follow the story line through the"good" characters' point of veiw, it still combines all the tasks together as a coherent theme is created.

Brand identity was predominantly visible through the main product and poster because they share similar features. We made sure that we were promoting the soap to the best of our ability in all our tasks, by applying the same font it became symbolic of the soap and became a kind of "logo" to the trailer. Furthermore, location also became representative of our trailer as we used related settings in our poster and trailer. We filmed our trailer in just two locations; either in school or in an urban estate. This not only helped reflect on a difficult life style and regulate the setting, but it formed a link between the two tasks.

3. What have you learnt from your audience feedback?

Once we finished the main tasks and ancillary asks we prepared vox plots and interviewed 5 members of our media class in order to gather some audience feedback. In general, we obtained some good constructive criticism that helped us improve our products. After the interview we did further research and watched a couple more existing soap trailers as someone suggested that we need to make it look more "professional". So we took this on board and as a result we adjusted a few details and feel that it enhanced our soap trailer.

Youtube also played a essential part in our audience feed back procedure as we were able to show family and friends at home our finished piece. It was helpful to know the opinions of people who are not media students as it provides a broader insight to our trailer. Youtube helped our feedback be more representative.

In addition, we got feedback from members within the group which we felt was crucial, for example, during the fight scene, we found it hard to film a realistic slap as there was a mirror which made it hard for us to hide certain movements, so we worked together and shared skills to enhance the act.

4. How did you use technologies in the construction stage, and in the research, planning & evaluation stages?

We used many different types of technologies in the making of our main product and ancillary tasks. During the research and planning stage, blogger and YouTube were extremely helpful as we were able to watch and analyse existing soap trailers, as well as posters and magazines. With out this we would not have been influenced by TV dramas such as W10 LDN as we were unfamiliar with the Programme. Using blogger to record and upload work including analysis of existing media texts, (with clips embedded via You Tube) scripts, location photos, story board animatic and audience feedback. It enabled us to constantly reflect on progress, working in a fluid way and allowing a more active engagement from my group, with constant updates.

During our post production phase we used Photo Shop and In Design CS4 to produce the magazine and poster. photo shop
We used the Sony HVR-A1E HDV Camera and Rode Mic/Boom to film and record our trailer. The camera allowed the 'building blocks' of raw footage to be filmed in a way that reflects how we see the scene, but in order for this footage to made into a narrative, we needed the freedom offered by the non-linear editing software; Final Cut pro. This software enabled me to consider and organise multiple narratives seamlessly.

Digital technology helped us in our intertextuality as we were able to use split screens and transitions with effects to interlink two genres. This benefited our trailer as made it seem more modern and appealed better to the younger generation that we aimed our soap at.

Brand Identity

Our brand identity was Urban Chic, hoping to attract young urban females living in London in todays society.

To make sure that all three products fitted in with this identity we chose a particular:

Setting - We chose to set our trailer in an ordinary school 6th form as it shows the lives of young teenagers helping our audience engage with the characters. We also chose a small estate in West London hoping to maintain our brand identity of urban chic. Therefor in our magazine we used an estate as our backdrop creating a gritty feel.

Costumes - The costumes we chose for each character represents their personality however, we made sure they fitted in the urban West London teenage look, keeping the continuity of our brand identity. In our poster and magazine they are all wearing the same costume and they are also seen in the trailer as well.

Style- We wanted to maintain an urban chic style through our use of colors and fonts, especially in our poster as it really represents youth, as the style of writing is recognised by urban teenagers. Our magazine and poster connect well as even though we kept the costume the same, we also kept the idea of having the 'love triangle' theme depicting our brand identity, as this idea of relationship troubles is one of teenagers struggles and us showing this in our trailer helps to attract out target audience.

Vox Pops

We asked four people to watch our film and look at our print based tasks then interviewed them on camera. we asked a series of questions to
-2 girls aged 17 & 18 and
- 3 boys aged 17 & 18.

We wanted to ask five members of our target audience whether or not our trailer and magazine cover and poster were effective eg. would make them want to watch the soap. We wanted to emulate the real media industry where they would use market research in the form of focus groups to carry out this research.

The questions we asked were as follows:

1. Do you think that the ancillary tasks were coherent with the film and would back up the effect of the trailer in terms of persuading the target audience to watch the film?
2. Do you think the music is effective and would it attract you to the soap?
3. Do you think it followed conventions of soap trailers?
4. Did you enjoy the watching the soap trailer?
5. What would you change?
6. Would you watch the soap after seeing this trailer?


The answers were as follows:

1. The interviewees all answered that the ancillary tasks were coherent with the piece and they reflected a brand identity. They all agreed that the poster especially created brand identity and consequently make the piece seem more professional and persuade them to watch the film.

2. there were mixed views on the music we chose as majority said that the music needs to "increase pase" during dramatic situations but also be less "grimy"-'grime' is a genre of music based in the uk which combines up beat high snare intrumentals with classic rap.

3. All interviewees had comparable answers as they said that the trailer does adhere to existing soap trailers and it "reflects on teenage live" and shows the traditional "teenage struggles"

4. Fortunately, all said that they enjoyed the trailer and thought that it was effective in the sense that it could persuade them to watch the trailer.

5. As mentioned earlier the pase of music should be altered according to the tone portrayed. Additionaly someone stated that there were too man transitions, which consequently made the effect less successful. In addition, another comment was that the location was "too Victorian" which did not suit the urban London genre. However, we were unable to film in rough estates as there were real issues of safety in places we waned to film in .

6. primariy, the response was that they woud certainatly watch the soap as it "reflects upon teenage life" and they can "relate to the narratives" however one person said he does not watch soaps at all and therefore probably not watch ours aswell but he would give it "a go" despite not watching other existing soaps. Moreover, another said he does not watch tv at all, however it was helpful knowing that he still found the trailer successful.

Narrative

our trailer showed multiple narratives happening to one character. the reason we chose these narratives was to use conventional themes from a soap opera and also to give the audience an idea of the content of our soap opera. the narratives we chose were:

- relationship problems
- family problems
- school problems
- bullying
- drugs
- social ostracism

These narratives target our audience as they are common to teenagers living in an urban environment and these are the narrative strands that we would have explored through our series of programmes had we made the series. I think they are effective in a soap as they fulfills three purposes.
1. They attract the target audience - the uses and gratifications theory states that an audience looks for people to connect with in their media and this character is someone they can relate to.
2. The narrative fulfills the genre requirements
3. The narrative gives an outline of the themes that will be explored in the soap therefore giving information to the target audience and fulfilling another purpose.