Group Meeting

Discussing general ideas, pitch and treatment

Tuesday 15th SeptemberStart Time: 11:37am

People Present: Elena Christodoulou, Thegla Savvides, Natalie Michael, Natalie Nicolaides

As a group we decided to involve our soap around a teenage lifestyle, involving school, relationships and typical teenage problems.

We discussed various locations and central meeting points like school, home and cafes.
Characters we decided are based around a stereotypical teenager. leaving the audience the ability to relate to them.

Heirachy:
-Popularity Vs Geeks
-Rich Vs Poor
-Popularity/Rich/Education
-Relationships/Jealousy/Revenge

We also discussed targets for the week and allocated eachother different assignements in complete. e.g research (questionnaires, tv soap analysis, trailer analysis evaluation of questionnaire etc.)

Finish Time: 12:26pm

Hollyoaks Trailer

The project we have been given is to make a trailer of a soap. Soaps do not usually broadcast trailers unless a big, life-changing storyline occurs. I am hoping this will benefit me and my group when we go on to deciding how we want our trailer to look like and portray. I hope to use these trailers to guide us to make our trailer successful.

The trailers I have picked are all based on the same storyline. It involves the McQueen family; the girl’s long lost brother, Niall, and Myra, their mother, are all featured in the adverts saying the same lines whilst each one features a different McQueen sister. Niall is trying to make his mother choose between him and one of the sisters, but the use of different trailers doesn’t give away which sister he has kidnapped. The trailer is called “Niall’s revenge”. The 6th trailer only features Niall and his lines, then Myra saying her bit then a narrator saying “its decision time for Myra”.
Myra hasn’t told the girls that Niall is their long lost brother, as she gave him away as a child. In each trailer, the girls are trying to talk to their mother whilst trapped or held hostage, trying to convince her to pick them over crazed brother, Niall. In the background of the trailers, it appears to be a living room but it is wrecked with pictures out of place, symbolising a broken home and a destroyed family, and that Myra’s decision is vital and can make or break the family.

Trailers:
1. Tina McQueen
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uMgyuCHOjeQ&feature=channel

2. Carmel McQueen
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=17qQjGOfGk4&feature=channel

3. Michaela McQueen
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=91OFJ5dETbY&feature=related

4. Jaqui McQueen
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S1eNjVrB7wI&feature=related

5. Mercedes McQueen
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LgqHU73L1Vk&feature=fvw

6. Niall's individual trailer
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AK1iSoYmLJ4&feature=related

My research on 'Hollyoaks' trailers has shown me that more than one trailer can be used to tell the same storyline. The huge storyline makes this successful and enables the audience to view the situation from all angles. They feel involved in the narrative and are eager to see what happens. From this i have learned that a trailer including drama and terror appeals more to an audience. Therefore, our trailer must have a certain 'scary' appeal and make the audience want to watch it. Mystery is a key element in a trailer.

Analysis of Group Questionnaire

Questionnaire

1) What is your gender?

Male female

2) What age group are you in?

10-14 15-19 20-24 25+

3) Do you watch soap operas? If so, which ones?

4) How often do you watch soap operas?

5) Where do you watch these soaps?

TV, Internet

6) When do you watch these soaps?

During the week, omnibus, on the Internet

7) What do you think makes a good soap opera?

8) What type of characters appeal to you?

This is an example of the questionnaire we sent out to a randomly selected group of people. The results showed that;

. Mostly females of all ages tend to watch soap operas.

· The most soap was Eastenders which was viewed on TV during the week.

· Most people wanted to see good storylines and appealing characters they could relate to.

We are going to use these findings to make sure we include what audiences want from soap operas in order to make to our work as successful as it can be.

Group effort. written by Natalie Michael and Thegla Savvides

Analysis of an Episode of Hollyoaks

By analysing an episode of 'Hollyoaks', I hope to achieve an insight to what is expected from a soap appealing to a young-adult based soap. This research will enable me to see what is conventional to this soap and what I should include and what should not be added. I was looking for specific forms and conventions, realism, and narrative structure.

LIFESTYLES: The generations lead different lifestyles; for example Anita lives differently to her sister Leyla or their mother. Students and teachers also have different lifestyles.
Different classed/statuses characters live differently as well, for example Darren lives different to a student like Elliot. These different lifestyles can also occur within a family; Ash lives a high, rich life whist his sisters live a simple student life.

RELATIONSHIPS: Relationships vary from family, sexual and loving. Family relationships are usually united and strong, but in such soaps the drama can tear a family apart. In the episode I watched, Ash was disowned by his family because he had told his sister she was adopted and had put his brother in a coma and lied about it. Another relationship seen in this episode was lust, between Cheryl and Calvin. She fancies him and when she has nowhere to go she stays at his house Calvin’s dad takes a shine to her.

PLOT: The plot of this episode mainly circulates around Ash being disowned by the family, and trying to get his sister Anita on his side, after telling her she was adopted. This branches into another family situation because of his previous relationship with Hannah, who was once diagnosed with anorexia. After an argument with Ash, Anita tells Gilly, one of Hannah’s friends, that Ash had hidden food in Hannah’s room to make it look like she was having eating problems and depend on him. Gilly told Hannah’s family what had happened and her mother went and apologised to her daughter for not believing her when she denied it, this resulted in them having a heart to heart and growing closer as a family. Ash realises that he has nothing left to stay for and after wrecking his restaurant, leaves the village for good.
Hollyoaks differs from other soaps by the way it shows special effects. Most soaps, like Eastenders, don’t use special effects, whilst Hollyoaks uses non-diagetic music, and imaginative beginnings that uses a short scene, which fits with the contents of the episode but is irrelevant to the story; for example, in one episode there was a large chess board and on one team was Darren and Hannah and on the other team was Tony and Cindy, this represented they games they were playing against each other and who had been caught up in the “game” but was not actually part of the characters lives.

By watching this episode, I have concluded how different 'Hollyoaks' differs from ordinary soaps. It challenges the forms and conventions of a typical soap and uses types of 'dream' scenes. The narrative structure has shown me what and how me and my group can appeal to a certain audience. I've taken my research and compared it with my group members research and a final conclusion of episodes of soaps has been included on the group blog.

Opening Credits Of Hollyoaks

I decided to analyse the opening title sequences for 'Hollyoaks'. I feel this will benefit me and my group when we are deciding final ideas for our own soap. We hope to take ideas both positive and negative and apply them to ours to make it the best it can be. Things like music type, colours, pictures and even the length of it will be taken into consideration and applied to our existing knowledge of soaps.

Shows each character one after the other and allows them to act out an action that represents them, for example Ravi is hitting a punching bag in his clip which shows his sporty, athletic personality and “skin”, meaning how people see him.
The background is mainly plain or with spiral lights or wallpaper. The plain backgrounds represent a blank canvas which allows the character to let their personality paint the background. The spiral lights show how their lives are spiralling out of their own control and how they are involved in many different storylines. The wallpaper background, however, could represent a fake front put on by the person, either to hide or to cover up some sort of fault in their own personality.
The opening begins with a woman’s eye with “Hollyoaks” written in it, this could show how the audience gets to view the whole of Hollyoaks village. At the end, the “o’s” in Hollyoaks have male and female sex symbols which join together and zoom forward to the screen to allow the episode to start.

I feel that researching the opening credits of 'Hollyoaks' has benefited me and my group. I found that by using an up-beat tune in the title sequence that the soap would generally appeal to a younger audience whilst a soap like 'Eastenders' has a neutral tune and beat that would appeal to a range of ages. 

A catchy tune would appeal to a younger audience. This is evident because whilst I was watching the opening credits, my class mates were standing around me singing and humming along to the tune.