Past students trailers

The reason I choose to write about the above trailer is as follows…

·         They criticise themselves at the beginning saying that radio is ‘more beautiful’. Why do they even include the beginning piece of text? What is its purpose? I believe the group wanted a clever approach to capture their audience’s attention, yet, the text was not clearly relevant to their soap opera theme. It shows no obvious link and therefore is distracting and would make me, as a potential viewer, decline giving the soap opera a screening in my spare time.

·         The voice over which introduces, informs and closes the trailer is hard to understand. A more traditional/conventional voice, clear and strong, would establish atmosphere which would make the work look professional, reaching an industry standard rather than staying beneath its boot. Perhaps they choose the voice over to be unconventional as it would match the new strand of soap opera which brings classes together in an obvious action. However, I still believe a more conventional voice or dialogue from the actors would have made the soap opera far more appealing to watch. I found it hard to understand what the soaps name was and I on my own would struggle to pronounce the title, as a result a clear voice is crucial.

·         The ending which informs the viewer of the timing and days of the soap is also unclear. I do not understand if there are three episodes back to back, if the episode repeats itself three times in a row or if the episode lasts from ‘19.00’ to ‘20.00’. Without clear guidance this production company will lose a large portion of potential viewers as they will often be too busy to follow up their enquiry about timing.

Editing

Conventional trailers include fade to blacks as a way to distinguish between scenes and show passing time. This trailer did not include this editing technique, however, it is still recognisable as a trailer and I believe that it is easy tell distinguish between scenes. Having said this, fade to blacks would have made it easier to distinguish between multiple storylines, by not doing so the trailer cannot appeal to the particular storylines an audience member may be interested in watching.

Title

The above soap opera font is not representative of their target audience but instead representative of the soap operas theme. The soap opera theme is incorporating higher classes to lower class disputes. This is why the trailer uses an unconventional voice over actor and has the posh, almost hand written font.

Costume

The only indication of character personalities throughout this trailer is their outfits. This limits the audience to only gaining suggested information through connotation of costume. This is why the costumes had to be planned down to the final detail. Early on in the trailer there is a picture which introduces the audiences’ to the soap opera character. It is this short still frame which gives the most indication of character personalities. However this picture is too crowded to get any good indication or even sighting of any characters. Some characters are seen in expensive coats and high hats, these costumes are black and white. Black gives connotations of important, high values business persons and white give connotations of kind, innocent people. The voice over informed us that there are two main groups in the soap opera, a high social class and a low. The outfits aren’t representative to who’s in which class; this makes it hard to categorised characters correctly which is an important process of attracting audiences. One of the uses of gratifications is that we watch things so we can relate to characters on screen, if we cannot categories these characters the audience cannot relate to them, thus, losing a major market.  

Despite the criticisms the group have accomplished getting a good set. I feel an establishing shot should have been included to help introduce the audience to the soap operas surrounding. However, they have a wide range of locations varying from realistic offices to a beach with the sunset dying down in the distance. This soap opera has taught me lessons which I will introduce into my own work. Mainly, that if the meaning or messages being conveyed, such as a theme or timings for the soap, are not clear then the possibility of our soap being successful is further from our grasp.

This trailer suggests an all female cast. This is told through the lack of male characters. My initial reaction was one of criticism, without any males the producers would lose a large portion of potential audiences’. Having said this and using my knowledge of existing television shows this may in-power the soap opera. ‘Sex in the city’ is a show which targets a female audience using actors and storylines which make the female gender powerful and appear dominant. This appeal of theme makes a gigantic female audience interested in watching the show so they can feel dominant. Applying this theme to a soap opera has not been tested as far as I’m aware but it the soap opera is created to an industry standard I feel they could have a similar audience to that of ‘Sex in the city’.

The music for this soap opera is depressing and though it matches the imagery on screen it makes the soap opera far less appealing. This is a trap many student soap opera trailers full into. Soap operas have plots which are seen as negative and harmful to the character who is leading them. So in trailers producers show this with depressing imagery and music. However, no one wants to watch a show which is constantly depressing, they need some form of relief. This is why in our soap opera I wish to have happier music and imagery which can be followed by gently forwarding serious negative plots.

The titles for the end of the trailer appears handwritten and on a chalk board type wallpaper. This is good relation to the soaps setting of a school though no establishing shot confirms this location. I like how the writing is slanted, this also relates to scruffy teenager handwriting at school. I do however feel that a voice over would have helped partially blind/blind audiences. They also could have created their own television logo. Though using an existing one makes the soap opera seem more realistic it could inflict with copyright laws.

The editing includes fade to blacks which is a convention of trailers, helping the soap opera trailer seem more legit. They make the fractured narrative more obvious by the words which cut into the frame, for example ‘obsession’ which appears thirteen seconds in.  The plots however that consist with these narratives are not clear. This is partially good because the audience can guess and explore ideas. However, to attract an audience member you want to advertise stories which they can relate to and without dialogue from the actors the producers did not achieve this.