Media facts about Mill Lane.

I and my group have the best understanding about media theories which apply to Mill Lane. In this post I am going to speak about a selection of such theories.

‘Neale’, key leading media theorist says “Genre is a set of expectations.” By selecting the soap opera genre we must deliver expectations for the audience which is associated to this genre. But before we could deliver these expectations we had to recognise/perceive this genre to our audience. We did this through paradigms and conventions of the soap opera genre. Iconography was also used constantly throughout, such as the location of the pub.  We allocated themes in our trailer which is recognised to the soap opera genre such as affairs, homosexuality and love triangles. The convention of soap opera genres is to leave the narrative open at the end of each episode (of our case the trailer). We also told multiple stories through our narrative which is part of the soap opera genre; this is known as an episodic narrative. On our group blog we showed how we applied narrative theories presented by’ Propp’ and ‘Todorov’ to our trailer. Despite our narrative being fractured during the trailer (as it skips time) it is presented in a linear pattern, which is connoted by the natural lighting change of morning to evening.

In my post called ‘What type of audience is a soap opera audience?’ I have recognised what type of audiences watch soap operas. Our trailer uses the Hypodermic Needle theory as our audience only watch soap operas for passive Uses of Gratification purposes. This allows for the audience to decoded messages preferably that we, as producers, encoded; such as the personality of Rachel Manning’s. The post listed above goes into depth about each of these theories.

 We encoded these messages using semiotics, known as the study of signs. ‘Peirce’ (1931) said “We think only in signs.” “Nothing is a sign unless it is interpreted as a sign.” By this ‘Peirce’ recognises that denotations/signifiers have no meaning until audiences decode connotations encoded by producers. You could turn this theory into an equation... Signifier + Signified = Sign.  The magazine Marcus Brooker reads held no information until you add a connotation to it. The magazine (the signifier) becomes a sign that Marcus is a homosexual when the audience expected this through the magazines content and Marcus’ father’s behaviour towards his son.

Hegemony is the theory that the majority have power over the minority. This theory did not apply to Mill Lanes trailer. Rachel Mannings (the minority) held power over the majority which was signified by all disturbances happening when Rachel was nearby; thus, turning this theory upside down.

We used binary opposites in our trailer as well. ‘Strauss’ believes that any effective piece of story will have binary opposites. Rachel Mannings is perceived as cruel, manipulative and came from an urban life style. Harriet Collins is Rachel’s binary opposite as she is represented as kind, caring and comes from a rural life style.  Using this our audience can see the beginning of a rivalry between two powerful female characters.

We used ‘Laura Mulvey’ Male Gaze theory in our trailer to attract a greater male audience. Rachel Mannings has a pan shot from her feet to her head. This is eye candy for male audiences and gives them further reasons to watch our soap opera. The Male Gaze theory is conventionally found in nearly all forms of media, from page3 girls in newspapers to films such as 'Transformers'. 

‘Jakobson’ says “There are ideologies behind every media representation’.  These ideologies are stereotypes of characters, such as Rachel being from Essex means she dresses inappropriately and has poor education skills.  This is a negative stereotype of our character Rachel Mannings, we wanted to make the audience dislike Rachel and to do so we followed a negative stereotype.

‘Tessa Perkins’ acknowledges that some stereotypes and not harmful, in turn are positive. However, we used no positive stereotype for any our characters, therefore representing them unfairly. However, we did this as soap opera audiences don’t want a realistic life or a show which conveys total verisimilitude. Instead they want locations to convey verisimilitude and have a cast which is out of reality, making them entertaining, hence feeding the desires for our passive audience.

Final Cut

Magazine Final Draft

This is our final draft for our magazine. Audience feedback from early drafts suggested the magazine did not look professional enough. So, to resolve this issue we followed all British successful conventions. Comparing our magazine to existing ones you can see that it's to a very high standard and looks remarkably similar.

We created the magazine using ‘GIMP’, 'GNU Image Manipulation Program'. ‘GIMP’ allowed us to cut out the images brilliantly. It was time consuming, yet, for a great end result it is worth it. As a result, we have a great selection of main and sub images. Each introducing both the characters and the plot which goes alongside them. For instance, the cover line ‘I know who the father is!’ has the Mother and the two potential candidates for the Father standing behind her. This connotes to the audience that the characters of this plot are the three shown and the positioning of the characters, having the Mother in the middle, furthers this enigma coded information.

A convention of soap opera magazines is the use of hyperbolic wording. Words which are both eye catching and dramatic. Like the picture below.

We have a selection of hyperbolic words presented both through colour, colour backgrounds which allow them to stand out and finally capital lettering. On the below image I have circled all the hyperbolic words which will grab potential readers attentions.

Through using both the images and hyperbolic wording we have made each individual cover line on the magazine both interesting and attention grabbing. To allow the audience to better understand each story and for the character's we have put, in most cases, a relevant background to each picture. For example, ‘Edith’, the mature woman is seen in her Kitchen and the ‘Vicar’ is seen in front of the Church.

We have included the needed elements to define a magazine. Which are as follows, a barcode, a dateline, a title, the issue number and the price. All these elements makes the cover look professional.

We could have included the ‘DECS’ logo; which is the channel the soap will be aired on. This is a brand new soap and will need lots of advertisement. I believe it is a must have, yet, some members of the group believe it can be left inside the magazine. My argument is, if a potential reader doesn’t by the magazine they will at least know from the title what channel the soap is on and therefore becomes a potential viewer.

I also believe the timing of the soap also must be included on the cover yet we are in a similar discussion.

To date we are in debate regarding the inclusion of the channel, its logo and the timing of the show including days on air. If we do decide to change we will do so immediately.

Poster Final Draft and Development

This is our final poster. We hope to achieve three targets with this product…

·         Advertise our soap opera.

·         Encode a message which was successfully decoded by the audience.

·         Looks aesthetically pleasing, meeting levels of industry standard.

Advertising our soap opera.

To advertise our soap opera successfully we followed conventions of advertisement posters which have been used in the past to successfully advertise products. We included days, timings, channel and the soaps name. By including the following we give our potential audience full opportunities to watch our soap opera.

Encode a message which was successfully decoded by the audience.

We had to connote messages to the audience about characters, locations and storylines. These messages then can be decoded by the audience and hopefully have a preferred reading from the audience who understands the messages presented. Stuart Hall, media theorist, says there are three ways the audience will decode a message…

·         A preferred reading as the producer intended.

·         A negotiated reading, so some parts of the producer’s intention were accepted.

·         A resistant reading, where the audience disagrees with the producer’s intention and find meaning or a different kind behind the decoding.  

How did we encode messages to the audience regarding characters and plots? And how did they decode these messages? We needed the audience to acknowledge the main plot of the soap opera launch was the arrival of Rachel. Equilibrium was in motion within Mill Lane until this character disturbed the piece (the beginning of Todorov’s theory). We encoded this character and her plot through colours, framing and wording. By having only Rachel in colour within the centre of the poster the audience can determine that Rachel is the character which the title is referring to. The title explains the plot and gives the audience a rough understanding of Rachel history, thus, establishing her and her plot. This was recognised by the audience and was a reading preferred by our production team. Other characters stand beside their piers within storylines which could be decoded by the audience, but equally, may be a negotiated reading of the media text. Outfits may suggest links to the characters but by advertising the main story within the poster the potential market can establish a rough idea of the plot behind Mill Lane.

How did we encode messages of the location to the audience and how did they decode these messages? By having the characters beside Rachel in the back in a brown (associated with old) colour scheme you can determine these people live a stereotypical old style life. The slogan informs the audience that Rachel is bringing Essex to Mill Lane. So we know these residences are from Mill Lane. The colour scheme of the residence therefore connotes Mill Lane is an old fashioned, stereotypical rural village that live of the land through farming (connoted by Charlie Collins farming outfit to the far right of the frame) and other outdoor vacancies. This message was decoded successfully by the market and therefore was a preferred reading.

Rough Cut 2

This is our second rough cut. It has the missing shots but lacks minor tweaks. These tweaks include…

*Adding a voice over.

*Making our music seems less childish.

*Adding the channel logo and soap opera logo.

*Adding sound effects, for example, when the car goes past.  

We have booked several hours onto the mac to complete the above list. Once done so I will inform how we overcame all these issues.

Poster, second draft

To help address previous criticisms of poster draft one we re-took all photos with a HD camera and switched to the program 'GIMP' (previously mentioned) so we could cut and edit images with ease.

Firstly, I got a good plaque and frame to establish the setting of our poster. Shown below.

We then took a good group photo of all the actors avalible for the poster photo shoot during the week. Shown below. We left gaps so to highlight where our other characters will be positioned for the final cut.

Then I began to edit and cut out the characters on 'GIMP'. Shown below. The Vicar character is highlighted, this shows the cutting out process. You craft around the character until you have made a perimeter around his outline. Then you cut.

I then began placing the character into the poster frame. I did not change their original size until all characters were placed, this was so I could keep the correct proportions in height and width. Shown below.

Once the characters were positioned I began to change the size so they all fitted within the frame but still remained in proportion. Shown below.

Finally, I added all missing convention of a soap including dates, channel logos, slogans and titles. Shown below.

Despite all the modifications to try and improve the poster there are still two huge errors. Firstly, we are missing four characters. This is because the actors were not available for the photo shot and we are planning a date to take the pictures before the end of the January week beginning with the 16^th. Secondly, despite using ‘GIMP’ the cut out of each character still is under industry standard. I think if I practice cutting out images I will become better using the program and then can meet the standard required to make a successful advertisement poster.



Channel logo design

Feedback suggested that we needed to make our own channel logo. This was a group intention before we showed audiences’ our trailer rough cut so we already have created several designs as possible channel logos. The below are the designs I created.

The inspiration from the two above logos came from a wide selection of American television channel logos using stars, including the ‘BET’ logo showed above. The connotation of our logo above is that the channel is fresh and new; appealing to new, younger audience generations. This is done through the logo star; the big font and the colour scheme of black and grey which is seen as young and hip. This, however, is not good marketing for our soap. Our soap must appeal to all audiences and therefore be featured on a channel which programs shows for a wide range of demographic groups and ages. Therefore, we need a more grown up, appealing logo for all types of people.

This one was inspired from the American ‘CMTV’ logo shown above. The logo was aimed to look friendlier, so not to make the mistake of appealing to a younger more aggressive audience like the above logos with the star. The colours are all friendly and create a calm atmosphere. However, the logo, I feel, is to friendly and looks like a child’s channel logo. ‘CMTV’ is a child’s channel so this must be the reason why their logo is how it is, to appeal to the very young generation. Realising this I scrapped the above logo idea and brought my research closer to home looking at British soap television logos.

The two above was inspired by the ‘channel4’ logo. I really like the look of this. The green connotes a more relaxed channel but the red connotes a more action packed, manly channel. So for the purpose of our audience we are targeting we would use the green example. However, despite really liking the design it is too similar to the ‘channel4’ logo (shown above) and is far from being original. The American inspired logos are okay, as it would never be recognised as a copy on British television. Yet, using a British channel logo and copying its main theme would make both the ‘DECS; channel look bad and could be followed up by a copyright issue.

This last logo was inspired from the ‘ITV HD’ logo above. The red connotes action which makes the channel seem intense. The black connotes a relaxed, fresher atmosphere for younger generations. Yet, again, this logo does not appeal to the older generations and therefore isn’t good enough for our group blog. This debate on logo has been continued on the group blog under the channel logo post.

Rough Cut 1

This is our original rough cut. It has several noticeable errors. Our biggest concern is the soundtrack and the continuity regarding mise-en-scene. The soundtrack is annoying, as it is extremely repetitive. It starts before the visual indicated moment; when Rachel hits the stereo, which makes the piece seem rushed. The continuity of the piece is no better. The work changes from natural high key lighting to low key in random positions. Disengaging the audience and destroying the atmosphere. However, I have noted both these errors in previous posts and the new song and re-filming we have done will correct our errors. On top of the major issues we have simpler ones to correct including a creation of a logo and a better speaker for advertising the show at the end of the trailer.

We also have several shots missing from our work. These shots have not been placed into the cut as to date but are being prepared to in short time.

Creating potential music

Screen shots of 'Audacity 1.3' and my song.

Using ‘Audacity 1.3’, a music creating and modifying program I have edited a selection of royalty free songs which I have downloaded from a wide selection of sites, including 'istock studio'. I combined these songs using DJing equipment I own. We will be testing the song with our trailer too see if it fits and establishes and atmosphere we intend. I, think the song is too upbeat, young, and fresh to be recognised by older audiences as a Soap opera they would enjoy watching. None the less, it is worth testing just in case it is sufficient. The song created is below. Footage for the video came from the 'windows live movie maker' package. 

Image of main DJing equipment used.

Magazine first draft

Magazine[1]

 This was draft one of the magazine, created by the second group I mentioned in earlier post ‘Creating the first draft poster’. By having me (a member who didn’t take part in the development) analyses the magazine we can get a more honest opinion, as I won’t be over generous of my own work.

The magazine included elements conventional for a soap opera listing magazine including a master head (magazine title), a main image, a main cover line, a price, the left third contains important information, smaller cover lines and smaller images. However, we have forgotten a dateline and a barcode and without the following the magazine cannot meet a professional standard.

Master head- The title of the magazine is simple and fitting. ‘Soap Buzz’ informs the potential audience of the type of magazine from first glances and makes it sound full of gossip. The colour scheme works well; the yellow is made bolder by the red behind. These bright colours will grab the audience’s attention. The  yellow connotes ‘boldness’ and ‘big events’ and the red connotes ‘gossip’ and subjects related to the theme including ‘death’, ‘love’ and more.

Images- Similar to the master head all images fit well to their cover lines; very well. Each characters facial expression and body language is intertwined with the narrative or enigma coded messaging fed through the cover line and this heightens the audiences interest, leaving them guessing if their theories of plot events are correct. An example of a fitting image is the top left cover line, ‘best friends? Hidden enemies?’ The character on the left looks like an antagonist or an enemy to the character on the right; yet, the character on the right looks like a friend of a protagonist to the character on the left. This fits perfectly with the cover line and allows the audience to guess if their friend or enemies and this in contrast will attract them to the show so they can find out, boosting our numbers.

Cover lines- Most cover lines need to be made better. But, this isn’t a massive issue as this is only a draft and the new lines made won’t take long. Some are clever and should be kept such as ‘Vicar Losses faith’ and ‘Best friend? Hidden enemies?’Ones that need improvements include the main cover line ‘trouble in paradise’. The reason I say this is because the characters did not live in paradise before Rachel Manning’s arrived. Though, their lives were easier I feel it is too random for our piece. The font for the main cover line is good and the colour scheme is good for the same reasons the master heads was. The sub cover lines however have smaller font which would be difficult for some viewers to read. I would use a clearer font and make the lettering bigger but again this is only a minor issue which can be easily corrected.

The left third- The left third is near too perfect. ‘BRAND NEW SOAP’ will capture the attention of potential audiences quickly and the purple colouring makes it easier to notice. Their eyes will continue down to the cheap price of the magazine. Followed by the channel the new soap is on and finally the free poster which makes the 45p cost seem more closely linked to 0p, leaving the audience believing the magazine is a bargain. None the less, without a dateline and barcode the left third seems unprofessional.  Once again however, this is an easy mistake to correct.

Layout and colour scheme- The layout of the magazine is good. It looks professional and all fits well. The colour scheme I feel may be overly bold. A conventional of magazine listings are bold, capturing colours but I feel the clash of multiple yellows, red, blues, greens and purples is too much and we should stick to a more simple set. Perhaps this colour scheme won’t matter if we incorporate more imagery and fill in the gaps? This will have to be experimented with and decided on a later date. Personally, I feel the colour scheme should be simplified as well as introducing more imagery or bigger images so too fill the cover more and too make the piece look more professional.

I will give my notes to the second part of our group and once they have made a second draft I will insist them in the final edit, making sure all my criticism listed above are dealt with.

Poster, first draft

1)      This is the first draft of our poster and it has obvious issues. Firstly, the majority of the characters do not look good. By this I mean they are either stood awkwardly or have had a bad photo taken of them. The characters Harriet Collins and Rachel Mannings look good, but the rest need improvement. We will improve the images by directing the actors better.

2)      The cutting out of the characters isn’t to an industry standard. This was not a major priority for the rough draft, for we were mainly focusing on layout. Now however, it is a priority and must be treated as a massive focus in order to attract audience to what should be thought of as a professional, real show being advertised. This quality of cutting will be easier when firstly we use a high definition camera and secondly we take photos in front of a white background. We are also debating using the program called ‘GIMP’, GNU Image Manipulation Program, which furthers the crafting material to edit photography.

3)      The background, I feel is good. But researching other possibilities will confirm if I am correct or not.

4)      The plaque with the soap title, ‘Mill lane’, is a good idea which will be kept. None the less, we have to find a better font for the title which is easier to read.

5)      Finally, we must plan a channel and a slogan for the piece. This is still being thought of and, similar to criticism ‘2’, wasn’t a major priority of the first draft.

Creating the first draft poster

To save time our production has split into two departments. The first department is creating a rough draft for the magazine cover and the second (the one I am in) is creating a rough draft for the promotional poster.

Step one- The initial idea.
The initial idea for our poster is to have it in a frame with an attractive backing. The frame and the background will attract higher class audiences and our soap character, wearing casual clothing will be juxtaposition to this posh-ness will attract the lower band audiences'.

Step two- Development.
The development required several factors. Firstly, images of the character to place into the poster. We took images in front of a black wall to make it easier to cut out the characters and place them into our poster. However, after several shots we realised that the black wall made it hard to see the black trousers of the characters, so as a result we started taking pictures infront of a white wall. Secondly, I initially did all cutting on ‘Photo shop 4’ but soon realised simpler looks better so we switched to the programme ‘Paint’ which made the cutting easier and faster.

Before putting characters into the work we gathered a background in which to place our characters and made the title of the soap opera so it can be advertised. We included a frame which I put around the image of the background to make the poster stand out and interesting.

 The first characters placed in the poster was Rachel Mannings and Harriet Collins. Here is an image to show you how this looked with the draft frame and background.

The third character I put in the poster was JenniferWard.

Followed by Barry Brooker and his bestfriend Charlie Collins.

Then I added Marcus Brooker and Ryan Parker.

All these characters created our poster and now I was able to add the final touches of poster conventions which included the location of the slogan and the channel name; which has not yet been confirmed.