Introduction of generic characters

Introduction to generic characters of Soap operas
by: scott94


 website used to createt this video is called xtranormal.com

Own soap idea

Some ideas came to mind when I thought of ideas that could make a potentially popular soap opera.

I considered a gap in the market, ‘a time period soap opera’. This has not been done before and would, I believe, attract a huge potential target audience who wish to learn as well as being entertained. This in turn would make two sections of the uses of gratification theory true, people watch to be entertained and people watch to learn.

However, without target audience research I could not even consider creating a time based soap opera. Also for a student to find locations, props, clothing and decent actors to fit the criteria of creating a time based trailer is near impossible, time consuming and money consuming, concluding the time based soap opera to be an impossible task with facilities available.

This led me to look for alternative solutions. We wanted to avoid an urban based soap opera and challenge ourselves to find rural locations, as well as props and clothing.

With few solutions left we decided to create a rural soap opera, like Emmerdale.

Are soap operas harmful?

In order to fully comprehend the task of creating a conventional soap opera trailer I researched the public’s view of soap operas. This is an important step in creating any form of media product, for it leads us to the holes in the market wanting to be filed. Here are just a small percentage of the debate, essays and complaints I researched.

UK: Soap operas ignoring negative effects of alcohol - research

Author: Katie Smith | 8 December 2010

A failure on the part of soap operas in the UK to feature the risks of alcohol abuse in their storylines could affect under 18's views on drinking, according to recent research.

Alcohol awareness charity Drinkaware has released research today (8 December) claiming that, on average, over a third (38%) of soap air time features alcohol. From examining four top soaps broadcast in the UK, the research shows that characters were more often than not depicted drinking alcohol to socialise or as a celebration. Only extreme storylines show the harmful effects of alcohol misuse.

Chris Sorek, chief executive of Drinkaware, said: "We need to avoid normalising the idea of consequence-free drinking to excess, especially among under 18s, so people of all ages can make informed decisions about their own drinking based on the facts"

Drinkaware warned that, with 42% of 11- to 17-year-olds watching pre-watershed soaps, the programmes are not depicting the negative effects of too much alcohol consumption enough.

As a result, Drinkaware has requested meetings with UK broadcasters and has developed recommendations to encourage soap opera producers to highlight the risks associated with alcohol misuse.

This article was posted on ‘just-drinks.com’ and it highlights a growing concern of negative impacts soap operas have on children.

Over the last few decades soap operas are more frequent and appear before watershed hours hosting some adult themed storyline. These plots often include alcohol; however, alcohol is now seen as a prop rather than a luxury. Many believe this could be harmful for children and a high rise of teenage alcohol abuse may be linked to television ignorance.

This can show a possible change in the potential market or call attention to the problems with watershed observations.

Furthering the defence that these shows may be copied I have a small section of an article…

Adolescent Soap Opera Viewers

Louise Saffhill

PART 1 - INTRODUCTION & LITERATURE REVIEW

Aims of study

My initial aim in undertaking this study was to investigate adolescents’ viewing of soap operas in terms of its effects upon their identity. However, I began to question the validity of this investigation upon determining my own reasons for viewing soaps. I have watched soap operas since childhood and cannot think of a simple example of how my engagement with this genre may have affected my identity or personal development. My prime reason for watching is escapism, coupled with the desire to be entertained. Herzog’s study of soap opera viewers lists the three main reasons for engagement in soap as "emotional release, fantasy fulfilment and desire for information and advice." (Brown, 1994: 68) Although this study was carried out in 1944, its relevance remains today and was adapted by McQuail, in 1987 (Brown, 1994: 69) who established four categories of reasons people use the media. They include

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 The writers of the London-based soap have hit the headlines with their cot death/baby swap storyline involving Kat Moon and Ronnie Mitchell. I for one took that particular story with the same fictional pinch of salt I do with all soaps. Pity it left such a bad taste in the mouth for a minority.

EastEnders viewers have always and will always turn on for a good dose of doom and gloom. And as an EastEnders spokesperson simply put it: “Our job is to be a drama”.

Around 10m of us watched the very real (followed by very surreal) turn of events over the Christmas period as Ronnie Mitchell discovered her newborn James had died in his cot before sneaking into the Queen Vic pub and swapping him for Kat Moon’s newborn, Tommy.


Shocking, thought-provoking, and utterly ridiculous at times; the storyline is everything we should expect of a soap opera and more. And it’s the ‘more’ that’s rattled a few cages, most of which appear to belong to ‘appalled’ and ‘distressed’ mothers. The same mothers who watch the soap four times a week for the reasons they’re now slating it.


Over 6,200 complaints have been made about the storyline so far. An Ofcom spokesperson told Confidential: “We are currently looking at them to see whether we are going to investigate or not.”

Information founded at http://www.liverpoolconfidential.co.uk/Entertainment/TV-and-Film-Reviews/EastEnders-from-soap-opera-to-soap-box

I remember this story to be on the covers of many magazines, news papers, news headlines and internet pages.

It is rare for a storyline to gain so much negative attention. The plot could be considered cruel to many mothers who lost children and offensive to many other viewers. Yet this boundary braking episode brought in a wave a mass audience attention which ultimately ended with huge success for ratings.

 'Unrealistic and hurtful': Mothers take to internet to protest at EastEnders cot death storyline’

Soap opera posters

Soap opera posters on Prezi

Soap opera magazine cover

Publication 1 Soap Magazxine


This is my analysis now i have learned magazine analysis terminology.

Soap Opera trailer times

Soap trailers times

What type of audience is a soap opera audience?

The reason the above question is important is as follows,

·         Firstly, if we can determine which type of audience a soap opera audience is according to the Uses of Gratifications then we can cater for their desires.

·         By catering for the audiences’ desires then we are almost guaranteed a successful soap opera.

So, I asked a selection of sixteen people, varying in age, social class and ethnicity to list two reasons why they watch soap opera trailers. I choose that they could choose two because there are often several reasons why people may watch soap operas. However, if they watched soap operas for just one reason then they did not have to select a second option.  I listed all four Uses of Gratification so the participants could select reasons why they watch soap opera trailers.

Below are the Uses of Gratifications.

‘I watch soap operas...’

1.       For entertainment.

2.       To establish a personal relationship with a character from the soap opera.

3.       To be educated.

4.       To change my personal identity which is influenced by a character from the soap opera.

Below are the results, presented in a pie chart.

All sixteen people said they watch soap operas for entertainment. Two gave a second option that they watch soap operas to establish relationship with characters. The other two uses of gratifications were not selected. This informs us that the majority soap opera audiences watch soap operas for entertainment purposes only, making them a passive audience. Also it informs us that no one believes soap operas offer any real education and that no one would like to base their personality on a soap opera character.

By realizing a soap opera audience are passive we can determine they belong to the Hypodermic Needle theory audience. Meaning the audience watches and doesn’t think, instead, are just entertained, almost injected with soap opera ideas with no resistance. By having little resistance in thought the audience also will decode messages in the preferred reading desired by the producer.

Stuart Hall (1973) is a key leading media theorist. He determines that there are three ways an audience can decode a message which was encoded by a producer. The audience can...

·         Accept the text as the producer intended. (Known as a preferred reading.)

·         Accept parts of the text but challenge other sections. (Know as a negotiated reading.)

·         Disagree with the text and rejects the producers intention. (Known as a resistant reading.)

As our audience are passive, fed ideas through the hypodermic needle then they will not challenge the producers encoding, unless the plot in extremely unrealistic. They will often accept these encoded messages unconsciously.

Tony Angellotti  (2005) “The audience have the greatest power. It’s the audience who tell you what they like.” This is why it was important that I research what type of audiences’ soap opera audiences are. I needed to know they were passive so I could deliver what they liked. I will include my findings into our soap opera trailer.

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.