Tuesday, 29 September 2009

Soap Questionnaire

SOAP OPERA Questionnaire
1) What’s Your Gender?
Male
Or
Female

2) How Old Are You?
3) Do You Watch Soaps? If Yes Which One Do You Like The Most?
If Not Which Soap Opera Do You Hear About The Most?

East Enders
Hollyoaks
Home And Away
Coronation Street
Emmerdale

4) Do You Regularly Watch Soaps?
Yes
No
Sometimes

5) In Terms Of Realism Do You Relate To Any Of The Narratives In The Soap(s) That You Watch
Yes
Not All I Just Enjoy Watching Soaps
Sometimes But They Don’t Help

6) What Sort Of Storylines Do You Enjoy Watching In Soaps?
Crime
Teen
Drama
Romance

7) The Duration Of Soap Operas Is Normally 30 Minutes. Do Sometimes Wish If The Duration Was Extended?

Errm I Really Don’t Care Hmm Maybe It Might Make A Difference

8) What Time Do You Watch Soap Operas?
If Not Which Soap Opera Do You Hear About The Best?
5:00-6:30

7:00-7:30
8:00-9:00
10:30
9) How Many Times Do You Watch Soaps Per Week?
Not Even Once
Once Or Twice
Three To Five Times
Meeting In Common Room

8:40: Discussion about the different ideas that we wanted to get in our trailer, Prince suggested the bixsexual storylines, Barbara talked about the girl with a serious brain tumour, I mentioned about the wedding racism story and how it may be difficult to find the location

9:00: We walked around school and looked at different locations that we may be able to use, issues such as managing to create the look of a church in the hall or outside it questionable.

9:30: Barbara raised the issue that it may be hard to film in a church so we did agree on school and decorating hopefully in the half term.

9:45: We discussed what sort of storylines we wanted in our trailer and why we chose those specific ones, I think our main focus was based on Hollyoaks because it recently has had extremely dramatic storylines such as Ravi finding out he had a tumour and keeping it a secret from his family, this was good for us as we also wanted to do the same in our soap, but getting the same sort of suffering from a female character.

10:30: Researched more soaps, Barbara looked into Home & Away, Prince looked into "Eastenders" and I looked into "Hollyoaks. (See individual blogs)
Discussed any framing shots or camera angles that we could use in trailer so perhaps like Hollyoaks, when Carmel lookes into a picture and the camera zooms out of the same picture but to a completely different location and a different storyline, this was an effective switch perhaps indicating the contrast between them.

10:55: Agreed on what we briefly wanted, so the start being more effective, getting straight into a racist marriage and ending in a cliffhanger or the girl nearly being knocked over by a car. Setting the audiences many questions such as Who is the girl? Why is she running away? Who are the married couple? What is going on.


Meeting Finished


Yana

Research Into Home And Away

A brief analysis of what I have watched.

From the soap, I have observed that home and away usually starts with a mini-cliff hanger.
It then us to a whole different story and after a few moments we are then taken back to it. I think the main purposeof this is to keep the audience in suspense. It tends to give the viewers some sort of enthuisism-as in it makes the viewer want to see more.

Eg. When Martha was diagnosed with cancer; we was juust told that she had cancer and was then introduced to a different scene. This idea of using about having a mini-cliffhanger just before the beggining of a soap is used very effective by the produces of Home and Away. This element could be a very useful in our soap as it works very well.



The music which is used in the soap is quiet calm and flows perfectly to most scenes-this is almost the whole soap as it follows the basic codes and conventions of soap.Non-diagetic music is often used in Home and Away; whilst other soaps such as Eastenders only use diagetic music.

The storylines frequently mixes up with lots of similar scenarios. We could see a minimum of three similar stories in the same shot. This is perharps done to build up some sort of anxiety in the mind of the viewers. This could be considered as continuity as the storylines are similar.

Eg. In the cafe, we had Martha discussing her family issues with her grandad; the tention that was built here was done via dialogue and camera angles/shotsa and also camera movement. The way that the camera was moved from this scene to the next one but still set at the same location made it very effective.





Tuesday, 22 September 2009

Treatment Ideas

An Orphan Teenager Boy Or Girl Black Or White...

Moves From their country in to a foster home in the UK, as time passes by he or she has to join a new school where everything is so different it seems like its not real, the life she used to see on T.V comes to reality and it makes her feel trapped in a world in a real world which was once her fantasy to that sort of living as she's used of working hard , long travel to shops, no street lights, only seeing his or her race no other races or cultures.Plot- He Or She Finds i hard to fit in because he or she doenst know who to mix with.She wants to be independent as she was taught from young.She always feels lonely and doesn't really want to associate with anyone.

3 Best Friend 2 Girls 1 Boy...

One Of The Girl is Bisexual And Likes Both Of Her Friends and is sexually attracted to them the boy and the girl. While the other two friends are also both attracted to her and she knows but she plays mind games with both of them as she she gets into a relationship with both of them but keeping it as private to the boy when shes out with the boy best friend and also keeping it private when she's out with the girl best friend.

Analysing Narratives In East Enders

A Short Analyse Of Narratives East Enders. (Rough Ideas)


The main dominant storyline in the episode that I watched were Family Problems
Most of the families in East Enders have their own problems and some family try to solve their problems with money. For example the Archie, He knows that Peggy would do anything to get Sam out of prison so he offers her money to get her out so that he can come back in her life and her family’s life too but except for Peggy all the other family members know that this is a bad idea as Archie is not a trustworthy character.

There seems to be a huge sense of hatred towards different families and characters. For Example Bianca’s family n The Mitchel’s Because Bianca’s daughter Whitney was the one responsible for Sam to be in prison after she called the police , the reason for this was to get Ricky back with Bianca.

During the episode the audience can clearly tell that there's a sense of jealousy within the female characters for example, Jane And Tanya as they are going through a Husband swap period for a week, Jane seems to be enjoying the fact that Her and Max r husband and wife for a week while Tanya seems upset because she’s hardly spent any time with Ian his always out with business partners.

Through out the sense the music which the audience heard were diegetic sounds coming from a scene were the was a radio for example the VIC.

Although there are many other minor storyline going on at the same time the most dominant story lines are Love Hatred And Jealousy trigger by money and family problems.

Ideas For Our Filmwork Treatment

Extended Treatment, Tell me what you like best!

· Girl is very life threatening ill doesn’t tell parents until the last minute that it may be a brain tumour or more, she then finds out she’s pregnant but her best friend is sleeping with her boyfriend.

· Boy finds out he’s adopted tell his best friend and cries. His friends bully him “cissy” because he crying<> parents don't approve due to colour so Prince's parents don't approve> disgrace to family. Question of will he carry on with the wedding or not?

· Guys plays around with girls feelings doesn’t realise what he’s done, only bullies her because he found out the real truth, she is his half sister. Doesn't know how to deal with it, angry that his father had a one night stand and managed to get someone pregnant. Also blackmails his father into telling his mother.

· Husband cheats on wife with his daughters younger best friend, mother walks in on them, upset big argument

· Popular girl attracts many but when she finds her love and reveals her true secret the fact that she was in a car crash at the age of 10 and has a fake leg, initial reaction of the guy to leave her or not to leave her.

· Love triangle- She cheats on him with his cousin whilst being in a relationship with him for more than 5 years. Conflict and confusion

· Family crisis, mother looses a son he gets bullied for being Gay, accidental death, sisters mourn another sister finds out she was pregnant from bully aka killer of her brother. Turns to abortion but cannot go through with it due to stress

· Family is torn apart when divorce becomes final, young 10 year old child keeps running away from home, cannot deal with it, becomes friends with a tramp


LOOOL i know this is a bit mad but you lot have to choose a few or add some more if you want
I really like the Racism storyline> Prince getting married family not accepting< its more real and I think it'll be good if we fit in that storyline somewhere in between our trailer.

Leave some comments x

Yana :P

Research into Hollyoaks

I recently looked at the various Hollyoaks storylines and noticed a big patten coming along, at the beginning of every episode there storylines are presented by flashbacks or in a more interesting way to capture the audience and question what will happen in that particular episode. So for example the episode I saw was the camera spiralling into each person getting up in the morning and showing how all these different characters have breakfast in their own unique way. It also outlined the different problems that will be later represented during the episode by perhaps showing hints of conflict or arguments that will be explored more to the audience further into the episode.

There was also a very interesting soliliqoue scene where Nancy Ravi and Chris each talked their feelings into the camera when the big storyline exploded> on the love triangle. Usually with soaps you are presented with various different small storylines and yet one very important one- that will later explode into something big, with this, soaps are able to market more easily as trailers are released on upcoming conflict that may happen or serious situations where a character may die off, leaving the audiences wondering who is going to die? When? and how?

Overall, I think hollyoaks is a bit unrealistic from the beginning but as you get into it the characters do seem to act what happens in reality really well, so for example when Nancy leaves Ravi and Chris we are immediately setting ourselves in that situation and contemplating whether she did the right thing or not, THIS RAISES even MORE questions. This was especially shown in the beginning when Nancy and Ravi were reading a book to the audience and then getting into their acting, this seems extremely unrealistic as they are being narrators.

Gossip is also vital, if you have many different characters to discuss people are always going to find things to talk about which is good for society as a whole as more interaction takes place.

There are many different storylines for example bullying, fitting into a crowd, MASSES of conflict usually shown through arguments or silent hate (when characters look at each other and walk past) we understand that there may be something dodgey going on.

I think there may be much more different storylines to focus on, the more complicated the better, but also having in mind that it is important to combine real life issues in soaps too so it can appeal to the audiences more.


By Yana

Thursday, 17 September 2009

Minutes 15/09/09+ 17/09/09

Stage 1 Research. 15/09/09

At 11:30- Present group members worked hard and gathered a few basic trailer ideas and combined each other's ideas together.

11:45- Present group members came up with two exceptable ideas but these ideas were not the final chosen distinctive ideas because not all group members were present at the time.

11:55- The teacher gave home work which was to look at the opening sequence of popular soaps such as Hollyoaks, Coronation Street E.t.c except for East Enders As we had reviewed it last year.

12:00 Present group members decided to start working on the Advance production project.

12:5- Present group members decided on the final group blog link and everyone knew what work they had to upload on the blog (Primary Research)

17/09/09

On this date all group members we present.

2:10 Group members attempted to log in to the blog and check the work we had uploaded so far but the School PCs were not working.

2:20 Group Meeting

2:25 The group started discussing from the beginning everything we need to cover and work on.

2:35 The group decided all members should do different tasks and show their research in the next lesson.

2:45 Group Meeting Ended

Goup Effort

A SERIES OF IDEAS FOR OUR SOAP

Idea 1: A christian boy who gets influenced by his Muslim friends-into being Muslim as well. He then starts to read the Quran; and also picks up basic Islamic attitudes such as frequently using the word 'Allah'.
(This was the initial idea but after the group discussed the idea over again we then decided to slightly change the scenario to : The boy choosing to be Muslim as he is not being accepted by his girlfriend's family because he was a christian)
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Idea 2: A young person becomes very ill and is very superstitious; the character believes that he/she would be healed if the stay home and pray. He/she refuses to go to the doctors as he is scared of what kind of illness he/she might have contracted. When the character was younger, he/she was diagnosed with childhood nephrotic syndrome but has never been told. Niether did his/her parents seek for the best medical treatment for it. They simply gave up and hoped the illness will one day disappear. He/she was very lucky they didn't die at a tender age. The illness will therefore continue.
*We shall also feature a flashback of when the character was young and what cause him/her to contract the illness.
Group effort
By: Barbara