Trainspotting; Choose Life.

We have been looking at voice overs from different films to inspire a voice over for our own trailer. We were looking at the film 'Trainspotting' and really like the 'choose life' opening. Although we can't use the exact quote we would like to create our own dumbed down version. Below is the clip and quote itself;

'Choose life. Choose a job. Choose a career. Choose a family. Choose a fucking big television, Choose washing machines, cars, compact disc players, and electrical tin openers. Choose good health, low cholesterol and dental insurance. Choose fixed- interest mortgage repayments. Choose a starter home. Choose your friends. Choose leisure wear and matching luggage. Choose a three piece suite on hire purchase in a range of fucking fabrics. Choose DIY and wondering who you are on a Sunday morning. Choose sitting on that couch watching mind-numbing sprit- crushing game shows, stuffing fucking junk food into your mouth. Choose rotting away at the end of it all, pishing you last in a miserable home, nothing more than an embarrassment to the selfish, fucked-up brats you have spawned to replace yourself. Choose your future. Choose life... But why would I want to do a thing like that?'

- The direct quote from trainspotting.

The Valleys

Due to the new release of the MTV's welsh 'The Valleys' we looked at the trailer for the new series as it follows a party scenario and is filmed so close to home. Although it is degrading it is a very well put together sequence.

Soap Opera Titles

A lot of soap operas use place names as their titles, such as East Enders and Coronation  Street.
We thought about this a lot when trying to come up with a name for our soap, we looked at different titles and fonts to help decide a name.
Titles normally include a easily readable font and a background of where it is set.

However as our soap is aimed at teenagers we need a more appealing 'logo' we are going to stay away from the conventional title on background of where it is set, and perhaps stick with a simple logo. 

The title of our soap is going to be 'Boys Village' which is where we are actually filming our soap, we also like the sound of the name and the word 'boy' suggests a younger audience already without even showing the trailer.  

Below are a few ideas of fonts for our title:

When looking at a tag line our current idea is Boys Village, 'where the girls come to play'

Trip to Boys Village

We took a trip to Boys Village in St. Athens to see if it would be acceptable to use as a film location.
St Athan Boys' Village was a village-style holiday camp located in West Aberthaw, Vale of Glamorgan, Wales. It is now all derelict and abandoned, bands like Deaf Havana and Funeral for a Friend have filmed music videos there which I have embedded.
While at Boys Village I took a lot of photos below I have uploaded them.

Here is the old swimming pool which is where we would like to base our party

We like this shot, it is in one of the old dormitory's, we'd like to shoot some footage here.

Here is a map image of where boy's village is in south wales.

The old church

We liked this room, the title floor gives it a retro feel that we could also film the party in.

Here are two music videos that have both been filmed at 'Boys Village' 

This is a music video for the song 'I'm a bore, mostly' by the band Deaf Havana who filmed at Boy's Village. 

And this is the Funeral for a Friend music video for serpents in solitude. 

IDEA

Our idea that we are going to work on for our soap opera trailer is a party scenario, as this is the easiest way to introduce all of our characters in one situation without a particular reason for them all to be in one place. We are making our soap to aim and include mostly teenagers, we are making our audience teen based as we can think on our level what teenagers would want from a soap.
We are going to follow three story lines through out the party scenario uses flash backs and cut away shots. The story line ideas that we are most likely to use:
After auditions we have based and altered our characters for our idea, and here is the final idea.

• A love triangle between three people; two proud gay men, the one then wakes up in bed with a girl the morning after the party. We feel this storyline has not been looked at before in a way that we want to portray it. We have Zak, Brandon and Paige who are going to star in our trailer, we are basing each character on different characters from soaps and series, or taking an element of a character. We are basing Paige on the character Effy from skins, she is the troubled character of Skins who is idolised and has some hard hitting story lines. We are basing Zak on two different characters both from Skins. The character of Tony from series one, he is the sort of 'ring leader' of the group of friends, very cool but has an under lying evil side that we can see bubbling. We are also basing him on Freddie from series two of Skins, he again is a cool character but also very loveable. 

Effy from Skins

This is Zak, he will play our gay character.

 

This is Tony, the other character we are using to base Zak on.

This is Freddie, one character we are basing Zak on.

This is Karl who will play the Drug Dealer

• Another story line we are looking at is a Drug Dealer played by Karl. He is the 'leader' of the group of friends and the party, we are taking elements from the character Chris from series one and two of Skins, he is a 'druggie' character but very loveable, his attitude for life that he often reminds the other characters in Skins is 'F*** It' we are also basing Karl on Alo from series 5 and 6 of Skins. He is loud, funny but like the rest of the characters has underlying problems that will arise in the soap. He brings the comic relief to the dark soap we are aiming to create. We want to give Karl some one liners to shout in the trailer as we think this will fit well with the trailer and his character. One direct line that we will use that Alo says is "we are the children of the revolution'' we think this will link with our theme of our soap. 

Alo, 'funny' character.

Chris series one of skins

• Our third and final story line that we are thinking of using is the transmission of an STD. We are having our character played by Ben, after having 'relations' with Hannah (myself) (our other character) we are going to have Ben receiving a phone call, the only thing we'll hear is "the results were positive" and then we see Ben leaving to find Hannah to 'break the news.' 

We are pretty certain on our first two ideas and need to develop our third idea accordingly.

Influence from other trailers

During the reasearch for our soap opera I have come across alot of scenes and clips from existing trailers for soaps and series that I would like to recreate in my own soap opera trailer.
Below are the full adverts and stills of my favourite bits that I would like to recreate and make work for my own soap:

1. Hollyoaks 'messy' trailer is what our idea is originally based on. We like the idea of the bouncy music and a party in a derelict building however on more research we preferred the darker theme that skins offered us.

We particularly like this shot of a girl kissing another boy,  the 'dirty' look she gives to another girl clearly shows a love triangle story within a matter a moments. Below is the full trailer.

2. Another Hollyoaks trailer we really liked was the 'Enchanted' 2012 trailer, it was very surreal and kept us engaged through out.  Here is the trailer below: 

We love this scene of letting the lanterns off in the sky.

3.  Skins 'Breathe Me'. Although this isn't a real trailer it has been very well done, and a particular scene we would love to recreate is the crabbing shot of the bed to the skins character 'Freddie' opening his eyes. Below is the entire 'trailer' and a screen shot of the panning shot.

4. Below are some screen shots from lots of the different skins trailers from all the different series, some shots we'd like to recreate and some we purely like as they are well done.

We love this running up the hill scene and would like to recreate it at one point.

We like the bed scene again.

I like this idea to end our trailer and promote when it might be on; something falling on the floor that sums up the entire trailer.

We would like to recreate this shot, the dark lighting and the characters running in. 

Why are soap Teaser Trailers used?

For our A2 media project, we have to create a trailer introducing a new soap. Soap trailers are incredibly important in the world of media as they entice in existing and new audiences to watch the on going soaps. Teaser trailers for soaps let audiences know when something exciting or dramatic is going to happen in the soap without giving away the actual story like. Normally the theme of the storyline is suggested.
Below are some soap teaser trailers that I particularly like:

This advert is for the very first series of Skins, we like this advert as its fast paced, young and idolises every teenagers dream of 'sex, drugs, rock and roll' My favourite part of this advert is the close ups of the slow motion scenes that fit with the pace of the music.

This advert is very different to the Skins advert, it's almost a behind the scenes look on Hollyoaks, again it is fast paced, it's up beat and fun. However the more we watch this trailer the more we dislike the upbeat idea, we prefer the darker side of the soaps like the Skins advert. 

This is the Being Human series 3 trailer, its dark and quite comical towards the end. The light verses dark in the different scenes works really well, you also get a good sense of the three main characters.

And we also researched existing A Level Soap Opera trailers, our favourite is one called This Life:

We love all the different camera angles, the dark colours used and the story lines of pregnancy, drugs and the breaking  into a house. They are very simple story lines but the angles and camera angles create a brilliant A grade.