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.
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.
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.
According to the web, a trailer is 'used to advertise an upcoming film, tv program, video game or product.'
What is a soap?
The soap opera genre originated in American radio serials of the 1930s, and owes the name to the sponsorship of some of these programmes by major soap powder companies. Tv soap operas are long running serials concerned with everyday life. The serial is not to be confused with the series in which the main characters and format remain the same from programme to programme but each episode is a self contained plot. In a serial at least one storyline is carried over from one episode to the next. A series is advertised as having a specific number of episodes but serials are potentially endless. Successful soaps may continue for many years: so new viewers have to be able to join in at any stage in the serial. In serials the passage of time also appears to reflect 'real time' for the viewers.
Being Human the BBC 3 supernatural television drama was filming shots for their new series at a local hotel, The Mardy, near our school. We were lucky enough as a class to go down to the set and look around, meet the director, some of the cast and watch them shoot some scenes. The director gave us a tour of the set that they were using and some rooms that they had created in the hotel just for the filming. It was incredible to see how some pieces of set were created and used. We went into costume and makeup and saw all the different costumes lined up for all the characters involved and we saw the new vampire of series 5 'Hal' played by Damien Molony getting his makeup done. After that we watched them shoot one scene for the new series including the new villain played by famous actor Phil Davis, they rehearsed the shot twice and it took around four takes before the director was happy. Although it was a slow process it was very interesting to watch. To get the shots a steadicam was used, this is where the camera is strapped to the camera man, he can run with the camera attached to him and still create a smooth image on screen.
After we watched the filming and they prepared for more shots, we sat outside and spoke to the on site Health and Safety officer who was a nurse, she explained the importance of health and safety when on a production and gave us a portfolio of all the information that needed to be collected from on site staff in order to prevent any serious accidents.
The portfolio included:
an accident book
a sample of risk assessments
examples of potential emergency situations
tablets and medicine, spray and inhalers, creams and rubs, insec bites, oral ointments
accident and illness forms
media referral documentations
disclaimer
paitents own medication
set medic protocols and guidelines
equal opportunities policy
daily activities for medics on set
oaoer nd electronic documentation protocols
safe storage of medical kit
oxygen policy
oxygen TREM card
confidentiality
complaints
data protection policy
environmental policy statement
health and safety policy statement
equal opportunities policy
medicalconfidentiality
manual handling guidelines
safe storage of medical kit
clinical waste
We also discussed all the people needed to make a production like Being Human, all the different departments are as important as each other to make a successful shoot. The different departments include:
Executive producer
Producer
Line producer
Director
3rd A/D
2nd A/D
1st A/D
Runners
Sound
Electricians
Carpenters
Wardrobe
Make up
Health and Safety
Accounts
Locations
Caterers
Actors/actresses
Extras
Art Departments
Props Department
image of the main cast from series four
Unit Drivers.
It was an amazing experience and there was no better way to start our research and planning for our A2 course.
here are some images taken while we were visiting the set, we looked at make up and costume.
