Soap Opera Initial ideas - Write Up

After creating a mood board and mind map and discussing as a group our initial ideas for our soap opera we have come to a decision of what we want our soap opera to consist of.

Location - The location we have chosen for our soap opera will be a stereotypical town consisting of such places as nightclubs, pubs, cafes for our characters to go to. We have taken inspiration for this from the SU bar in Hollyoaks, these sorts of bars are common on university campuses so to keep in with verisimilitude we would include these in our locations.

Characters - The age of our characters we have chosen will be between 16 and 19. Our characters will be college age. There will be a mixture of types of characters in our soap opera consisting of stereotypical emo's chavs and indie kids, like those off dramas such as Skins, Misfits and Hollyoaks.

Storylines - The storylines of our soap will be a rebellious over the top look at student life consisting of use of alcohol drugs and drink. The teens will get in trouble with the law and generally be rebellious in the story lines.



Narrative - Our narrative would show the contradicting views on life at a university and the different emotions felt by students. As our piece is a soap opera it will be an open narrative.


Real media products/inspirations - We will be using a popular E4 programme 'Skins' as our inspirational product as this is what our soap opera will mostly relate too because of the rebellion theme and use of young adults/teens. Our soap will also relate to 'Hollyoaks' as this programme also uses mostly young characters so our soap opera will be a mixture of the characters from 'Skins' and the story lines from 'Hollyoaks'. Another relation to our media product will be 'Eastenders' as the setting will be similar (Town/City mainly outside) 'Eastenders' is the type of location we will be looking for when filming our media product.

Target Audience - There is a wide target audience for our Soap opera due to the use of many different types of character in the shows however there is a clear age range we are aiming for which will be teenagers due to the use of teenagers as our characters as we feel that teenagers will be able to relate to what they are seeing. We will be aiming at low demographic groups as our target audience due to the use of setting for our soap, as it will be filmed in city areas low demographic groups may be able to relate to what they see and to the story lines that occur.

Titles - Our titles will need to reflect on students and teenage life's, the titles need to be fast paced to keep up with what will happen in each episode as the soap will be as a whole fast paced.

Our piece will follow the same conventions as other soaps and dramas such as Skins, Hollyoaks, Beaver Falls and Inbetweeners. As a group we enjoy these dramas and feel that a mixture of the styles of these could make great watching. The trailers for a selection of these dramas shows our point as they use comedy to show serious points.

Trailer for Misfits:


Trailer for Inbetweeners series 3:




Trailer for Skins series1:

 

Trailer for Beaver Falls:

 

I have found these trailers to highlight the things that we want to include in our trailer, these trailers use comedy and excitement to get people to want to watch the soap. This is how we want to attract people to our soap.

Will Howlett