A2 Media Studies: Evaluation.

Nicolle Carter-Grice

In what ways does your media product use, develop or

challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

My media product uses and develops conventions of real media products for example; whilst conducting research and then planning our product, we looked at current soaps and their trailers to depict certain conventions and build on our knowledge of what we had previously thought to be a soap convention. We found things such as, the costume that is worn by characters is mainly very realistic and credible in everyday society; other things we came across included settings of soaps which again tended to be a very realistic representation of modern day society for example the houses, streets, furniture etc. even pubs, local shops and mechanics garages are used to draw on comparisons between the soap world and real life.

The characters portrayed are mainly around the same age as the target audience as it allows that group of people watching to relate to the characters and their situations, which again are chosen carefully to draw attention to issues that may be going on at that current time. Also in soaps there is a big focus on women: women with power and middle-aged women, this is mainly because of the fact that soaps are mainly watched by women. There tends to be a range of characters- but mainly focusing on the working class in British soaps.

Conventions of the soap trailers we looked at in particular, tend to have the following:1. Time- the time the program can be viewed 2. Name of the soap- for the audience to identify with3. Days- days the soap is aired4. Institution- Channel 4, ITV, BBC etc. 5. Voice over- makes the trailer more dramatic and also helps people who may not watch the soap understand what is going to happen in the

upcoming storyline. 6. Characters- the characters that are going to be involved in the upcoming storyline will be in the trailer. 7. Stand Alone Sequence- the trailers for soaps are usually stand alone sequences which are especially filmed for the trailer and are not taken

directly from the soap itself.

During our research and planning time, we looked at and discussed all these aspects in order to construct a trailer of our own following the conventions that we felt necessary for the audience to relate with a ‘soap trailer’ however we challenged other conventions that we felt were less ‘set in stone’ for example: using music throughout the trailer may not be considered a typical convention for a soap trailer and aiming it at a younger target audience than most other well known soaps is also challenging conventions.

As for the two print products we created, we tended to stick to the main conventions of the soap magazine because they are well constructed and very popular as they are, people can recognize them straight away due to their trademark bright colours and well known characters faces being pictured on the front, we tried to make our magazine aesthetically pleasing and fairly priced but also competitive with other existing magazines as we used persuasive advertising techniques such as “2 weeks revealed” and “shock return” which allows consumers to believe they are getting ‘their money’s worth’.

The poster is quite unconventional as soaps don’t tend to make them a lot however as our soap would be relatively unknown we would need to do as much advertising as possible to promote it in order to gain a competitive audience level. We used the channel 4 institution logo so the public would know where they can watch the programme and we added the title of the soap in the corner of the poster so they could identify what the programme is called. The poster also has the returning character’s legs and costume and the letter that is seen in the trailer this allows the viewers to make the connections with the two whilst still not giving away the identity of the character.

Examples of trailers we looked at:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YbUoYGRbIyg http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iOlbvANgs8A http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ldiXVqHoVMQ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LtnxLOaLiPs

We used these trailers to discover new ideas and ways of making our soap trailer for example their advertising techniques, camera angles, choice of music and style. We tried to incorporate some of the existing soap’s ideas in our trailer, for example the cheating husband storyline and the character returning to the soap, the dramatic walking down the steps and the music that fits with the storyline which is virtually unknown.

How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary texts?

Our main product was very successful the audience feedback was generally very positive as were our ancillary texts which were made up of a soap magazine and poster.

We felt that our soap trailer fitted it’s purpose and both the trailer and the ancillary texts were very successful in advertising our soap whilst sticking to the main soap conventions whilst challenging some conventions that are less ‘set in stone.’

Together our soap trailer and ancillary texts work well as the front cover of the magazine gives a taste of what is to come in the storyline but doesn’t spoil the surprise of the face of who is returning to the soap as we wanted this to be a complete surprise, the poster also does this although the returning character’s body is shown in the same clothing and with the letter that is as seen in the trailer, so the audience can immediately relate the two and it should work in reminding them to tune into the soap, however the character’s body is shown the face is still not revealed so it works very well with effect as a teaser as people may think they have worked out who it is.

The ancillary texts were very effective, the feedback we received was generally very positive, many people said they liked the use of bright colours, specifically with the magazine cover which is typically bright and multicoloured, following the conventions of existing magazines, the bright colours, big bold writing, spoiler alerts and pictures of characters and upcoming storylines.

The poster is also brightly coloured, but is mainly in pink to follow and to in keep with our storyline in the trailer and the character’s personality who is returning which is very girlie and pink, which is meant to give people a clue as to who the returning character will be.

Overall, our texts and our trailer together, work very well as I think they are a complete package and that we have successfully covered all ways of advertising a soap trailer possible to gain a strong audience.

We have created a brand identity across the promotional package for example, the poster uses images from the trailer which help to anchor the soap.

I think that our products are very realistic in the sense that they fulfil their purpose and are credible and are similar to existing products for example the established soap magazines and existing trailers that we have looked at.

Examples of our two soap magazines, one with existing soap characters and one with our own photos:

Example of our poster advertising our soap:

What have you learnt from your audience feedback?

After finishing our main product and the ancillary texts we showed our products to the class and received feedback, some positive and some negative.

The most common positive feedback we received was about the storyline, how the music fitted well to the storyline and how at the end of our trailer we had the information that helped people to recognise when our soap would be aired what time and what channel it would be on, we also made our own logo for the soap and used the channel 4 institution which the audience thought was good as it relates to identifying our target audience as channel 4 broadcasts “Hollyoaks” which is aimed at a similar target audience to ours, which is mainly teenagers and young people.

Some negative feedback we encountered was mainly about the lighting as quite a few people said it was too dark, which we did feel was an issue as we struggled to find the right lighting whilst filming scenes outside as it was quite dark and when editing it was quite difficult to perfect as the more we lightened it the picture became grainy and looked unprofessional.

Others said it was quite long for a soap trailer and seemed more like a short film, however as we didn’t have a time limit we decided it was better to do more than not have enough footage and we also wanted the audience to see the story unfold to get them interested in the soap and I don’t think we could have portrayed that quite so well in a short teaser trailer, so we opted for a feature length trailer.

The feedback we received on our print products was mixed, however many people we asked said that the pictures were too blurry and some of the writing was not clear enough, after we received that feedback we re-edited our products, making adjustments to the writing and making the pictures clearer as we wanted them to appear well presented and to look appealing and professional.

Overall, we were very pleased with the feedback as it was constructive and the positive out did the negative and as we were very pleased with our final product we were delighted with the positive feedback which reassured us that our product was sufficient and we were able to take the negative criticism on board.

How did you use new media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages:

For my planning and research I mainly used the internet as a resource to find the information I needed, I used Google blogger to keep accounts of my work up to date and we did a lot of power point presentations to present our findings, some of which were updated onto the blogger, this was useful as we were able to regularly outline our ideas and create detailed plans.

We used a DV camera to film our footage of the soap trailer and took pictures of the characters with a digital camera we then uploaded our footage to Final Cut and the pictures to Paint Shop Pro, which we then used to edit our trailer and photos for our planning and for the ancillary texts.

Whilst editing, one of the things we mainly had to adjust was the lighting, for example there was one specific part we struggled to edit: as the girl walks down the steps in the trailer, the lighting was too dark to depict her legs and feet which was obviously the key part to that clip, however when we tried editing it to make it lighter the footage went grainy and looked unclear and unprofessional, it took us many attempts to get it right and in the end we had to export that scene to another programme in order for us to make the changes we needed.

Another technical problem we cam across was the sound, some of the dialogue was too quiet for the camera to pick up clearly so we used non-diegetic sound for the new year countdown in the trailer, our characters said the words into the microphone on the computer and we then deleted the existing sound and added in the non-diegetic voices in the right place in the scene to keep the lip sync.