Social Network Questionaire ( Soap opera research)

Media Facebook

I produced a questionaire on this social networking site called facebook, which allowed me to interact with different kinds of individuals around the world.

How soaps attract there target audience?

Soaps send out plenty messages, allowing the audience to put forward there own personal views, this helps to have a better knowledge of what their viewing, with the language and appearance of the characters, adding that extra excitement into the soap. As we all know must famous stars are targeted by teenagers, everything they say or wear is under critic, therefore there extra careful in what they say and wear, a good example of this is Hollyoaks, the soap targets young viewers day to day lives, allowing the theme of teenagers life style to be exposed, the sexy females were used to attract the male audience, due to the stereotypical views going round about how soaps are aimed at females.


As you can see from the poster girls were used in a sexy way to attract the male gender towards the soap, trying to compete with soaps like Eastenders and Coronation Street.





Graham Watson said "Dallas has to be one of the greatest ever TV shows, because it had all of the attributes for entertainment. It had great characters, good writers and story lines that ranged from the ridiculous to the sublime. Oh how easy it was to run an an oil company! Watching Dallas was pure fantasy, it's simply what makes TV fun and relaxing, take out an hour from the real world and enjoy, for people who saw the show they know what I mean!"

As you can See this refers back to my point earlier on about people having there own personally opinions , as we can see this viewer loved the show, from what i know about the show J.R was a rich successful business man who attracted a lot of girls, mainly due to the fact of the amount of money he had. Another thing which still allows us as the audience to remember J.R is character was played in such a formal way, adding some form of realism in to the show, he also said the phase"Keep your friends close, but keep your enemies closer", which has turned into a famous saying in society and even been talked about in Parliament, the kind of affect shows like this have on the world are amazing, it manipulates the audience to live as if your in a soap, which is the reason they try to make soaps realistic but sometimes go over the top.

We will be using the sexy girl character in our soap, allowing not only our female audience to get invalid but also our male gender, we will be focusing on money so we could say Dallas is a good example of how money opens many doors in life, but if you don't have it , its hard, which is the point we will be focusing about. Our soap will be targeting 20-40 year old people, due to the fact they'll have a better understanding of the word "recession".

Focus group meeting

Via our focus group i learnt.... (by serhan velettin)

I learnt how important it is to be realistic, while composing our film. Interesting topics via the industry covered which enable us to focus of certain affairs in today society i.e the recession, which focuses on the economical situation in major retailers in London, and how they might of got affected by the recession. Our findings from the focus group allowed us to change our ideas slightly, helping us focus not only on the company's reaction but also the staff's, which has to be released due to the crises. Before we formed the focus group we decided to assign many roles to one specific character, which i was against but was later decided by the group its a good idea, when we reached the focus group we discussed each character and described there personality's and there roles in the film, for example the personal assistant was assigned with many tasks like; having family and kids, being a health freak and even being slightly gay, the focus group declined this character as he was "too many people in one", which they thought was not logical to be married and have kids and still be gay. There words were "i personally would not watch someone like that", which led to a major discussion on reason why they thought the character was "over the top". As we all know Eastenders is a successful soap on BBC 1, which is viewed by many people around the country, they have covered major factors like Gay's, bullying and business as a whole. While focusing on these points they never went over the top on one character, for example Christian plays the gay character in the soap, creating conflict in his own way, but he is not assigned other tasks on top of that to confuse the audience, these kinds of things were all talked about in our focus group, which my group finally decided to keep the personal assistant as a normal family person, dedicated to his job and boss. We also played a little game with them, We got them to draw there boss in detail and really add any kind of frustration to the image they had.

Agenda plan

Method of learning

1-Introduction

- Introduce ourselves
- Rough outline of treatment


2-General conversation

- Talking to focus group
- Asking questions like "if they watch soap?"

3- Give out handouts

- Which includes information on soaps like Eastenders and coronation street, which also includes most popular storyline which has occurred in the soaps.

- Look through handout, to have a good understanding of the kind of event which occur in soaps.

- Look through the questions on the questionnaire and answer them one by one

4- Discuss violent story lines

- Talk abut the kind of gossip which happens in soaps and what effect does it have on our society today.

- Examples of violent storyline would be for example, Phil in Eastenders knocked out on the floor in blood.

Example of violent story lines

-Eastenders - The fact that every Christmas day someone dies on Eastenders i think really gives the soap a unrealistic view.

- For example-
1- so called "Dirty Den" comes back from the dead and returns to the soap after many years, creating a shocked appearance on the square and also on our screens.
He is later killed off the show by three women that he slept with, close to Christmas day.


-Coronation Street -Tony Gordon attempt to strangle Jed Stone with women's underwear, both of these characters were well respected before greed got in to the equation and also before the characters started arguing about money.

Debatable questions


- Why do soap use domestic violence in there shows?

- And do you think this would effect a young viewer? If yes in what way would it effect them?

New Trailer (Group effort)

Note: Each dialogue the boss speaks she will be wearing different clothes to show the different days that the redudencies were being announced.

Employee 1 - happy

"Hello"

lights cigarette

Employee 2 - confused

"So hows everyone working downstairs"

lights cigarette

drinks coffee

Employe 3 -nervous

*nodding* "It's a hard time now"

lights cigarette

drinks coffee

typing on keyboard

"I wanted to let you know"

lights cigarette

drinks coffee

typing on keyboard

puts cup to the side

Employee 4 - worried

"These are the expected figures"

lights cigarette

drinks coffee

typing on keyboard

puts cup to the side

"We can't afford to go the way we're going"

lights cigarette

drinks coffee

typing on keyboard

puts cup to the side

stubs cigarette out

Employee 5 - crying

"I'm going to have to let you go"

lights cigarette

drinks coffee

typing on keyboard

puts cup to the side

stubs cigarette out

Zooms out to Boss sitting in the chair completly exhausted

Verve House appears center stage as if being typed.

.End.

Poster idea (done by Serhan and Aslihan)

The first three posters show dominant female characters. We want to emphasize on this idea on our trailer on empowering women. It has elements of film noir because of the silhouettes and shadows. i think this is a good way in showing that there is a "dark side" to the business in some way. The idea of a woman holding a cigarette is quite good because of the masculine elements it has.

Group meeting

Agenda

Website preparation
-Asign tasks
Filming preparation-Asign tasks
Evaluation focus group
- group discussion

Minutes

Website
- What's being communicated (ideas, feelings or both)
- How its being acheived
- What is being sold
- How is this acheived
- Entertaining, Educationg, Marketing (combination of all three)
- Everyone must design a draft for the home page of our website and present this on:
Thursday 19/11/09

Focus group
-Agreed that the PA is not gay
- Show the main effects of the recession effecting the business. Showing the boss speaking with individuals about their redundency
- Accountant showing the balance sheets
- Boss shows order forms/estimated figures to employees

Filming
Due to our focus group we were informed about many things which we otherwise pressumed inacuratly. We shall present a small video to highlight the focus group discussion. This will be done after our filming.
Our original ideas for a trailer have no been changed. See other post for detailed specifics.

Treatment: Verve House (Group effort)

Verve House is an office set in north London which distributes clothing to major retail firms. The business is running successfully and employees would be classed as middle class, however there is a spectrum of classes used throughout the characters because of the mixed class society London is today. The boss, Aya, is the woman in charge. She wears a headscarf as it shows she's religious, we chose Islam as the religion of this character because of the current prejudices of western societies and the headscarf is a distinctive symbol of this religion, she is a representation of a strong dominant female as well as a representation of multi cultural London. She is intimidating towards the employees just as any other boss would be.

Some characters are homosexual; some are open about it whereas some keep it secret. In today’s society it is a norm to have any preferred sexuality. However, age and status may get in the way of this norm. The youngest character, the new girl, is homosexual, she is quite open about it; whereas Peter, the PA is married and has a family and feels as though he cannot reveal this about himself. This idea reflects how norms of society have changed rapidly over time.

The new girl character has a 3 month work placement from her university and her family background is from a working. Her role to the audience is to allow them to emphasise with her because she is new and everything would be introduced to her as well as everything being introduced to the audience. Her working class background represents the changing of this class identity, and that she is able to achieve a middle class background. This character also appeals to the younger audience because students would be able to emphasise with her.

The soap also features disabilities. The ‘sexy/handsome guy’ has a mental disorder - ADHD/ADD basically meaning Attention Deficit Disorder which summarises a lot of his characteristics; he has difficulty concentrating. He gets prescribed medication for this. He is accepted and quite popular within the workplace, his disorder does not make him a bizarre character because he has medication for it. It is quite common in the real world for some people to have similar mental disorders, even schizophrenia as long as it is manageable, and in this case: it is.

The representations are well suited for a busy city like London. It is quite normal for London to be multi-cultural and with people who have different views and preferences. Middle-class and students would be the target audience of this soap. Students would be attracted to the professional looking setting, just like the new girl, they would be interested in their future career and what it would be like. Middle classed audiences would be the main target audience. Middle classes are thought to be of high culture and education; they may be interested on the different representations of contemporary UK. Or, they could just be attracted to the narratives and characters.

All the different characteristics of the characters highlights that even in a crowded place like London, anyone can easily feel lonely.

location

This is a meeting room in our office location. It's hard to see due to the reflection from the lights but in the background you can see a large warehouse containing fashion garments and hundreds of boxes. We thought we may replicate this idea as a drafted idea for our own poster. Obviously it's less glamorous as Freefall as we thought to bring back down to Earth. It shows the real life industrial lifestyle, it also shows more dominance and gives off a mood of mischief and dodgy deeds.



If we decide as a group to go ahead and create a prototype developing this idea, i believe it will be an accurate representation of our soap.

poster draft

The program freeFall as huge resemblance to our soap so i thought it'd be worth looking at advertisements from them. The DVD cover was the same as the poster and it shows a high powered business man (white) standing in his office gazing out at his amazing view. This holds a lot of symbolism that's easily interpreted from the viewer. The man is very high up from the ground which can be a physical representation of his class in society, his possible bank balance and his egotistic character.



When visiting our location we had various idea's of having our poster in a similar style to this. It's very ambiguous, it features who you'll presume to be the main character. The colour schemes are not particularly eye catching so this may need adjusting. Like most posters the characters centralised it gives you a clear narrative image of the environment and it features the broadcaster.



We wouldn't follow this as our targeted audience will not be based in the center of London, we still wish to relate to our suburban viewers. This is due to the success of Eastenders so we thought to follow certain conventions with this soap in particular

Focus group research questions

1. What kind of soaps do you prefer watching and why?
2- Who your favourite character? And what does he make you feel?
3-What makes a film realistic in your view?

4- What events which are occurring in real life, do you think would be good if it was turned into a tv program?

5- As we just explained in our treatment, we will be having odd characters from society, is there anyone round the business who you are suspicious of, wherever its gay behaviour or just weirdness?

6-Would you watch a soap that has a strong reality for example, real scenarios based around the recession?

7- Is there any part of reality you wouldn’t like to see in soaps?

8- The Muslim culture is often mentioned as terrorist organisation, what’s you personally opinion about this? (Because as you know one of our main characters is a boss of a major firm)


9-The recent downfall of all major firms due to recession , i.e. Woolworth , marks & Spencer and many more firms, do you think this has opened a gap in the film industry to take advantage of? Also do you think this should be taken advantage of?

10-Sexual behaviour something which is always effective, in soaps and films, a women is always used to attract the male audience, do you think using sexy guys would attract the female?

11- In your opinion which gender is soap mainly aimed out? Why?

12-Why do they have a main meeting point? (For example in Eastenders you got the pub) What does it enable the audience watching to capture?

Written by Serhan Velettin

Dirty Den Watts death (Focus group research)

More than 14 million people saw "Dirty" Den Watts killed off on Friday, marking EastEnders' 20th anniversary, according to unofficial figures.
Den's death came 16 years after he was supposedly shot in 1989. But he came back to the show in September 2003.
The audience for BBC One's one-hour special averaged 13.7 million and peaked at 14.2 million in the last 15 minutes, overnight figures showed.
Den died after being confronted by Zoe, Chrissie and Sam in the Queen Vic.

If the ratings are confirmed, the episode will have given the soap its highest audience for a year.
The overnight figures showed almost 60% of the viewing public tuned into EastEnders between 2000 and 2100 GMT, leaving ITV1 with about 13%.
"We are very pleased with the figures," a BBC spokesman said. "It shows viewers have really enjoyed the story of Den's demise."




1- So called Dirty Den Watts, was a gangster figure in the soap, doing what ever he wanted, sleeping with as many girls has he wanted, he never ever took no as a answer. Near enough to christmas day he is killed by three women, i think the soap trys to show female dominates by the gangster figure being beaten down by a women. Thanks to this storyline as you can see from the review bbc's ratings went to a record high level, Den watts coming back from the dead raised alot of eyebrows, with da soap becoming unrealistic.

poster idea

When we visited the location we began brainstorming some potential poster ideas. Walking in through the glass doors you see the name of the company in silver letters above the reception desk. I took this picture as a basic draft, we thought we could have Aya/the boss standing from the balcony looking down at the character in a stance that shows power and control.
By having Aya central to the screen above the title of the programme it follows a simplistic layout form which is a common convention from other posters we've seen. It shows a clear message of status, it can relate to many people has statistics say over half of employees feel intimidated or are bullied by their employer. Overall it has a striking effect, i think there's a concurrent colour theme. We could developing the framing better and digitally edit the colours.
Things for us to think about would be what slogans, if any, would we want to feature and where to position it.

Storyboard planning/research

Today we arrived at our primary location (the offices) this helped us all to gain a better understanding of the enviroment and inspired us to think creatively of how we're to shoot this trailer. It put into perspective we may need more characters to play apart as secondary characters/extras.


IDEAS:

-Serhan playing Peter can have chipped nail polish on his nails, only very slightly to convey an enigmatic narrative to viewers. It could mean his young daughter wanted to paint one or it could be his cheeky secret that he may like to paint his own nails as apart of his secret (he's gay and hiding).

- To link all the characters together and symbolic show that they all have an important role within the business we've thought to have a folder/documents passed round to all characters. We may begin a shot with a close up of Peter/serhans hands flicking through a filing cabinet to look for these important documents for their weekly board meeting. This will establish the setting for the audience.

- Another opening idea was that the new girl can arrive through the doors at reception, this will reflect the audience stepping into this new territory. The reception is one of the more glamorous areas and this can give a contradicting message, although the audience would only find out the business is not all it appears once they've entered. This can be be enigmatic and attractive to some viewers.

-Yet another opening idea could be Aya sitting upon her throne although her back is turned away from the camera and you only see this grand office chair. The chair can then turn still concealing her identity. You'll then see Aya's shoes/heels walking down the long corridor towards the confrence room. She'll then enter late as all other employee's are waiting patiently for the bosses arrival.

- We could have everyone gossiping in the meeting room before Aya comes in as we're aware gossip is a huge element to soaps, althought for a trailer we must highlight a dramatic storyline to capture the audiences interest.

- We're exciting about all the potential opening scenes and could feature all of them. Once Serhan finds the documents he could then beginning handing them round to all staff members around the table. This will allow us to film each character and highlight there main characteristics. Aya could eventually enter late being the last one to read the document. She can then reveal these secrete work documents. She can take them out and it large font the name of our soap either Verve House or Southbury Rd can be shown as well as negative bank statements. The camera can zoom out intoconvention soap form and there present upon the table newspapers feturing headlines about the recession or specific business failure.

- Be presenting all the characters at the table we're hoping audience's can find atleast one that they're intrigued by eg; the good looking sexy man, they may begin speculating he'll have an affair with Aslihan as we may chose to show them to staring at each other. But on Aslihan's arrival we can show her 'giving-the-eye' to the female receptionist, this will be one storyline we'll breifly introduce viewers with and it may be enough to want to make viewers tune in.

-As Aslihan walks into the building the tramp can be sitting just outside the main entrance or can be hiding in the car park. This may be enough to make viewers question why there's a tramp there. We could represent him to be rather shifty and intimidating, or generally dirty and degrading to the image of the business. However we chose to repsent this character, viewers make be rather shocked and would be interested to find out why he's there, weather he's allowed or maybe wondering if further action will be taken to remove him etc.

-When Serhans rustling through the files before the meeting he can comment on the nail polish, this again will hopefully cause questioning from viewers....Enigmatic storylines are a key convention to soaps and to trailers of all kinds and are focus at the moment is to present enough vague stories to appeal to a large audience without diverting from the realism of the situations.

Enigma's are key to attracting viewers to tune in, when filming a trialer it doesn't neccesserily represent the style of how the soap would normally be represented. This trailer we're planning, in terms of filming style and general narrative structure, is an exception to the normal conventions of soaps. If we were to film a scene from our soap then we would follow the tradionaly structures such as avoiding the close ups/abstrast representations and heavy symbolism.

Research:Posters

It is not surprising that Hollyoaks unlike the majority of other soaps uses posters, as it is an unconventional soap; different to other soaps. When analysing the poster i realised that Hollyoaks used the fact that it was different as a highlight for their poster and were proud of that.....


















The poster is mocking other soaps such as Eastenders and Coronation Street for their emphasis on pubs and perhaps for having a pub as the dominant central meeting point in their soap, through it featuring pubs and drunken people negatively. Hollyoaks is shown in the poster, as not being about drunken people in pubs like other conventional soaps but about young, glamorous, sophisticated characters. And so the image presented is a real one as shown through their annual calendar which features airbrushed, athletic, sexy, well presented characters and the soaps emphasis on student life.

*Throughout the whole poster there is a theme of spot the difference almost. This is clever not only because it takes the same format at spot the difference games in magazines, which the young target audience of Hollyoaks will be regularly read and so they will be attracted by this, but also because straight away it represents other soaps negatively whilst appearing positive and ‘better than the rest’.

The second image is intended to be everything that Hollyoaks represents, such as glamour, brightness and clever ideas as well as being different. Therefore, straight away when audiences look at the poster they will straight away draw a comparison which will put the second image as a better option. As a result the individual will begin to watch Hollyoaks rather than other soaps because the poster shows them to be not good enough and far less appealing.
*It can also be argued that Hollyoaks uses class to appeal to audiences and uses this as one of its criticisms of conventional soaps like Eastenders and Coronation Street. This is because the poster representing Hollyoaks is far better mannered and neatly represented. This is shown through the couple fighting who are shown in the second poster as Latin dancing, and the dog that is urinating on the carpet is shown neatly brushed in pink, eating from its plate.

Group meeting

During our discussions today we realisedthe pressure on. For thursday all reasearch should be complete.

Me, Zoe - Locations and mise-en-scene.
Look at The L Word and Home and Away

Aya - Characters
Looking at Emmerdale and Dirty Sexy Money

Aslihan - Camera movements and sound
Looking at Neighbours and Dirty Sexy Money

Serhan - Storylines and dialogue
Looking at Coronation Street and The Office


And everyone must complete their questionnaires.

Also look at articles and reviews of your selected soaps or dramas.

Brainstorming

Locations:
-Offices (central meeting point)
- Pub
- Car park
- Reception
- Kitchen (staff room)
- Car (travelling to and from work)
- Houses/homes
-Tube?

Target Audience:
-Middle/working class
- Unemployed, entrepreneurs, business minded people
- People of all ethnicity's

Main Characters:
1. Women in charge (boss).
-Very loud and powerful

2. Boss PA (personal assistant)
-Timid, quiet, keeps everything calm
- Gay, 'in the closet'

3. New girl.
- Attractive and flirtatious
- Lesbian
- Intern, training

4. Sexy man (tall, dark, handsome)
- 'normal' with a very peculiar laugh.
- Takes medication for mental condition (eg. ADHD)

5. Care taker
-'Stoner'
- Very slow and not very intelligent
- High most of the time

6. Tramp in the car park????
- Although in society he would be seen as a minor, we could make him someone who gives advice or something? so maybe he could be the philosophical one like the conscience of the cast because i think we need a kind of 'serious' character' since most the cast are eccentric in their personality. (aslihan) any comments?


These are some more rough ideas about our soap. We must refine them and be more specific of characteristics and whether or not there'll be enough realism. Once we've collected all our research we can then going through things in finer detail.

Our characters so far group effort)

The organisation is based around the fashion trade and it breaks away from the normal conceptions. Most people see fashion from the media's view of stylised and filled with glamour but this will behind the works of the spectacles and highlight the production. It will show how it ranging no differently, in terms of structure, from most other business organisations.


1. Boss - A women in charge, can be very dominant in the working environment and has tendencies to be a complete control freak. Normally someone in her position would often get very stressed, she's no different, she also has a few sneaky cigarettes when things get too much for her, these are hidden in her desk drawer. She also murmurs to herself prayers when things get tense, some people may mistake this for curses. She wears a headscarf as it shows she's spiritual although her mother who may feature from time to time won't. She's money greedy and is motivated by proving everyone wrong (including her childhood bullies). She has very small moments in the soap where she lets her guard down and shows her vulnerable side (this is only ever done to her PA). She is also a hypercondriact.


Bosses PA – a ‘normal’ man who has a wife and children at home. He’s an ambiguous character who may appear shady at times but this is due to recent gay feelings which he keeps very secretive from everyone. Although at times he lets on to the Boss as they have a very complex and trustworthy relationship. He acts as an ‘agony aunt’ to the boss when she gets too stressed. He appears bossy and arrogant towards other staff lower down the hierarchy to him, he’s known as a misfit to other workers and often gets teased by other employees (he’s made solitary). He’s a very good listener, well educated and is known as a health freak as he constantly reminds the others of their unhealthy lifestyles.


New girl – She’s been given a recent work placement in the office for 3 months as she’s studying fashion/business at university. She’s young, flirtatious and attractive. She’s gay and single and gets a lot of attention from the male staff. She gets very bored and attention seeking when there’s not much going on in the offices. She appears very helpful at first to make a good impression. She has many ambitions dreams to save the world and begins preaching that sweatshops are wrong and that there’s not enough recycling going on. She mirrors the audience as she too is new to the scene.


Production manager/sexy man – Tall dark and handsome (following the conventions of tv programmes). He’s a regular man with an eccentric laugh. He also has a mental disorder known as ADHD/ADD which summarises a lot of his characteristics. He gets prescribed medication for this.


Care taker – He’s a very intelligent man who is not highly rank in the organisation but is very well respected by most. He helps with the accounts as he’s a very good mathematician. He’s very humble, genuinely happy and smokes marijuana. He was previously prescribed marijuana as he suffered from anxiety issues therefore not being able to be employed by a professional organisation but as the boss as a sensitive side she was charmed by him.


Homeless man in the car park – very quiet man who spends his days outside the building as he’s very found of the workers. He recently lost everything due to the recession. He was already very lower class but the council refused him a home and is bound to the streets for several months. He’s able to use the shower in the warehouse and occasionally gets jobs unloading stock. He’s very wise and keeps the smokers company either with his guitar or general wisdom.

Questionaire

Sex
Age
Occupation
Social Class

List the soaps you watch

What's your favourite?

Which soap would you think is the most successful?

Why do you think this is?

What do you think of the soap?

Would you say it is realistic?

State what you think is unrealistic about it

Whos' your favourite character generally?

Why is this?

What storylines would you like to see more of?

Is there anything you would like to see more of?

Is there anything missing from your favourite soap that you would like to see?

Would you watch a soap that has a strong reality element? (eg. real scenarios based around the reccession)

Is there any part of reality you wouldnt like to see in soaps?

What would you relate to most in soaps?

When would you sit down to watch these soaps?

.

This is the questionnaire we are using to determine who the target audience is, and what sort of pitch we would like according to the information we receive.

Importance in camera movemet

Camera movements give the audience a more intelligent understanding of what is appearing on the screen, a good example would be someone getting angry, the camera would move from a long shot to a close up of the man or woman's facial expression. This would express the situation in a more highlighted approach , conveying to the audience the actor rage and frustration, and try to get the audience engaged in what is happening in the screen and to also feel what is happening as if they are in the situation of the person playing in the film.

Camera movement is one of the most expressive tools available to a filmmaker. It alters the relationship between the subject and the camera frame, shaping the viewer's perspective of space and time and controlling the delivery of narrative information. As the camera frame orients the viewer within the mise-en-scene, movement of the frame provides the illusion of the viewer journeying through the world of the narrative. The camera height and angle, the distance to a subject, and the composition of a shot may change during camera movement, as the framing travels above, below, around, into, and out of space. Types of camera movement are distinguished by their direction and the equipment used to achieve motion this creates the realism in any soap or film, which also makes it interested to the viewers watching at home.

A tracking shot indicates the camera through space parallel to the ground and can travel forward, backward, from side to side, diagonally, or in a circle. Whereas a pan or a tilt reveals what one might see when standing still and rotating one's head, a track provides the impression of actually advancing into space. Tracking shots are often produced with the camera mounted on a dolly, a small, steerable platform with rubber tires. Tracking shots receive their name from the railroad-like tracks that are frequently laid on the ground to guide the dolly during long camera movements, again another thing which adds to the realism in a soap or film.

KENJI MIZOGUCHI
b. Tokyo, Japan, 16 May 1898, d. 24 August 1956
One of the most acclaimed directors of world cinema, Kenji Mizoguchi created elegant, precisely staged long takes in films that examined the circumscribed choices of women in Japanese society. His tightly controlled camera movement, recessed foregrounds, and depth staging served to subordinate characters to the overall composition, positioning the viewer as an observer to highly emotional yet distanced subject matter. (As you can see this is a well known director)

A tracking shot being filmed for the chariot race sequence in Ben-Hur (Fred Niblo, 1925). (director decribing opinion of his own film)

rises and lowers on a platform connected to a mechanical arm, much like utility company cherry-pickers. A crane enables the camera to traverse great distances up and down, as well as forward and backward and from side to side. Although in use as early as Intolerance (1916), crane shots became a signature of the 1930s musicals of Busby Berkeley (1895–1976) and multiplied following technological improvements after World War II. In the late 1970s the introduction of the Louma crane further increased shooting options. The Louma operates like an oversized microphone boom, with a rotating arm and a remote-control camera mount at the end. The Louma transmits the image from the camera to the operator in another location, enabling the camera to move through very tight, narrow spaces that were previously inaccessible.

Aerial shots taken from a plane or helicopter are a variation of crane shots. A camera mounted on an aerial support can move into space in all directions while achieving much greater heights than can a crane. Filmmakers began exploring ways to mount a camera on a plane during the 1910s, and in the 1950s helicopter mounts created additional shooting possibilities. An aerial shot may frame another flying object, as during the Huey helicopter battle sequences of Apocalypse Now (1979), or it may provide a "bird's eye view" of the landscape, as in the swooping helicopter shot of Julie Andrews in the Alps at the opening of The Sound of Music (1965).

Eastenders trailer- Christmas is coming

The trailer starts off by popping up three words on to blank black screen. we see the word "Christmas is coming" in normal sized font in white colour but with a shadow in each letter, which links up with the soap very well giving it a Christmas look with the snowy font.
we also see the owner of the Queen Vec breaking a cracker with the non-diagetic music really adding to the atmosphere. The "BBC" icon is displayed underneath Peggy's chin in white , in standard font for the audience to focus mainly on Peggy's face. Then it cuts to a black background with small white blocks spelling " To Albert square", the non-diagetic music also implies that its going to be a happy day for some and sad for others, with the change in the singers voice. when the camera does a shot reverse shot from Max's daughter to Stacey you could feel the tension in Stacey's facial expression, which makes the audience want to see more

We see a shot reverse shot of Max's family and friends playing the video of max holding Stacey in the video with the non-diagetic music adding the shocking factor to this situation, a black out is used to indicate Bradley's animosity on his face, the eye brows really represent how serious Bradley is, which quickly switch's to a shocked reaction of Stacey's face to a gutted reaction on Max's face, with the lyrics in the non-diagetic soundtrack saying "all i want for Christmas is you" people aspect to see these kind of events appear in Eastenders, because there realistic things which do happen in our day t day lives.

Eastenders title sequence

The theme tune of Eastenders is something our ears are getting used to, especially when it zooms in then out over the millennium dome, which we call a birds eye view.
which enables us to see everything on the screen, but could also imply heirach and lowrach, which is the reason why the camera turns 360 degrees through the clouds of London.

We also see the river Thames,kind of separating two areas of London, and of course we see the standard size font(bold) fading in on on the screen to let the audience know the name of the soap, we also see the "bbc" symbol in standard font(bold) underneath the soap's name. both the soap name and "bbc" symbol are in white font. it could symbolize Innocent people. another thing which caught my eye is that the soap name and "BBC" symbol is in the middle of the screen, but on the top of the river, which think adds a very good effect showing a small map of London.

Cgi was used to create clouds which made the opening look more realistic, you can also see famous architecture which include the cityscape.

Group meeting

In lesson we looked at the conventions and forms of soaps. With this list we then (in our group) discussed possible conventions we'd like to keep, others which we'd like to develope and ones which we would discard.

Our ideas so far:

-Realism is crucial
- Ecentric characters
- 'Big Brother' soap - bizare characters in reality
- Viewing time is not crucial as with the internet and sky plus intelligent viewers can view it at any time that suits their leisure.
- Relevent to the year (eg, finacial year)
- Include more ethnic groups (possible sub titles)
- Documentary style (as similar to dramas such as desperete housewives)
- More depth than a love triangle
- 'ghetto twist'
- Keep strong narratives with gossip
- show more of a minority lifestyle within the mainstream (eg homeless people)
- Two sides of life in one location
- Have quirky camera work to appear glamorous/stylised
- Show glamorous lifestyle and reality

By next tuesday we should have a complete record of questionaires (which Zoe will do)
Everyone should do atleast one trailer and title sequence analysis (independently) we shall feed this back to eather either over the blogs or on Tuesday.
I hope people can begin posting pitches/treatments/general ideas about characters/storylines/storyboards etc.