The initial thoughts on the type of soap opera i would like to create would be different to the major soaps that are on television at the moment. It would contain more humour and believable scenarios and showing how smaller incidents change peoples lives just as much as larger things such as death and divorce.
The soap would be aimed at 15-30 year olds mainly. With the use of extra humour the soap would have a lighter feel to it compared to the feeling of inevitable doom which many major soaps have. With the age group we are aiming our soap at we would include the stereotypical depiction of people of that age group.
The programmes that it would take inspiration from would be Friends and Skins, in these shows they use everyday occurances and create humour and sorrow, in both shows they have a very strong bond between all of the friends, i think a wider scale version of these shows would create a better feeling of community compared to the soaps that highlight violence and aggression and disputes between family and cultures.
This is a trailer for Skins Series 1, in this trailer it shows the lifestyle that many young people want to lead and the effects from it, my soap would run along the same sort of storylines.
I would prefer to have a certain amount of main characters and follow their road compared to following many different characters and sometimes becoming confused with what storylines are relevant and which are not. As it is a soap and would have more then one episode a week the group of friends wouldnt be able to be the only group as peoples attention would dwindle as storylines would become stale.
The main storyline would be the coming of age years of many childrens lifes, it would be the discovery of new things, including drugs, sex and relationship break-ups, This is staying close to the generic conventions of soap operas but my soap would differ through keeping storylines believable and able to happen to any people their age. I would try to keep to verisimilitude as much as possible as drama is much more believable when you can imagine your self being in that position.
The setting for the soap would be in a large town, that way many scenarios could arise, and many characters would be sharing many of the same issues. The language used would not be slang as can be found in youngsters in many soaps. They would include different accents and phrases, but all would be spoken in proper english as with soap operas using more and more slang it spreads rapidly through to the audience and has a negative effect on society.
The trailer would include an introduction to a few characters and to the settings. With the lack of talking in a trailer i think it creates more of suspense for what the show will be about. The trailer for Beaver falls is a good example of this, it hints at what the audience will get but never fully tells them.
The soap that I would like to create a different feeling to many other soaps and try to keep things as up beat as possible, i think this would bring in a large audience as many people would want more humour and happiness in their soaps.
Wednesday 31 August 2011
Soap opera History
A Soap opera is different to other television programmes due to the open-ended nature of the narrative, with stories spanning several episodes. The defining feature that makes a television program a soap opera, according to Albert Moran, is "that form of television that works with a continuous open narrative. Each episode ends with a promise that the storyline is to be continued in another episode"
Soap operas originated from the boom in radio sales during the 1920's. To aim for the market that would be at home during the day the radio producers targetted women with Dramas. Many of these were sponsored by cleaning items and household goods as the target audience was mainly female. The first radio soap opera based in Chicago was sponsored by margarine for example. By 1939 the press had started to call the drama's "soap operas." The term opera had changed sense of the word since in the 20's when western films were described as "horse opera" These films changed the meaning of operas from musical to a T.v drama. .
Soap operas have a greater impact on peoples lifes that they realise. For example the American television show, Friends. According to a study by a linguistics professor at the University of Toronto, found that the characters used the word "so" to heighten adjectives more often than other, such as "very" and "really". He discovered that the use of "so" to heighten the adjective had become widely used across America very quickly. This is showing how to use of certain language can affect the way that a wider range of people can speak.
A large amount of people tune into soap operas weekly, certain episodes can reach larger audiences if it is a end of a large storyline, had heavy advertising or if it is an anniversary episode. Eastenders and Coronation street have been in the top 10 most viewed Tv shows since 1993. This highlights the large amount of people that view largly publisiced episodes.
This is an example of a trailer for the anniversary episode in Coronation Street:
To show the amount of people that view soaps weekly i have researched using BARB to find figures showing how many people view them weekly:
Week ending 3rd of July:
- Eastenders (Mon)- 8.63 Million
- Coronation Street (Mon)- 8.86 Million
- Emmerdale (Thu)- 7 Million
Most soaps follow certain conventions, they usually have the same kind of characters, same storylines but all have a different way of telling them asnd many come from different angles. For example many soaps have these characters and places:
- Pub/ Pub landlord
- Local shop/ Shop owner
- Local business man
- Old married couple
- Newlyweds
- Toughman
- Villain
- Peace maker
- Homosexuals
- Teenager
- Troubled teenager
Soap Operas bring in a large audience weekly, with such a large audience the effect soaps have on the public can not be seen very easily, but the study on the effect of Friends on the American public gives an insight to how powerful soaps can be.
I found this information through many different means:
Will Howlett
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