Demetri - Samples of Music

Originally, my group had chosen a soundtrack for our project created by UK Drum & Bass artists 'Nero'. Although the soundtrack was very suitable and complimented my group's trailer we were unable to include it in the final version due to copyright. We were unable to gain permission from the artists so the song had be changed.

We then decided to get our soundtrack from the London Grid for Learning so that we could avoid any copyright complications. After my group went through near enough 100 soundtracks from different categories on the LGFL we eventually settled for a piece called 'World United'

Samples of both have been included on a disc submitted with my group's coursework.

Demetri - Soap Trailer End Title Sequence

Demetri - Empire Avenue Shooting Script

This is the shooting script for my group's media production, we'll have this with us to refer to on the day(s) that we record.

Shot	Timing	Description
1	4 seconds	Approaching train
2	1 second	‘Palmers Green’ sign
3	1 second	Train station ‘exit’ sign
4	4 seconds	‘Saul’ walking up train station steps
5	1 second	Front door being unlocked
6	1 second	Front door being opened
7	4 seconds	‘Saul’ entering house and hugging ‘Andreia’
8	5 seconds	Hug ends and ‘Andreia’ leaves the room
9	3 seconds	A photograph of ‘Saul’ and Nicole
10	5 seconds	‘Saul’ entering the living room and sitting next to ‘Andreia’
11	2 seconds	‘Mustafa’ walking down an alleyway and assaulting ‘Aran’
12	1 second	‘Empire Avenue’ road sign
13	1 second	Shot of ‘Mustafa’ pushing ‘Aran’ against a wall
14	1 second	Shot of ‘Mustafa’ pushing ‘Aran’ up against wall from ‘Aran’s’ point of view
15	1 second	Shot of ‘Mustafa’ looking around for something on the floor whilst keeping a hold on ‘Aran’
16	4 seconds	‘Saul’ and ‘Andreia’ conversing shortly before ‘Andreia’ leaves the room
17	2 seconds	‘Andreia’s’ phone that she left on the couch from ‘Saul’s point of view
18	7 seconds	‘Saul’ moving across the couch and checking through ‘Andreia’s phone
19	7 seconds	‘Saul’ calling ‘Andreia’ back into the room and questioning her about what he found on the phone
20	4 seconds	‘Andreia’ attempting to explain herself
21	3 seconds	‘Saul’ leaving the house
22	1 second	‘Andreia’ running to the door as ‘Saul’ closes it
21	2 seconds	Two trains crossing paths

Demetri - Minutes of Meetings 9/12/2010

Agenda: What do we want our Soap Opera trailer to communicate to the audience?

Present at meeting: Demetri, Mus & Saul

Person recording minutes: Demetri

Start time: 2.13 PM

End time:

Demetri: What do we all want to represent with this Soap Opera trailer we’re making?

Mus: I think we need to make a trailer that represents something more experimental than conventional Soap.

Demetri: Something that stands out?

Saul: That’s true, Soaps are all similar but we need to stick to having traditional Soap Opera elements otherwise it’ll be classified as a Drama or something along the lines.

Demetri: I agree with both of you, I’d rather make a Soap Opera trailer that shows a more experimental approach to the genre but still manages to stay in the guidelines of traditional Soap conventions.

Mus: We need to work out how we’re going to get that balance.

Saul: It shouldn’t be too hard once we have a solid idea of how we want our Soap, at the moment we can’t be too specific because we haven’t established characters, script etc.

Mus: We should just establish a general set of ideas of how we want our Soap to be, once it comes to establishing characters we can work with these ideas.

Demetri: I think as far as traditional Soap Opera conventions are concerned, we need to display parallel storylines that show typical elements such as relationships, affairs, confrontation etc, a sense of community and the mise en scene that you would expect to see in a Soap Opera.

Saul: Don’t forget realism, shot types and editing.

Mus: Realism is an important factor; we can engage the audience by basing our trailers narrative of things the audience can relate to. Like you said Demetri, relationships, affairs and confrontation. We can also try and include current affairs in our trailer. As for shot types and editing, it’s a trailer so we don’t have to be close to home with the genre, we can push the boundaries.

Saul: That’s a good point, I think a good way to make our Soap stand from others is by giving a different target audience as well as viewing schedule to others. If we take all we know about the genre and adapt it to a younger audience, say late teens to late twenties and put it on a channel such as E4 we’ll have something that stays within the Soap Opera conventions and stands out by appealing to an audience of its own.

Demetri: Yeah, I agree, that’s what we need to focus on if we want our Soap to be different from others. Target audience is a key element and if we focus on changing that that instead of conventions such as parallel storylines then this will all go to plan.

*End of minutes*

Mustafa - Evaluation Task 2

Magazine

This is our poster for our new soap opera ‘Empire Avenue’ I think that as this is a poster, it has to be very basic and the information on this poster has to be very clear. Information such as viewing time and the channel it is going to be aired on, and how many times a week it will be shown on TV.
The strengths of our poster is that it is very clear and very basic. We have a cropped image of two of our characters; this image shows tension between the characters, which can show the audience that they are at a rough patch within their relationship. The title at the top shows the audience the title ‘Empire Avenue’ this signifies to the audience that this is a soap, the title of this is a typical soap title, as other soap operas such as coronation street which is the name of an actual road. The viewing times and the days it is going to be shown are printed on the poster as well as audiences are clearly informed about the days and times shown, the channel that our new soap is going to be shown is also clearly shown on the poster.
I think the weakness of our poster is the colour, it is not that enticing and can prevent attracting audiences, and can affect the amount of audiences watching the shows.

Webpage

this is our home page for our new soap, this is the welcome page to our site, which has 4 other page links to it. These pages include character pages of David Wake and Craig Smith and other pages including photos of the soap and a blog of upcoming events. Our home page includes the trailer for our soap. And also an introductory paragraph of what our soap is about, and what you can look forward to.
The home page shows the channel logo which is ‘E4’ which shows the audience what channel our soap will be shown on and at the same time can signify the target audience we are trying to cater to.

Trailer
This is our trailer for our new soap ‘Empire Avenue’. Our goal for this trailer was to show audiences that we can create a soap trailer by applying soap conventions and narratives to the trailer.
I believe that in our soap we have produced really clear and typical storylines, and characters that our target audience can definitely relate to.
One of our downfalls for our trailer was not using all the shots that we had taken, I believe our trailer could have been more effective and narratives clearer to the audience if we used the shots that had not been used, some of the shots include one of our characters getting off the train signifying his return to the avenue.

Mustafa - Evaluation task 1

Title

The title ‘Empire Avenue’ came about from a road located in Edmonton N18. The name first started as ‘The Lane’ as we got inspiration from other soaps such as ‘Coronation Street’ as they take names from actual roads. Our soap then went to the name of ‘Empire Lane’ then after further discussion we thought we should change the name of our soap to an actual road name (Empire Avenue) to increase the realism. Empire Avenue is a real name and the name itself signifies a sense of community already.

· Setting –

the setting used is palmers green high road a long stretch of road with countless places that create community including pubs, gyms and supermarkets. Our characters will mainly be seen roaming this road, and live in the housing nearby the high road, a quiet area that always has tension and drama floating in the air.

· Costume/Props –

The costumes used in our soap is clothing that can be found on any high street. Clothing that can be seen everyday, very casual. The type of clothing used for some characters can represent their personality e.g. Craig Smith wears a hoody which then can portray him as a troubled youth. Props used in our soap are very conventional in everyday and are items that are very common in society today e.g. iPhone which is used by Nicole. All these items are used to add realism to oursoap because these items are commonly seen in everyday life.

· Camerawork/Editing –

The camera shots that were used for our soap trailer were not the conventional shots that are seen in soap operas in general and also soap trailers. From our research we found out that soap trailers are more cinematic compared to the soaps itself, an example of this is ‘Coronation streets’ 50^th anniversary trailer where a tram clash is about to take place. The editing we did to our shots were also not conventional in soaps, however more extravagant editing can be seen in soap trailers an example of this is ‘Eastenders’ western themed trailer. An example of some of our editing is when David Wake (played by Saul Nash) is walking up the stairs to exit the train station and the shots jumps from him walking from the bottom of the stairs and then jumps to him nearly at the top of the stairs. This not only looks good but also helps our trailer become more efficient as we can show more content in a shorter time, as trailer are very short, and are usually around a minute long. Other little editing that we have applied into our soap trailer is fading images into the shots, so audiences have a clearer understanding of what is going on, for instance when David is going through Nichole’s phone the audience does not know what is written on the phone therefore we faded the text conversation into the backdrop so audience can read what is written between the characters but at the same time see the performance from the actors. This also helped us be more efficient as instead of adding an extra 2-3 seconds of footage we have tied it into the trailer already so we have not added minutes to out trailer.

· Title/Font/Style –

This is our title shot of our new soap. As you can see we have a blue stone effect in the backdrop, to give a gritty feel to our soap. In our soap we want to follow the typical conventions of a soap so we can attract a soap audience, however as a new soap we want to challenge the typical soap by trying to attract a younger than typical target audience. Our soap will capture realism within society today and portray issues within society today. Our soap will also present a great sense of community which will have tie in joy and happiness which is accompanied by comedy within the community.

· Narrative/Storylines and how they are set up –

Within our trailer we show two different narratives. The first we come across is the return of David Wake (Saul) to Empire Avenue after a lengthy absence because of a violent incident he was involved in. after he’s arrival David goes to his girlfriends house Nicole (played by Andreia) where then he finds out that she is seeing someone else. This is a very typical narrative that can be recalled from various soaps. We chose to use this narrative because we felt that it would be a very clear storyline for audiences to understand what is going on between the two characters. The second narrative that we used was more male dominant as we see Craig Smith (played by Mus) push Aran (played by Aran Singh) onto a alleyway wall, the reason for this is because Aran has told the community Craig’s darkest secret when he told him not too, resulting in his reputation being ruined. This again we felt would be an easy narrative for audiences to pick up, as we can see the conflict between the two characters.

· Genre and how the sequence suggests it –

I believe that our soap clearly signifies to the audience that we are creating a new soap. The narratives and the storylines in the trailer show drama, conflict and community which are some of the main conventions within the soap genre. Our trailer shows a great deal of realism, as we see the violence between two characters in an alleyway. Also relationships are a huge part of soap operas, therefore we decided to bring a relationship into our trailer, a relationship with a hint of drama coinciding. Even though our trailer is only 72 seconds, we believe we have established drama and conflict within these seconds.

· Characters and how they are introduced –

David Wake is our first character that is introduced within our trailer. We see him exiting the train station after returning to the Avenue. We then see the partner of David, Nicole is waiting at home for David and welcomes him home after opening the door. We then have our two other characters which are introduced when we see a confrontation of both in an alleyway as we witness there conflict. All of our characters in our soap are young adults; we chose these characters so we can interest our target audience more, which is younger than the typical soap opera audience. Our target audience can also relate to the characters and therefore be more interested in watching as they might be dealing with the same problems that they are.

· Soundtrack –

The soundtrack within our soap is an upbeat sound with a slow start. This sound within our soap seems very chilled however closer to the end where we have an argument scene within two characters the pace of the music begins to speed up, showing chaos and disaster between the two characters.

Saul - Final Storyboard

After drafting the storyboard three times i finally came up with the three images below Although we may not use all of the different scenes featured within our storyline i feel as if a storyboard is a crucial way to visualise the outcome of our trailer before it has been shot.

Board 1 : Palmers Green Station

Above within this scene we aim to feature the return of the soaps main character by capturing him coming off of a train.

Board 2: Empire avenue Int. House

Within this scene we aim to introduce characters Nicole and David and thier decietful relationship.

Board 3. Ext. Alley

Here we aim to introduce the Dark side of character Craig.

television listings and soap magazines act as a weekly access to gossip outside of a soap opera this is particularly evident through the ways in which a typical headline would say something like " will she kill sis." and other referances to a soap operas Narrative.