Rebekha White submitted a media production project for her Advanced Production course at Aquinas College. Her soap opera, called The Edge, was meant to emulate the glamorous and dramatic styles of soap operas on E4. She used conventions like central locations, title cards, and fade transitions between scenes. Some elements challenged conventions, like leaving the audience unsure of a character's secret. The lighting, costumes, and locations in wealthy areas were meant to portray the class and status of the characters and match audience expectations of a glamorous soap opera genre.
3. Question 1. In what ways
does your media product
use, develop or challenge
forms and conventions of
real media products?
4. Using forms and conventions.
Glamorous
Dramatic
Gossip Younger
Audience
Both
feature on
E4 Romance and
Relationships
5. Using forms and conventions.
Place names.
The title of our soap is THE ‘EDGE’ – this is
taken from the place named Elderly Edge,
this is a Northern version of places such
as Essex or Chelsea, glamorous and
so called, ‘higher’ class.
6. Using forms and conventions.
Most soaps if not all have a social area to which they all gather, for
example; pubs, cafes, clubs and even students unions and halls.
Picconlino’s is a posh café/bar in Bramhall, this location allowed us to
use this convention, after research into various places we found
that this matched the ‘glamorous’ genre/theme for which we were
aiming to achieve.
7. Using forms and conventions.
Coronation Street has Coronation Street, Eastenders has Watford Square, The
Edge also has its one road to where all the action and drama unfolds.
8. Using forms and conventions.
Main action going on within the centre of the frame,
yet the focus is still on this profile of the person whose
watching.
Like most soap operas we decide that with our
camera work we would try to create a sense that the
audience are a ‘fourth wall’
9. Using forms and conventions.
Like trailers such as this Eastenders one, I decided to use, ‘fade to
black’ transitions in order to build tension and expectations as well
as allowing smoother jumps between scenes.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SclS5pslF_w
10. Using forms and conventions.
Title card placed at the end of the trailer
E4 purple
Day and Time
E4 logo
Matching the E4 branding
11. Developing forms and conventions.
LOCATION- Characters
act on being rich, posh
and better than others
yet the location actually
shows that they are not
fully who they are
pretending to be, and are
more ‘normal’ than they
think.
12. Developing forms and conventions.
Many soap operas use text messages in order to help explain the
story and to allow the audience to know more than the characters. We
took this convention and developed it by allowing it to had a certain
twist that keeps the audience guessing what the ‘congratulations’ is
for. We also decided to had 3 kisses at the end of the text to parody a
serious text message.
13. Developing forms and conventions.
USE OF EFFECT TO SHOW DREAM
MOST SOAP OPERAS LIKE EASTENDERS
WOULDNT USE EFFECTS LIKE THIS.
MAKE IT
CLEAR
OVER
EXAGGERATED
HIGH ANGLE SHOT OF ME OF STAIRS
14. Challenging forms and conventions.
Usually it’s the audience who knows more than the characters usually
do but not in this case we have Nat’s character knowing everything yet
the audience are still left not knowing exactly what her role is and
what exactly this secret is, the cheating? or something more serious
such as pregnancy?
15. •Does the combination of sound and images tell the audience how to
feel?
NERO- GUILT http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pf0SIkflu1E
•Music creates
tension and
urgency and
darkness of
the
situation.
Edits match the beat of the music:
•One beat per close up of characters on the end
•Beat as the car door slams
•The music drops as the tension has built – the edit
becomes quicker
16. •Does the editing connote the emotions shown in the trailer?
Fast pace editing- shows the
emotions of the characters building
grabbing
and creates tension,
the audiences attention,
leaving them wanting more, to
know what happens to the people
and therefore tuning in to the soap
opera.
17. •Do the lighting, props, locations and costumes reinforce audience
expectations about your programme?
• What messages do your costumes and locations send to the audience
about the class and status of the characters?
• POSH restaurant- is the second main location within my trailer it shows, class
and glamour with gold tinted lighting showing money and wealth.
• Door- Even the smallest props have an element of wealth, for example the gold door
knocker.
18. •Do the lighting, props, locations and costumes reinforce audience
expectations about your programme?
•What messages do your costumes and locations send to the audience
about the class and status of the characters?
Cars- not all of this aged people own cars- a car is featured throughout the trailer
showing again wealth. However if we were to re-film I feel that we should of used to
separate cars as at some points the trailer it is obvious it is the same car yet different
drivers.
19. •Do the lighting, props, locations and costumes reinforce audience
expectations about your programme?
•What messages do your costumes and locations send to the audience
about the class and status of the characters?
• Heels and nice clothing- shows glamour from the jackets,
brands and heels they are wearing.
• Colours of clothing
• Red- danger
• Green-jealousy
• White- pure
• Black- suspicious
