In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?
We believe that our trailer Amber Valley challenges current conventions by the involvement of a variety of ‘taboo’ subjects in just one episode; Sex, Lesbians, Alcohol, Murder and Suicide are all featured heavily. We believe that our trailer is extremely close to the border of a 9pm watershed due to its’ controversial effect on the audience, yet to combat this we decided to suggest and hint towards events as opposed to fully showing them. For example this was shown with the swaying feet scene which to the majority of our audience would have connotations of death and suicide in particular. One option open to us, however, is the expansion of a spin-off soap that could enable even more harrowing scenes such as the likes of Hollyoaks Later.
 |
| Hollyoaks Later advertisement with the quote "The Night is just beginning" which hints towards more sexual-esque content. |
We further challenged conventions of soaps such as Eastenders and Coronation Street by considering names and their etymology. One character, Keaira, means “dark” and this is shown overtly by her on-screen persona which yields obvious signs of schizophrenia and the possibility of it’s’ development into something far more sinister. This contrasts with names such as Pat, and Roy which are just seen as typical British names.
We developed the subject of alcoholism within our soap by having the protagonist Lilith being a heavy drinker, arguably an alcohol. Often soaps such as Eastenders will use the drink to spur on tension and drama at a party, yet for ours we preferred to show the devastating and life impacting effect it can really have when drunk in volume. Her life falls to pieces when she’s caught in a vicious love affair, and her decision has the chance to enhance or destroy those around her.
 |
| Eastenders fight with alcohol included in the mise-en-scene. |
Even your typical meeting place would be a local pub, the ‘Rovers Return Inn’ and the ‘Queen Vic’ in which a lot of the on-screen storyline is developed. Amber Valley however decided that juxtaposition would have a far fresher effect, and this was enabled by such serious events happening in what’s often to be considered a family-friendly environment – a recreation ground. There’s even the contrast of life (nature; woods) and death itself happening.
Furthermore, our magazine itself utilizes colour choices similar to that of TV Mag with a sky blue background and a vibrant red title that helps it stand out on the shop if our magazine was to become available. We challenged the magazine slightly, however, by only including one character on our front cover as opposed to the convention of two or more. Her costume was the same as shown within the poster to allow for continuity with the main theme of “passion” which is displayed ostensibly; especially on her t-shirt.
How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary texts?
The combination of the main product and ancillary texts are effective in reflecting many common elements found in real-life products. Furthermore, continuing on from the prior paragraph we believe that including just Lilith on the front-cover alone permitted us to be successful in portraying her inner turmoil and feeling of isolation.
Soaps themselves are becoming heavily influenced by the 'big-screen' using different camera quality and angles for special episodes or trailers; this can be seen in the Kat and Alfie Moon show-down trailer which features a much clearer picture. With the genre going under a 'transition' to a movie-esque format, we found it vital to represent this within our poster. At both the header and footer we have included stills from our footage in a film-reel layout - using conventions of the transition yet twisting them into a revitalising idea.
We attempted to hold on to the core values of magazines and posters - having the same general conventions as regards to colour scheme and layout. Having all characters in the film, poster and magazine in the centre was paramount, it enabled us to emphasize the importance of each individual character; adding a three-Dimensional layer.
In the future we would possibly consider pioneering a move to create all episodes of the show in a higher-resolution picture like that of a movie, yet technical limitations of sixth form would limit this.
How did you use media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages?
We used media technologies in a variety of ways on both the PC and video camera. Adobe After Effects was used in conjunction with Sony Vegas for the editing of our video. We used to the suites to make the portrayal of schizophrenia and mental illness in general much more realistic via a variety of different effects, slowing down of time, reversing a shot and so forth.
The Blogger platform has been used to upload all blog posts. In order to do this effectively it involved the creation of a multitude of pages that would host the "construction and research, planning and evaluation stages". Usage of Blogger has also made it easier to integrate pictures, and hyperlinks. In this post especially a white border is prominent in order to make the image stand out, while also adding in a caption to aid explanation of what the picture is displaying.
We also used programmes such as Microsoft Word to type up all our blog work before uploading. It was also used for the initial though process of other soap ideas/storylines that were eventually not used by our group.
Audience Feedback:
Our audience stated that they felt our soap "contained a good variety of camera angles" and "met the general conventions of mainstream soaps". They did argue however, that our soap contained "not enough of an age range". In response to this, if the soap was being made for real we would include a variety of age ranges. For the purpose of our trailer we felt it important to just include young adults as this is the main focus of our soap like Hollyoaks and we therefore didn't want to include a tokenism by the inclusion of a present abscence. Overall, the feedback we recieved from our audience was extremely promising as it reassured our view that we had met the criteria for a mainstream soap.
We attempted to hold on to the core values of magazines and posters - having the same general conventions as regards to colour scheme and layout. Having all characters in the film, poster and magazine in the centre was paramount, it enabled us to emphasize the importance of each individual character; adding a three-Dimensional layer.
In the future we would possibly consider pioneering a move to create all episodes of the show in a higher-resolution picture like that of a movie, yet technical limitations of sixth form would limit this.
How did you use media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages?
 |
| Image of Indesign; a software used for the editing of our magazine and poster. |
We used media technologies in a variety of ways on both the PC and video camera. Adobe After Effects was used in conjunction with Sony Vegas for the editing of our video. We used to the suites to make the portrayal of schizophrenia and mental illness in general much more realistic via a variety of different effects, slowing down of time, reversing a shot and so forth.
The Blogger platform has been used to upload all blog posts. In order to do this effectively it involved the creation of a multitude of pages that would host the "construction and research, planning and evaluation stages". Usage of Blogger has also made it easier to integrate pictures, and hyperlinks. In this post especially a white border is prominent in order to make the image stand out, while also adding in a caption to aid explanation of what the picture is displaying.
 |
| Click Image to make bigger - it's showing different pages (contained within the blue header). |
We also used programmes such as Microsoft Word to type up all our blog work before uploading. It was also used for the initial though process of other soap ideas/storylines that were eventually not used by our group.
Audience Feedback:
Our audience stated that they felt our soap "contained a good variety of camera angles" and "met the general conventions of mainstream soaps". They did argue however, that our soap contained "not enough of an age range". In response to this, if the soap was being made for real we would include a variety of age ranges. For the purpose of our trailer we felt it important to just include young adults as this is the main focus of our soap like Hollyoaks and we therefore didn't want to include a tokenism by the inclusion of a present abscence. Overall, the feedback we recieved from our audience was extremely promising as it reassured our view that we had met the criteria for a mainstream soap.
