TARGET AUDIENCE PROFILE

Defining our Audience

Class - Demographic Grouping

We would hope to have a very wide range of viewers for our soap, therefore we would like people from demographic profiles B to E to watch. Meaning roughly anyone from middle management to the unemployed. Although we believe the main groupings we would be focusing and aiming on, would be that of D and E, as from our research, these are the people most likely to watch soap operas such as Coronation Street and EastEnders in their free time, and we would aim to have a similar audience as these existing popular soaps.

Race

Anybody of any race would watch our soap, it is not aimed at a certain race. Our soap is set in a small to medium sized village, but there will be tokenism used throughout, to show the diversity of the location, and to stop us from being too bias towards one race. 

Interests, Attitudes and Beliefs

The cross-cultural consumer characteristics group we will mainly be focusing on is TheMainstream group, which is 40% of the population. These are those people who live in the domestic and everyday. We think they would stick to food brands they know and trust and would not worry too much about designer labels when it comes to clothing.

We believe that our target audience would watch TV to escape their lives, to relax and laugh, therefore other shows we think they would enjoy to watch would be 'You've Been Frammed' and 'The X Factor'. By knowing what other shows are target audience would enjoy, would help us when we come to consider when to show our soap operas trailer. 

We think our audience members would get their daily news intake from reading a newspaper similar to 'The Sun', as it is simple to read, entertaining, has lots of pictures and has celebrity gossip.

Gender
We would like our soap to be watched and enjoyed by people of both genders, although it is proven that more woman than men are regular viewers of soaps, we would aim to have an almost equal percentage of both. We would want to break the 'soaps are for woman only' stereotype.

Age
We decided that we would have an age range of 16 to 60 years old for our soap opera. We believe we can appeal to an age range that is this wide, by the diversity of story lines we will use, some will appeal to a mature audience, others would be catered for teenagers. Our soap will include a big variety of characters, hop fully every viewer would be able to find a character within the soap they could relate with.



Audience Theory's
In some cases the Hypodermic Needle Theory would be quite prominent for our audience members. This theory would relate to those wanting to escape their own lives for a bit and relax with the TV on, they would not question anything that happens on our soap, and would just accept anything.
Some of our audience may watch our soap for Personal Identity. They would compare themselves to characters within our soap and maybe even adjust and conform their identity to become more like that character. In contrast they would not watch our soap if they wanted to find out what was happening in the news or to gain information on the world. As although a soap opera has to be verisimilitude, it will be entirely fiction, meaning you would probably not learn a lot about current affairs.
The Uses and Gratifications theory would apply to our soap opera as we believe our audience would watch our show for entertainment, to relax and enjoy. We also believe they would want to be involved, and would start to relate and compare themselves and to the characters and their personal relationships and social interactions.

-Amy Bowman

SOAP OPERA PITCH (INCLUDING CHARACTER PROFILES)

As part of the process of creating our soap opera trailer, magazine and poster, we chose to create an in depth, formal pitch about our soap opera idea 'Cherry Gardens'. We created a PowerPoint presentation which had a lot of information and many pictures, but to keep our pitch professional we decided not to read directly from the PowerPoint and instead had extra detailed notes which we spoke while our audience and investors were kept captivated by the on screen images.

Below are our notes; they need to be read in conjunction with our neighboring PowerPoint for our pitch to flow.
Verbal Pitch notes


This is our accompanying PowerPoint:

Cherry Gardens

More PowerPoint presentations from ablt

-Amy Bowman & Lauren Tween

SOAP OPERA NAME IDEAS

Below is a mind map we created of potential names for our soap opera.

After much deliberation, we decided to call our soap 'Cherry Gardens' this is because it seemed the most practical to our production group, as there is a street nearby that we could film in with this name. By using an existing street name, this means we can make use of the street sign in our soap trailer which would look professional. We also thought it was short, catchy and easy to remember and say.

-  Amy Bowman

ROUGH PLAN FOR TRAILER

We have come up with the idea of having our soap in a rural setting rather than a city location.  The centre point of the village will be the vilage pub where the inhabitants gather.  The trailer will be action-packed with fast-paced editing.  It will introduce a few characters from our actual soap opera by intertwining them around the focus of our trailer who is the character that is the landlord.  We want this character to be hurt which will gain sympathy for him and draw the audience in.  Meanwhile he will be experiencing flashbacks of his life in the village, which will familiarise our viewers with the setting. 

-Lauren Tween & Amy Bowman

CONVENTIONS FOUND IN TRAILERS COMPARED TO FULL EPISODES

Conventions of soap opera trailers differ from those found in full soap opera episodes.  We will need to consider the following conventions in order to create our own realistic soap opera trailer:

Sound
A vast difference is how sound is used in the two.  Within soap operas (apart from Hollyoaks), there is never any non-diegetic sound as the soap is made to be as realistic a verisimilitude representation of everyday life as possible.  In a soap opera trailer however, there is use of non-diegetic sound and is rarely much diegetic sound involved.  However, this does depend on the audience the trailer is targetting.  For new audiences, to give them an insight into the storylines and characters, the trailer may consist of a combination of clips from a soap episode itself, where there would obviously be diegetic sound involved.  Other soap opera trailers consist completely of new scenes filmed especially for the trailer.  These don't often have diegetic dialogue and have a song overlaying the action.  These trailers are for pre-existent viewers, who already know about the characters and plots, to capture their attention using the Uses and Gratifications theory;  they are interested and want to watch the episode to find out more.

Titling
Unlike soap opera episodes, the titles in soap trailers come at the end.  These can be in a visual or narrated format, or both.  The name of the soap, the channel it is shown on and when it is shown is always included to ensure it is clear to the audience where they can see the soap, as you can see below:

 

To entice and entrail a younger audience, as you can see from this last image, the use of the social networking site, Twitter's, hashtag has been incorporated into the title screen.  This is an effective way of reaching out to the youth of today's society; where most people have access to social networking sites at all times through their handheld electrical appliances such as mobile phones and iPods.

Camera Angles

Lots of the time in soap opera trailers, more close-up shots and mid shots are used, than in the soap opera episode, as a way to introduce the audience to the characters.  These shots help to convey the emotion within the characters faces and how they interact with the other characters so the audience can create assumptions, assess and determine the characters' personalities and relationships.  In effect, this gives them a taster of what the whole episode is to be like - so the more interesting and captivating it is, the better.  These closer shots are used more so in the trailers than in the full episodes; where the action is followed with long shots.

Narrative
Similarly to soap opera episodes, the trailers are usually edited continuously in order for easy viewing - if the trailer was too confusing, the audience may not want to watch the whole episode, although there does need to be a level of excitement and mystery to add the interest needed in order to claim this new audience.  More often than not, Propps' hero/villain/helper theory is seen in soap opera trailers to increase interest and to give the audience a sense of knowing and an insight into who the characters are. 

Over many half an hour soap opera episodes, Todorov's theory of equilibrium is used where the state of equilibrium is disrupted and recognised before being, usually, overcome once again to reveal equilibrium.  However, this happens over a long period of time throughout various episodes.  In a soap opera trailer everything happens a lot more fast-paced.  Usually, the state of equilibrium is shown as well as the disruption of the equilibrium, which builds to a dramatic climax at the end of the trailer.  This cliffhanger cleverly encourages the viewer to watch the full episode.

-Lauren Tween

INITIAL IDEAS

These are our initial ideas for our soap opera trailer. 

-Lauren Tween & Amy Bowman & Jordan Kenneally

SOAP OPERA TRAILER TARGET AUDIENCES

From research we’ve found that there are two types of soap opera trailer.

One is informing the current audience of your soap, of a prominent upcoming episode. If your trailer was of this kind you would have to consider the overall target audience of your soap. For instance Hollyoaks would have to cater for older teens and young adults in their trailers. Whereas, soaps such as EastEnders and Coronation Street have such a large target age range, meaning they could potentially create their trailers in whatever style they wish. By doing this though, they can’t always guarantee they will please everyone within their target audience range; this is because there are so many different social groups that they cater for.  

The other type of trailer is made with the intention of attracting new audiences to watch the soap. This would include a soap trailer for a brand new soap, which will be our trailer when we come to make it. For already existing soaps, they would have to decide whether they want to attract more people that would fit in their usual audience range, or if they create the trailer with the aim of bringing a new type of audience to watch their soap.

When creating a soap opera trailer you have to consider your target audience you are aiming it at for it to be a success. This means taking into consideration aspects such as, age, demographic grouping and gender.

- Amy Bowman

SOAP OPERA TRAILER TIMINGS INFORMATION

Soaps each have their own target audiences, but who are the soap trailers aimed at?
As a group we each conducted research into soap opera trailers, the times they are on and what shows they are in the ad breaks between. This is what we found out.
For the soaps Coronation Street and Eastenders I have seen many trailers advertising them shown after the time of 6pm. I would think the reason behind this, it the fact that most people would be home from work, many of which, would be watching TV to relax. In effect, soap trailers are aimed at everybody, as they want whoever to be viewing the channel to stop for a moment and see the trailer.
On BBC1 for instance, Eastenders trailers can be seen after the 10pm news, the reason for this would be the fact that the 10 o'clock news has very large viewing figures, meaning they would almost be forced into seeing the trailer directly after, catching many peoples attention. By putting it at this time, there would be a wide variety of people seeing the trailer, and people who watch the news can potentially be from any demographic group, from A to E. Therefore the soap trailer is being aim at a wider audience than the soap itself.
Eastenders trailers have also been seen after the show Doctor Who, yet again this popular show gains a very large audience, meaning many would see the trailer afterwards. Doctor Who is also an example of a TV drama, soap operas are a variation on TV dramas, the fact that the trailer has been shown after this show, could be suggesting to the audience that they may also enjoy watching the soap. Those who watch Doctor Who would most probably be from the same demographic groupings as whose who enjoy soap operas, therefore they are aiming directly at their desired audience.
The channel 4 soap opera Hollyoaks, had a trailer that was shown quite late after a spin off program of the show Inbetweeners. Hollyoaks is different to other soaps in the respect that it has a very specific target audience of teens and young adults. This target audience is what is has in common with the comedy show, Inbetweeners, meaning putting the trailer after this program would hopefully attract the desired audience of young people and students, demographic grouping E.

I have also witnessed a trailer for the ITV soap Emmerdale, this was shown at 9:30pm in an ad break between the shows X Factor and Downton Abbey. The X Factors is one of the most popular family shows on TV, the X Factors doesn't have a specific target age range, although i would think it is aimed at those in demographic groups C-E. In contrast the period drama, Downton Abbey, i would say is aimed at a more sophisticated audience, of those over 20 and in demographic groupings B, C and even maybe A. By placing a soap opera trailer and the end of one show and before the start of another, means it is quite likely you could have two audience types tuned into the channel, meaning a broad range of people will see the trailer.
By knowing how and when TV channels choose to show their soap opera trailers, it gave us greater knowledge into how soap opera trailers are made and aired on a professional level. By finding out how channels specifically place trailers between shows, we found out that there was a lot more to learn about these trailers than we first thought.

- Amy Bowman

REAL MEDIA TEXTS - COMPARISON OF SOAP OPERA EPISODES

We each watched an episode of a different soap and roughly analysed them to find similarities and differences between them.  From our results we found that Hollyoaks in comparison with Eastenders has a lot more characters in one episode but not so many scenes.  This connotes that in these two specific episodes, Eastenders had more dramatic storyline which involved lots of scene changes, suggesting it was fast-paced and exciting.  Whereas the episode of Hollyoaks used more characters and not so many scenes connoting a maybe more relaxed and less dramatic episode.

 

There are some settings that have overlapped in the two soap episodes, such as the park bench, pub/bar area and the inside of a house.  This shows how soaps follow similar conventions to achieve their aim of a verisimilitude storyline.

 

Families issues are a recurring theme within these two soap episodes, showing again the conventions soap opera like to follow to achieve for a successful story line. In particular the make ups and break ups of couples, that as with other story line, contribute to Todorov's theory of equilibrium.

 

 

- Lauren Tween & Amy Bowman

KEY SOAP OPERA FACTS

Soap Operas first started running in the US in the 1930s.  They get their names from the soap companies that used to advertise in the breaks of the then radio shows.  Before that time, they were known as serial broadcast drama then the 'soap' nickname stuck.

The audience of soap operas is 'assumed by programme makers, advertisers, and those producing the attendant publicity material, to be a largely female one', Media Studies: The Essential Resource, Philip Rayner, Peter Wall and Stephen Kruger, Routledge 2004.

A reason for this largely female audience is that, when soap operas were originally played on the radio, it would be during the middle of the day; when housewives could listen whilst carrying out the daily chores.  'Soap operas convince women that the highest goal is to see their families united and happy', Media Studies, a reader, Paul Marris & Sue Thornham, Edinburgh 1999. 

Soap operas always have an open narrative.  This is what is unique about them and what gives them their 'soap' status.  Coronation Street, for example, has been on television for over 50 years; making it the longest running television soap in the world. However the longest running soap is 'The Archers' which is still running on it's original radio station, from 60 years ago, to this day. If they had closed narratives, they would no longer be a soap, they would be an ordinary TV drama.

Within soap operas there are usually 4-5 storylines in progress during each episode.  This creates a verisimilitude scenario to everyday life.  These storylines 'make families seem important not by presenting an ideal family, but by presenting a family in constant turmoil.' Media Studies, a reader, Paul Marris & Sue Thornham, Edinburgh 1999. 



-Lauren Tween & Amy Bowman