SOUND WITHIN OUR TRAILER

A common convention of soap opera trailers, is that they use little or no spoken dialogue within them. Following this convention then left us with a silent trailer, which we didn't want, so we then had to start considering music and sound effects for our piece. Before we started to choose suitable sound tracks, we had to make sure all the sounds we were considering were royalty free so we didn't infringe on any copyrighting laws.
As a group we decided we wanted two sound effects and a music track within our trailer.

Our idea was to have a contrast in the tone of the trailer, between what happens before the punch and the shots after this event happens. We thought music would allow us to display and highlight this change.
For our opening clips of the church and the tilt of the 'Cherry Garden Road' sign, we decided to include church bells as a sound effect. We thought this would work as the clip of the church would make the music relevant and would put it into context of the piece. We also thought that by having the bells, it would make the audience anticipate happy scenes, such as a wedding, so they are even more socked when the mood of the trailer changes shortly after.

After this section, the next part of the trailer is introduced through a boy punching the character of Marris. We discussed if we should add a sound effect to this part, or if the use of silence would be more effective, we finally decided that we would use sound as we hoped it would add to the impact of this part. We searched through all the appropriate sounds available on the software we used, Imovie. We found out that there wasn't any that sounded like a punch, but there was one noise which we felt fitted perfectly with the clip. Although it didn't sound how you would imagine a punch to sound, we liked the impact and effect it brings to the trailer, and it doesn't seem out of place.

For the rest of the trailer we wanted a soundtrack that would run right up until the end of the piece, this meant the music track would have to be about 50 seconds long. With this in mind we starting to listen to sounds of about this length. We were not sure what music style we wanted yet, so we tried many different tracks with the trailer to see what fitted and matched with the clips. As this would be a non-diegetic piece of music to co-inside with the visual side, it didn't have to sound realistic to the setting, so we could be quite open with the types of sounds we were testing. In the end we decided upon a certain track that we felt worked well and helped convey our aims of the trailer. Our sound track has been described as religious by some of our audience members, but we think this suits the trailer, as you could link it with the church bells at the start, yet it's still a huge contrast. It also could connote that Marris is looking towards religion to help him in his situation.

-Amy Bowman

SOAP OPERA BRIEF

Our soap opera brief for Cherry Gardens:

Welcome to the new era of soap operas...
Cherry Gardens is a soap opera following the dramatic lives of ordinary people living in Great Waltham, 'Essex Village of the Year 2010'.  Experience the day to day lives of your new best friends as they tackle ups and downs, divorces and marriages, relationships and affairs, births and deaths and the overall emotional roller coaster that is Cherry Gardens.

We think this paragraph will capture our audiences attention and imagination. We deliberately made it short and to the point, so our audience would be able to read it quickly without getting bored and hopefully remember most of what they have read so they can tell others of our soap.
We've made a direct link between the characters within the soap and the audience members themselves by stating that they will experience the lives of their new best friends. Meaning for everybody who reads this, they should feel as if they are being directly spoken to, and by doing this we are giving them a connection with the soap, which they probably don't have with other TV shows. We also listed many life events, by doing this, we instantly made it seem like an intriguing soap, and something they will be able to relate their own lives to.



- Amy Bowman & Lauren Tween

FONT CONSIDERATION FOR TRAILER

Within our trailer, we have to display the key facts of the soap opera. We've decided to show this in text at the end of the trailer including, the soap name, when it is on and 'channel5.com'. We've shown these as we wanted to keep to the channel 5 title screen (below) so our trailer has a professional look to it. Our aim was for it to look as much as possible like the genuine channel 5 screen, this means picking a font that matches this font as much as possible:

We spent a long time on IMovie looking at all the potential fonts types we could use we, this is the shortlist of fonts we found which could work:

• Hiragino Kaku Gothic
• Trebuchet MS
• ITC Franklin Gothic
• Ayuthaya
• Damascus
• Euphemia UCAS
• Geneva
• Coolvetica

In the end we decided upon Coolvetica.  We thought we would use this font as it was the most suitable we could find for what we were looking for.
Below is our final title screen:

The font is obviously not extremely identical to that of the Channel 5 title screens, nor is the positioning (the main white and red titles should be lined up and slightly to the left hand side.  Ideally the 'CHANNEL5.COM' needs to be further down and in-line with the other titles).  However, we did what best we could using iMovie and are pleased with the outcome.

-Amy Bowman and Lauren Tween

SHOT LIST FOR MAGAZINE AND POSTER

Magazine shot list
Magazines always have multiple images on them.  This means we will need to take multiple photographs for possible use on our magazine.  To do this, we will need to recreate scenarios stereotypically seen in soap operas and ensure they are verisimilitude regarding setting and costume to everyday real life. 

Character	Shot	Emotion shown	Costume	Props	Setting
Kirk	Mid shot	Anger	Hoodie	n/a	n/a
Dan	Mid shot	Anger	Hoodie and waistcoat	n/a	n/a
Dom & extra	Over the shoulder shot	Happy	Jumper worn in trailer	Drinks in hand	Outside pub
Extra & dog	Mid shot	Confusion	Pink jumper, glasses	Drinks, plates	Inside house, sitting at table
Extra	Mid shot	Surprised/shocked	Coat and jumper	n/a	Inside house
Extra	Close up	Stern expression	Top and apron	n/a	In kitchen
Extra	Close up	Shocked	Jumper	n/a	In house
Extra	Mid shot	Upset	Jumper/jeans	Broken mug	At kitchen table
Extra	Long shot	Anger	T-shirt, jogging bottoms	n/a	Outside pub

Poster shot list
Our poster is going to be fairly simple, with the characters standing forward facing.  We will need mid shots of them (torso upwards) wearing costumes similar to in the trailer.

Character	Shot	Emotion shown	Costume
Kirk	Mid shot	Anger	Hoodie
Dan	Mid shot	Anger	Hoodie and waistcoat
Marris	Mid shot	No emotion	Jacket, no hat
Beryl	Mid shot	Slight smile	Pink jumper, glasses

-Lauren Tween

ROUGH CUT 3

Since the previous rough cut, we have made some drastic changes to our soap opera trailer.  This included the addition of a professional-looking title screen and the rearrangement and addition of some shots (e.g the 'Cherry Garden Road' sign post shot has been put to the beginning along with a new shot of as church).

Feedback:

• Liked the addition of the church and bells ringing since the last rough cut
• The title screen at the end looks classy
• They would definitely watch the soap after seeing this advert and think they would be dedicated
• It's fantastic
• Good actors found
• The gap between the kids running and the man on floor is slightly too long
• It looks really professional
• I was lulled into a false sense of security by the bells which made me think i was going to see beautiful wedding scenes, so i was very shocked by the impact of the punch! It was a great contrast and made me want to watch the rest of the trailer, it is a great 'who done it?'
• Left me in suspense, want to watch the actual soap now! And Marris Morris!
• I don't know what's going on, but that is why i would want to watch it.
• It would have been better with speech and i didn't understand the relevence of the music, but i thoguht it was really funny!

-Lauren Tween & Amy Bowman

ROUGH CUT 2

This is our second rough cut.  We removed a couple of clips that received negative feedback from our target audience such as  the second time the person appears from the the phone box.  Also, when watching the trailer back, we realised we hadn't removed the audio from the clip at 0:51 so this will have to be corrected for rough cut 3.

Feedback:

• Didn't understand the relevence of the car - 18 year old
• The titles at the end don't look very professional - 30 year old
• I really liked the punch and the man on the floor - 18 year old

Lauren Tween & Amy Bowman

ROUGH CUT 1

This is our first rough cut for our soap opera 'Cherry Gardens'.
Here is some feedback from members of our target audience (16-60 years):

• Music is too church like - female, 17
• Add some colour effects onto clips to make it more interesting - male, 45
• The second phone box clip does not make sense - female, 33
• Clip of mature female does not fit with other as it has been sped up - female, 16
• Really like the music - male, 18
• I think the storyline of the trailer is very clever - female, 47
• I found it exciting and gripping - female, 42
• I think the punch and the noise that goes with it is effective - female, 32
• Nice variety of characters shown - male, 23 
• Its melodramatic which makes it enticing - male, 18
• Music maybe too over the top - felmale, 17
• I think the music is really suitable - female, 18

-Amy Bowman & Lauren Tween