Comparing an American TV Guide to British TV Guide

 An American Style TV guide differs to a British style TV guide. Usually in American TV guides young attractive characters are featured more frequently creating the image that youthful looks are an appealing factor in USA soaps and dramas. Furthermore the females featured wear revealing clothing further adding to the sex appeal of the characters and attracting a male audience which british TV guides do not often do. British TV guides such as "TV Easy" appear to target a female audience from the use of the pink theme to the romantic storyline which would have more of an appeal to a female audience.

 The T.V guide appears to be aimed more at a younger audience due to the colloquial slogan "The 411 on the  new 90210." In contrast, the majority of british TV guides are aimed at a more mature audience and tend to use more formal language.

Analysing listing magazine

Radio Times front cover

This particular front cover of the radio times features popular TV drama Doctor Who.

I particularly like the v-shape standing structure of the daleks as it establishes the main dalek. The magazine cover does not feature Dr Who or any of the obvious characters but instead features a significant but slightly less normal character from the drama.

The cover also features some characteristics from the World Cup,being one of the popular programmes on TV that week.

'TV easy' listings magazine

• 
  
  I analysed this listings magazine to help construct my ancilliary texts
• 
  
   'TV easy' uses the popular Soap opera of 'Eastenders' to attract audiences to their product
• 
  
   I particularly like the bright colours which stand out and the air brush glamour effect used on the characters Sean and Roxy.
• 
  
  The casts representation breaks the stereotypical conventions of soap opera being realistic. Instead they look like the perfect happy couple with the caption 'I LOVE YOU' below their image.
• 
  
  For my ancilliary text, I will take in consideration the layout and decide who should be on the cover. In addition to this, I will need to consider whether to represent my characters as they are in the drama or create a more unrealistic effect.

Please click the link below to view my analysis:
TV easy magazine front cover analysis

Editing begins

Today we started to edit our filming to practice using final cut express and to see whether we are filming correctly. The amount of filming will be the same amount of time it takes to upload which means we need to constantly go back and edit our work. We are struggiling to find a dream like effect to represent Elliot in science dreaming about being a fashion designer.

Coursework Feedback

We recieved feedback from our teacher on our primary research and how to prepare for filming. As a group, we were given advice on adapting the characters, making more connections between them and being more specific on tasks delegated between us. After our discussion, we created a brief clearly identifying what each person's task is. We went back to our character storyboard and developed the characters. We made Grace and Sheniqua best friends.
Although we had to spend time making changes, we now feel more confident, positive and excited to start filming.

Filming

As a group we found filming an exciting experience. Emma was in charge of the camera while Laura and Yollanda where the actresses in the scene.
Laura played Grace and Yollanda played Sheniqua in this practice scene.
We filmed next to the college library, a quiet undisturbed area, with a long path perfect for walking down. We improvised actions such as Laura handing over her bag and giving Grace evil, jealous glances.
The practice scene enabled us to get used to the camera and equipment such as the tripod. It also got us thinking of potential props and shots we might use in our final shooting.

Letter requesting to film on college site

To whom it may concern,
We are A2 media students filming a soap opera for our coursework. We are writing to request to film on site.

Our media teacher Sophie Mngoma has given us permission to film and has asked us to request permission from you as well.

Yours sincerely,


Yollanda Musa, Emma Frow ,Laura Bradbury

Filming Commences

Today we practised filming . Through this experience we learnt that we need to obtain a dolly track to make the camera movement smoother, particularly on scenes where characters are walking down the street. Another objective is to purchase good quality camcorder tapes, preferably Sony. We also need to arrange a schedule with our actors and actresses so we sort appropriate filming times.

16/10/09

Today we went around college looking for characters for our soap trailer. It was a difficult task as we have to select specific individuals and some people were not so willing. We required the following characters;

• A blonde female
• Black boy with urban clothing
• Muscular football type boy
• Posh looking black female
• Geeky looking male

Some images of our main locations

Establishing the location

Today we took images of exact areas to film which is set around the college and the young peoples houses. The computers represent the use of internet and the website 'Flex'. The canteen is a typical location for teenagers to hang out and certain shots such as graffiti emphasise where Grace's real house is; on a lower class estate.

Questionnaire results

After collecting the results, we put them in charts too compare and contrast the information. From this research we discovered Soap's these days have become uncommon for teenagers. We have an aim to get the youth off the streets and regain an interest in Soap by including aspects which appeal to them like social sites. American programmes are also more common so we want people to enjoy the realistic view of British television with problems they can relate too.

Article on BBC website on 'Fewer young people' watching TV

'Fewer young people' watching TV

This article focuses on the decline of Young people watching television and and the increase of yonug people watching on the internet.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/4758932.stm

Students launch online soap opera -Newspaper article

This article desribes how university students created a new online based soap opera. This is a very interesting idea and we are exploring the possibility of having our soap online .
http://news.bbc.co.uk/local/bristol/hi/people_and_places/arts_and_culture/newsid_8021000/8021314.stm

Treatment

The soap opera trailer Flex is about six teenagers in England who all are unhappy with there lives and as a form of escape go on to a social networking site called flex. These characters are, Grace, a girl how pretends to be wealthy by wearing stolen designer clothes but really lives on a council estate. Jerome, a teenager whose parents are divorced, his Dad pressures him to go to Cambridge university but Jerome in an attempted to deal with the stress is secretly taking drugs. Eliot a geeky boy who dreams of being a fashion designer but as he is a guy he fears being ridiculed and fears upsetting his parents. Sheniqua is a wealthy girl but wants to fit in the others at her college so she pretends to be ordinary. Jack is an average teenage boy how longs to be a football legend, popular and a ladies man.

Song Choice 2 for our trailer

We have also considered using Dizzee Rascals "Flex" as it links to the name of the soap. The tune is also quite hip and funky which is appealing to young teenagers. If we chose to use this song we would probably use the instrumental as the lyrics are not particularly relevant to the soap.

Dizzee Rascal – Flex
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tUPleuj42w0

Songs for our trailer

Lily Allen – LDN
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wmYT79tPvLg
We thought about using this song because it relates to our soap trailer. Although life seems perfect you have to look closer and read beneath the lines. The following lyrics are taken from the song LDN by Lilly Allen. They emphasise the message we want to put across.

Sun is in the sky oh why oh why ?
Would I wanna be anywhere else
Sun is in the sky oh why oh why ?
Would I wanna be anywhere elseWhen you look with your eyes
Everything seems nice
But if you look twice
you can see it's all lies

Potential Characters

What appeals to teenagers

Brainstorm showing issues facing teenagers

Potential names

This is a brain storm showing that we came up with for the social website in our soap, we decided the name of the social website would be the name of the soap. We tried to think of something memoriable,catchy and that appeals to teenagers. We also tried to combine the names of some existing popular networking sites such as Facebook and Myspace to attract audiences who use these sites. For example the name "Pic Face" combines Piczo and Facebook.

Questionning the questionnaire

After distributing the first few questionnaires we faced the following issues;

• There is not enough spacing between the images on the question "Which character is your favourite?" making it impossible for someone to tick next to the image.Some people resorted to circling the box. So either we must create more space or change it to "circle" your favourite character.
• Some of the images of the character are not very clear so perhaps we should include the charcaters name
• Some people did not even recognise the characters as they watch more American Soaps such as Smallville and Heroes, so therefore perhaps we should include characters from these soaps
• We need to include a question as to why people chose the character they chose
• The order of some questions needs to be reconsidered for example, where someone has said they never watch soap, then perhaps they cannot answer further questions. Perhaps it is best if we reconsider this question as well as the questionnaire is aimed at teenagers who watch soap.
• The "what channel do you watch the most" question could be improved by adding other popular channels such as channel 5, Living T.V. and leaving space for people to write the name of any other channel they watch.

Questionnaire

Today we worked on the questionnaire which we will use to assist us in the production of our soap trailer. We used visual imagery to discover the best type of characters to use.


Please see the evidence folder for our questionnaire

Idea for television drama trailer

Flex

A soap opera for the 21st century, Flex follows the lives of six different teenagers from different backgrounds who face different issues and as a form of escape they go on a social networking website called Flex. This enables each character to help them discover themselves as individuals, escape from ordinary life and socialise with others that they wouldn't normally socialise with. This website also helps them deal with the problems that they face in reality.

Flex is an equivalent to Facebook that many teenagers use as a way to socialise and as there are no other soaps with a modern focus. Traditionally soaps are typically set in a street, town, workplace but this is different as it is set round a social networking website.

Sky News article on issues of social networking

This is a real life event which shows the dangers of social networking. Our soap highlights some of the common issues faced with chat rooms and social websites, we hope to send out a clear message for teenagers to be careful when using the net.

http://uk.news.yahoo.com/5/20090930/tuk-web-pervert-teacher-jailed-for-four-45dbed5.html

Soap Audiences

The table shows the most viewed soaps and the times they are most viewed at. Using this information we can estimate the perfect time to show our new soap,avoiding clashes with popular soaps. Monday at 19.30 for example would not be an ideal time to show our soap as this is when popular soap Coronation Street is shown. I assume this is the time when a typical British family has just finished dinner and they are having quality family time so they sit down and watch Coronation Street. Because our soap is aimed at teenagers and not the entire family, perhaps late night shows, such as after the 9 pm watershed, would be ideal.

Primary Reseach -Chronology of Soap Opera's

This is a table from a media studies text book showing a range of soaps from 1948 to present day soaps. I wanted to focus on how the themes vary between the years. Initially the main focus of soaps was profession, in particular woman in the workforce perhaps because the concept was controversial due to woman not being allowed to work in those years. 2 years on domestic and community issues were introduced as the nation became more comfortable with publicising domestic and community issues which would normally have been kept a secret in households. Between 1992 and 1993 soaps began to focus on exile as the nation became more ethnically developed and focused on themes such as immigration and racial issues. In 1995 young domestic issues and profession were introduced and young people had their own soap in the form of "Hollyoaks." At this point , teenage actors/actresses were on a rise and soaps began to target teenagers with themes that appeal to them.

Why we chose the name 'Flex'

After we agreed on a social networking soap targeted at teenagers, I created the name 'Flex' which sounds hip and modern. This word comes from the popular song 'Flex' by Dizzie Rascal. I thought young people could relate our soap to him meaning it would be stylish and 'cool'.

Because our soap is aimed at girls as well as boys, we needed a name that any person would find appealing. For example, calling our soap something like girltime would not appeal to boys. 'Flex' will also be the name of the social netwotking site since it's catchy and easy to remember such as 'Bebo' and 'Facebook'.

Quote from Advanced Level Media textbook

"If anybody has the right to get angry at Eastenders it is the people of the East End of London who for more than 10 years now, have been collectively labelled by this series. Albert Square seems populated by hopeless alcoholics, juvenile delinquents, rapists, arsonists, muderers, serial adulterers, psychopaths and sad misfits. And that's just the Mitchell family."

This quote highlights some of the typical stereotypes of a soap opera. Typically, themes such as crime, drugs and sex run through British soaps.

Dizzee Rascal "Flex"

Click here to watch the video

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tUPleuj42w0

21/09/09

Today we brainstormed some ideas for the soap. We thought of ideas on what appeals to teenagers, issues facing teenagers and potential characteristics of the characters in our soap. We have decided on naming the soap "Flex" as it is cool, hip and appealing to a teenage audience which is our target audience.

Conventions of a 'Soap Opera'

Today we researched conventions of British and American soaps to help us a gain a better understanding of what to include and to help us think of ideas for our own. Typical features include events such as affairs, underaged pregnancy, drugs and relationship problems. Micro features like location are also important and I realised soaps have strong regional identities like Eastenders being in London and Coronation street in Manchester. Most British soaps are set in a community, school or work place.

Although we have not decided whether we want to create an American or British soap, we now have the knowledge of what they are about and the different approaches we could take.

This is an image of a huge American Soap 90210 which now has a new cast due to popular demand.

Definition of "Soap Opera"

soap opera - a serialized program usually dealing with sentimentalized family matters that is broadcast on radio or television (frequently sponsored by a company advertising soap products)

Research Begins

Today we started the initial planning process. We looked at past coursework folders and made a mind map to help us decide what types of research to include.

Task Delegation

We have decided to divide the work between each group member.

Initially each member will focus on a particular media concept.
We have delegated the following tasks;

• Emma will be focusing on representation and new Soap delivery systems.
• Laura will be focusing on narrative,conventions and target audiences.
• Yollanda will be focusing on the history of soap and soap institutions.

Introduction to A2 Media Coursework

Hello,


Welcome to Laura, Yollanda and Emma's blog!!

We have decided to do a soap opera trailer so watch this space!!