Initial Ideas for Our Soap Opera Trailer

Using what I know about soap opera trailers and generic conventions, I created a simple spider diagram to map my individual ideas on the setting, storylines, characters and contents of our trailer.

My ideas for storylines came from the fact that all soaps have several events, relationships and dramatic situations happening at the same time. This grabs and keeps the viewer's attention for a longer period of time. The types of storylines I've mapped out are very dramatic and extreme situations, ensuring that the trailer content would be keeping to the use generic conventions used in soap operas.

My character ideas were inspired by Eastenders, as the range of ethnicity, age and social classes is wider than most other existing soap operas. This is evident in the 'Soap Opera Analysis' post when full episodes from Neighbours, Hollyoaks, Eastenders and Emmerdale were analysed in terms of characters, setting and storylines. Out of the four soaps, Eastenders had the largest variety of people by a long way.

This tactic is clearly successful as Eastenders has won 265 soap and television awards since February 1985. I believe that using this technique in my soap opera trailer would be ideal as it creates a sense of verisimilitude and makes it easier for audience members of different age, ethnicity and social class to relate to the characters in the soap.

All soap operas are set in a domestic location, and because keeping to generic conventions is an important factor of successfully resembling a soap opera, the types of locations are very limited. The main areas I've looked at are rural settings, urban settings, typical domestic locations and common public areas.

My ideas for location were inspired by Emmerdale, as it was originally called Emmerdale Farm and was set in a small, rural location. As the soap became more popular, it expanded and the setting changed from a farm to a village. This gave me the idea that starting a brand new soap opera in a rural location would be much more realistic as the soap would not be well-known.

The content of the trailer would use all of the typical conventions used in soap trailers, including fade-to-blacks, narrative theories, the enigma code and a cliff-hanger at the end. The most important content used in the trailer, magazine cover and poster would be the introduction of the brand new soap, the characters and the relationships between them.

By introducing the characters and how they interact with each other, you immediately grab the viewer's attention by appealing to their sense of curiosity. If the characters relations are extreme (eg. affairs, pregnancy, enemies, homosexual relationships, etc.), the viewers are more likely to feel obliged to watch it for the purpose of fulfilling a need for drama and gossip.