Simliar characters in other soaps and categorization

Characters and Categorization

We decided as a group to create a table to compare characters from exisiting soaps to our characters in our own soap. This helped is to understand what type of characters are involved in soaps, what category they fit into and what/who will be popular.

Storyline Flowchart

Here is our flowchart for the storylines of our first two episodes of the soap. There are three main plotlines taking place in the first two episodes, two of which interlink. This flowchart is primarily to show how the soap episodes would flow and not how the trailer flows


Story Line 2

We have made this flowchart to show the different storylines in our soap episodes and how they connect with each other as the story progresses.

Naming our Soap

We have had a group discussion to make a decision on naming our soap. We came up with several suggestions such as:
- Waltham Crossing
- Walthumbury
- Waltham Corner
- Cherry Garden Road
- The Walthams
We decided to call our soap The Walthams. This is because we feel this gave the best sense of village life. Our soap is going to be set in a village called Great Waltham so it also gives information as to where the soap is set much like other soaps such as Eastenders being set in the East End of London, and Emmerdale being set in Emmerdale. We have also taken inspiration from the soap The Archers, which has a very short and to the point name. By using a short and snappy name it is more memorable to the audience and stands out.

Character Profiles

Helen Johnson (major role) -
Age: 28 years old
Occupation: Bank Clerk in a nearby town
Helen is a young and aspirational character. She is happily engaged to Dan Baxter and are living together in the village. Helen spends her time working, and more recently planning the wedding.

Dan Baxter (major role) -
Age: 29 years old
Occupation: General assistant in the village shop
Dan is Helen Johnson fiance, he is happily engaged to her and is very excited for their big day. He spent a lot of time building up the guts to propose to Helen as he was very nervous but was very happy when he got round to it. He spends a lot of his time working at the local shop and enjoys going to the pub with Helen for a drink.

George Macintyre (major role) -
Age: 39 years old
Occupation: Unemployed
George is the village loner. He finds it hard to make friends and has very few. He is secretly in love with Helen Johnson but she does not know as he keeps himself to himself. He is unemployed and lives off benefits and his mothers money.

Hendrick Saunders (minor role) -
Age: 17 years old
Occupation: Student
Hendrick is the typical Jack the Lad. He is the popular boy amongst his group of friends and very rarely attends college. He does whatever he can to be in the centre of attention, even if it could get him into trouble. He is into drinking alcohol and occasionally drugs.

Jenny Gruff (major role) -
Age: 16
Occupation: Student
Jenny is a typical teenage girl who tries her best to fit in with the crowd. She is new to the village so is trying to make new friends. She isn't the most popular girl yet but she plans to try to change this. She is focused on her studies most of the time, and is a high achiever.

Neil (minor role) -
Age: 56
Occupation: Pub Landlord
Keith loves his job working in the local pub and spending his days chatting to the locals and pouring drinks. He is very friendly and popular within the village. He is currently not in a relationship.

Keith (minor role) -
Age: 63 years old
Occupation: Unemployed
Keith is the village drunk. He has no aspirations and is on benefits. He spends all the money he does get on alcohol at the local pub.

Storylines in Detail

We have created a video to explain our storylines in more detail. The video includes clips we have created to represent the storylines, an explanation of each story and a list of which characters will be included in each story.

Target Audience Profile

Target Audience Profile

Comparisson of Target Audience Questionnaire Results

We are going to compare the results of our target audience questionnaires to see if we found the same results and to look at any similarities found.

Firstly we found that between the questionnaires the majority of the participants were females. This is very typical of a soap opera audiences as they are aimed mainly at females. We also found that range of ages interested in soaps was incredibly varied, from one survey finding the most popular age group to be 10 - 19 and another finding that it was 41 - 50. This is a very important factor we will consider because it means we will have to have a range of story lines and characters to appeal to all of these age groups. We will try and apply the uses and gratifications theory of personal identity to our soap opera so the audience will have a member of the cast who they can really relate to and sympathise with.

We found that with regards to occupation and demographic groupings, the participants ranged from groups E - C1. This includes people in retirement, students, semi skilled and unskilled worker, skilled workers, supervisory, clerical and junior managerial. This is quite a wide range of demographics but it is what we expected to find, we thought that soaps would be very popular within groups E - C1. This is because people with these jobs, will come home from work wanting to relax and unwind, by watching television and getting escapism from watching drama in someone elses lives.

When asking participants what their favourite existing soap opera was, we found that Eastenders was most popular. We believe this is because it is very appealing to a very wide audience. There is something for audiences of all ages and classes to relate to. It is also very widely advertised through the means of them media making very good use of posters and trailers.

We also asked whether audiences are influenced by viewing soap opera trailers. We found that the majority of participants said either yes or sometimes, particularly if a special episode was being advertised. This shows us that trailers can be effective if found interesting by the audience. Our trailer in a sense will be a special as it will be advertising a brand new soap, and hopefully this will enable use to gain a wide audience. This links in with our results regarding what first got people interested in soaps, which we found was trailers and word of mouth. This means that creating a trailer is likely to be effective in advert sing a new soap.

We found that the most popular time for soaps to be viewed was in the evening. We believe this is so due to a lot of people watching soaps whilst having dinner or after dinner. Also when people come home from work and want to unwind by watching something interesting on TV, they will want to watch something that will allow them to escape from their day to day life. This is where we would want the uses and gratifications theory of entertainment to be applied to soap, which says people will watch a piece of media to be entertained or to escape from day to day life.

Final Soap Idea Table

Using our mind map and discussion, we came up with a table showing the rough outline of some of our soaps conventions. The table includes our main characters from the first two episodes, the three main story lines which will take place, as well as the locations where we will set the first two episodes and the people we're aiming it at. As we came up with the ideas for the soap, one of our group members (Jimmy) even came up with names for all the characters.

I have put what is written up into an Excel graph to make it easier to read.

Table

Soap Brief

As a group we have created a brief for our new soap, we done this so we have a detailed description of the characters and locations to work with. We will be able to refer back to this whilst creating our product.

The JAMS Brief

Justification of Ideas

We have chosen these ideas because we know that they have worked and been popular in previous soaps.

The Wedding Scene:
We have chosen to create a storyline based on the idea of an interupted wedding. This kind of drama will keep the audience drawn in and create suspense. This fits in with the Uses and Gratifications theory of Diversion. This means the audience will watch the soap to escape from everday problems by watching something exciting and different to everyday life.
An example of this would be seen in Hollyoaks were the wedding was stopped by Max's accident.













The Pub Scene:
We are going to include scene revolving around a pub as we know the is a very strong convention in soaps and is very popular. This is evident from all existing soaps being baseed around a pub community. We plan to show the elder characters in our soap appearing in the pub, being the gossip based characters. This links into the uses and gratifications theory of Personal Identiy as we can appeal to an elder audience by including characters they would relate to.

Such as:













The Queen Vic from Eastenders

The Rovers Return from Corronation Street

The Party Story:
We have chosen to create a storyline based around a house party to help us appeal to a younger audience part of the socio economic group E. This links to the uses and gratifications of personal identity meaning the young audience will be able to relate to the young characters. We know this story will be popular as similiar stories have been used before. Such as Lucy Beale from Eastenders holding a house party that goes wrong.

Developing Storylines

We continued the mind mapping process by drawing these pictures to help us vizualise the potenial storylines for our soap. We have tried to include stories that fit in with typical soap opera conventions. To do this we have got stories revoliving around love, family life, young couples, a wedding, a pub based scene and a scene containing issues such as underage drinking and drug use. As we know these conventions already work in exsisting soaps, for example Phil Mitchell in Eastenders using drugs, it is a good idea to carry on the use of these conventions as they are popular and likely to gain a big audience.

Soap Ideas

Initial Soap Ideas

We have created this mind map to enable us to get together all our ideas on what our soap should include. We thought about potential storylines, characters, locations and target audience. We will develop this to get a definite plan for the items appearing in our soap.

the JAM

This is our group blog where we will post all of our planning, ideas and any work we have done. The group consists of Matt Bigg, Abi Crafter, James Garrod and Stephanie Hadlow.

We will be producing a trailer for a new soap opera, along with a poster and a magazine cover to promote this soap.