Evaluation: The impact of extremly dramatic storylines

I watched the latest episode of 'Skins', and was shocked by the ending. Freddie's death became popular within gossip everywhere- showing just how much people were emotionally involved with Skins, and how they were shocked at the suddeness of his death, and sickened in the way he had been murdered. It is interesting to look at this because our soap contains extreme storylines, and will contain many more as it progresses- if it were to progress- so seeing how just one character's storyline within a whole episode of a drama has taken a large proportion of youth by suprise alows us to see the kind of impact our storylines could have on our audience. The photo I have posted above brings the sadness of Freddie's death back to the viewer's mind, so that they acknoledge the shortness of his life. The fact that he was born in 1992 and died this year, makes him even more easier to relate to because he is the same age as me, and it just makes you think of how young he is and that this could have happened to one of your friends. This makes his death even more personal, therefore making his death almost a reality, because we now know that Freddie Mclair is dead and that he is completly gone from 'Skins', and his death and absence is felt by those who have watched 'Skins', especially from the beginning, and have seen Freddie mature, change, and develope as a character. So for the fans of 'Skins', Freddie will be greatly missed. It would be great if our soap could have this effect on our audience; it would be proof of its success.

Evaluation 4: How did you use media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages?

Here, I have posted my work as an image from photoshop. I have used icons, logos and photographs, and manipulated them to create a colage of technology and software that I used within my construction and research, planning and evaluation stages.

I have included the photoshop cs3 logo, the programme- 'Paint', Google logo, imovie logo, london grid for learning logo, a dell computer, a mac computer, the youtube logo, the CLC logo, a camera, a camera stand, and the blogger.com symbol.

Dell computer: This is usually the computer I used at school to complete posts on my blog. Sometimes, I needed to start a post right away, at school during the lesson to be able to document it before I got hom, because then I would have to do another one then. So using these computers came to alot of use.

Mac: This is where I did editing, website work and sometimes photoshop work. It is what we used at the CLC to do our website, and it is what we used to edit our trailer. We could not have completed our coursework without a mac. We used imovie and iweb on the macs.

CLC: Without the CLC, we would not have been able to learn how to create websites properlly. I am glad we went, because this is where we started our website, and also where we continued to work on our website. This is also where we created our games. Someone who works at the CLC showed us how to make games, and we were able to make them to incorporate into our website, making them a great bonus, because existing soap websites also have games to allow their audiences to play them. Our audiences will also be able to play our games.

Blogger.com: This is the website I have been using to document all of my progress through the the entirety of the coursework. I already new how to use blogger, from using it in AS, but these skills have developed in A2, as I now know furthur skills, such as how to edit html and how to upload complicated images and links into a post.

Small hand-held digital camera: This is what we used to film our trailer. The tape in it was really good because it was able to hold up to 60 minutes of footage and has a good make. The camera was also very easy to use, and as we use these camera within AS, using them for A2 was very easy and not a problem atall because we already had very good knowledge of camera shots and angles.

Youtube: This is what I used to find videos as research. Youtube videos are really good to use for Blogger.com, so I used them throughout my blog. Youtube is also a huge website, so has thousands of videos, so finding ones that I needed for research, for example: Eastenders Christmas special, was really easy.

Google: This is the search engine I used on computers when I wanted to search for information, and also, websites like Youtube, Blogger.com and london grid for learning.

Camera tripod: We used this when we wanted to keep the camera stable and balanced to stop it from moving or shaking during filming. It was also useful for keeping the camera shake-free when we wanted to create pan-shots with our camera, for example, moving along with the character when we were filming the rape scene.

Photoshop: This is the software I used to create my magazine cover, and the image tasks within my evaluation tasks. At first, I did not know how to use photoshop atall, but once I was shown how to use the basics, I was able to teach myself how to use the rest, and I was able to create my magazine cover which took me a very long time. From using photoshop, I have learnt how to use a large variety of tools which include the move tool, the lasso tool, the magnetic lasso tool, and the crop tool. I enjoyed zooming up to the images until all I could see were thousands of pixels, and using the erase tool to rub out the background. This technique ensures precision and makes the end result look professional and is the technique existing publications use to create not just their magazine covers, but the insides of their magazines also. So I am glad I have learnt how to use photoshop so well.

Imovie: This is the software we used to edit our trailer. It would not have been possible to finish our trailer if we had not used this software, however, using it was slightly complicated, because we were not able to start editing straight away. First of all, we had to save the trailer onto the mac. This took a long time because it only saved as slowly as it played- so we watched it as it played. Then we found that we could not edit it unless we did this process called 'letterboxing' which we thought would seperate all the scenes out. But it did not, the whole trailer stayed within one box. So we had to go through the whole thing again and cut it ourselves, cutting where ever one scene ended, and another began. It was a very long process, but it was worth ir because we were then able to edit our trailer. From this, I learnt how to use imovie properlly and learnt how to use techniques such as letterboxing, cutting and adding other things to the video, such as audio- in this case- our music.

London grid for learning: This is the website we used for researching music. It is also the website where we found the music to use. We found it very useful as it had a variety of music samples and we were able to find the kind of music sample that suited our trailer. I am happy that we decided to use this website, as the music was to a high standard and suited our trailer well.

Paint: I used this programme when I could not find any other way of publishing a screen print onto my blog. I pasted the print screen into microsoft word and then dragged the image into paint. In there, I saved it as an image, and I was able to publish it onto my blog. When you want to show a web-page as an image on your blog, but save image does not come up when you right click, this is a good tchnique to use, and I only learnt how to do it when I had to use it for this, so its a very useful skill to have and I'm glad I learnt it.

Evaluation: 3.What have you learnt about your audience feedback?

Stereotypical viewer for our soap:


This is Andrea. She is the typical viewer for our soap because she is an 18 year old student and she has a down to earth, sensible, open-minded, caring personality and likes listening to indie, pop and girlie rock music. She enjoys shopping with friends from shops such as 'Next', 'New Look', 'Topshop', 'Office' and 'River Island'. She enjoys watching programs such as 'CSI', 'Glee', 'Gray's Anatomy', 'Hollyoaks', 'Home and Away' and 'Skins'.

Andrea would watch our new soap because it would appeal to her because of the youth portrayed, and she would find the storylines interesting. There are also many female characters within our soap, and she would be able to relate to their situations and how they feel because our storylines are every day matters and issues as well as serious incidents and life-changing problems. Being inspired by girlie programmes such as '90210' and 'Gossip Girl', our soapwill also appeal to Lisa because of its girlie under-theme.

This is a photo of a more wide range of our typical target audience. They range in backgrounds, ethnicities and religious beliefs, and range in age from 15- 41. Our target audience is 16- 25, however our primary research shows that we would get older and younger viewers who enjoy watching our kind of programme. Therefore, this photo is an example of that wider audience, as it shows the different kinds of people with all different opinions and thoughts and enjoy different things.

These people enjoy different hobbies which include going to parties, playing games, listening to music, doing qymnastics, painting, collecting buttons, playing guitar, going out with friends, spending time with family and cooking. They enjoy doing their shopping at shops such as AllSaints, New Look, Topshop, Topman, H&M, Primark, River Island, Asos.com, T.K.Max, JD Sports and French Connection. The music they listen to also ranges widely. They like to listen to Black Eyed Peas, N-Dubz, Take That, Coldplay, Lady GaGa, The Gym Class Heroes, Gorillaz, Beyonce, Rihanna, Florence and the Machine, Flo Rida, Eminem, Dizzee Rascal, David Guetta, Chris Brown, Biffy Clyro, Arctic Monkeys, Alphabeat, Alicia Keys, Akon, Jay-z, JLS, The Kooks, Noisettes and Katy Perry.

They would watch our soap beacause the characters portrayed in our soap are in the same age group and doing the same sort of things in life, whether it be university or working. Our audience can watch this soap and enjoy the storylines whislt also seeing the message that they can enjoy life, but also get an education. These people would be able to relate themselves to the characters they see and perhaps pick a character that they are most like and have them as their favorite. Our soap brings both every day and serious issues to the screen which means that our audience dealing with the same issues will understand what the characters are going through, find the drama interesting and maybe even be comforted by what they see. There is a range of race and religion in our soap, not to mention sexuality and relationships, so our audience will have alot to relate to there, and find the lives of the characters interesting, and as they watch each episodes, they will become more and more interested and involved within the storylines. Our soap is also extremely modern, so it shows up to date fashion and trend, even the querky dress sense of the character Joannah, and our audience will see the different dress senses and like some, hate others, depending on what they like, and because our soap is modern, it means that we get a wide audience in the first place, unlike specificly aimed soaps such as Emmerdale who are aimed at the elderly and people who live in the country side. Our soap tackels the urban side of life.


We were able to make all these choices from both the primary and secondary research which we carried out. Below is a video showing the kinds of questions which we asked, and the answer which we recieved which helped us make decisions on Liberty.





In class, we asked other groups about the broadcasting times of our soap and where able to recieve the information that our soap clashed with 'Eastenders'- an existing soap so popular that it would be stupid to ignore this. So we changed the time so that audiences would be able to watch both programmes, and it would be late enough in the evening to make sure that parents would be home from work, but early enough so that it is the average time that people eat dinner and are relaxing as a family in the living room.

Evaluation: 2.How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary texts?

I think my magazine cover looks good because it uses the conventions of a soap magazine and it has bright colours, eye-catching font and good quality images which I think all work really well together to make the magazine cover look intressting and bring the viewer to purchase it.

I think the website works well with the magazine cover because this too is packed with information about our soap and has been created with fresh bright colours to give it a modern look. I think this is a detail which makes it appealing to our audience, because our trailer is also very modern and specifically aimed at a young audience, so our audience are visiting our website to be furthur intertained by the soap that they enjoy watching. Our website has a number of pages, all with intressting never-before-seen photos of us and the characters we are playing and also other things which our audience can read and be interested in like the interviews we wrote up, the e-cards we created and the games that we made. Ensuring that our website gets updated as our soap progresses on television, our audience should not ever have to be bored. Also, my magazine is a good example of other media products where our audience can read about our soap and find out things that they did not know before.

The font we chose for our website also helped to give the site a modern look, as the font is different and looks stylish. We used a slim font for the name of the soap on the main page and put a silhouette of central London behind it to show the location of our soap.Within our webpage, we used bright and bold colours which gives it an overall modern and young look.

I think, if we were to do our website again, we would make it more unique and try to move away from the layout restrictions. By this, I mean that we could use more professional website creating software so that we could create the layout plan ourselves and then, this would be more suited to our trailer which is quite youthful and therefore jumping from story to story in a fun and engaging way. But I think for what we wanted to create and considering the scale of the project, our website is good enough and also looks quite professional as we took the time to make sure everything was neat and the images worked in harmony with the text and information.

I am happy with the way my magazine cover has turned out because it looks like a real product and that it could be successful within the industry.

Our trailer has the overall effect of a soap trailer, and I am happy with the way it has turned out.

As a whole product, the three texts link together really well because our webpage reflects the characters' personalities and storylines in a way that lets our audience look on our website for more information about our soap after watching our trailer, if they should wish it. My magazine cover helps to promote and advertise my soap, making it known as a soap opera amongst other existing soap magazines which means that people intressted in buying soap magazines will see our new soap on the cover of my magazine and be interested in it, and therefore, may purchase it to find out more about our programme. Our trailer engages the audience in realistic storylines and issues that could happen to anyone, with their life styles, fashions and relationships being interesting and stimulating to our audience which makes our audiences want to watch more and keep watching.

Evaluation: 1.In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media texts?

Here, I have posted a jpg saved version of my 9 box grid I created using photoshop. Each box represents something different about our soap. Box number 1 is in the top left corner, box number 2 is at the top in the middle, number 4 is top right, then number 5 is left middle, and ect.

1: Title:

In box 1, I have placed images which for me, represent 'Liberty'- the title of our soap opera. I have typed up the definition of liberty which is: 'The condition in which one has th e freedom to act according to his or her own will'. This is what our soap is about; young people breaking free from the rules that they feel trapped by and doing what they feel is right. I have placed images of alcohol and drugs because sometimes people like to use these to turn to them, or just act silly for a night and get drunk. I have put a lip print to represent make-up looking after ones appearance, and butterflies fo symbolise freedom and free spirit. We wanted to keep the name of our soap simple by having only one word in it. We wanted this one word to reflect what our soap is about; which is breaking free and freedom. i think our title has kept with the conventions for soap names, because soap names are usually one word, and it is good that way because it is kept simple and easy to remember.

2: Location:

I have placed images to do with the location of Liberty into box 2. The images are of central London, Elena's house where we did our filming, and the London underground logo to show the main method of transport for young people travelling to and from central london, for university lectures and for going out with friends. Some soaps like 'Eastenders' keep within the premesis of a few streets for location, but we wanted our soap to do more. We did not want our soap to be confined and limited to just the road that our school is on or one street because then, there is only so mush that can happen. Although it is typical of soaps to stay in a small area in terms of location, some dramas like 'Skins' have almost a different location each episode to show how the characters are individual and move around seperatly. So in this way, we have developed on the conventions of location for soap because we ra enot limiting ourselves on location, but doing more, and this is not common within soaps.

3: Costume/Props:

Within box 3, I have placed images of the props we used during filming to add to the realism, and the costumes which we wore because we felt it was important for our character roles. We have pretty much kept with the conventions of realism on the costume front. We did not want to make our characters look like models or too glamorous like in '90210', so our characters are wearing normal every day outfits to look like average young Londoners. The props we used improved our sets. Mise en scene was important for our soap. We gave Shadei a headscarf to wear during the praying scene because she was acting as a Muslim, and because she had to throw it off to show her being rebelious. We also used a real pregnancy test for Maria to use, and some sort of fizzy pill to use as a drug to put in the drink which Maria drinks. Using realistic props like this means that we were able to make our soap look very realistic, but we pretty much kept to the conventions with this, and we are happy with the props that we used.

4: Filming/Editing:

In box 4, I have placed images of the filming equipment that we used and images of our filming in progress to show the points wen we held the camera in our hands only to film, and when we had to use the tripod. I have also placed images of a mac and a dell computer because these are what we used for our practical work. We edited our film on a mac. We used simple and easy ways of filming and editing. The camera shots we used were to show perspective from certain characters views, or to show only what the audience can see and no one else can. Whilst editing, adding sound effects and the correct effect to make the camera look like it was moving meant that the audience can understand that the beginning of our trailer is a blurry memory and the pill is added by someone trying to drug Maria who we later see being led up the stairs by a strange man, and then again being crept up on by this man when she is unconscious on the bed. We kept with the conventions because we used simple filming methods and did not go to the extreme with our editing. We used special effects, but only because this is a trailer, and in a normal episode, we would obtain the conventions of the fly-on-the-wall effect.

5: Font:

I have included the fonts I have used within box 5 to show the kinds of fonts that we used for our project. The words I have used for the fonts describe them, and shows why we chose the different fonts for different reasons. With our font, we wanted to develope on the conventions for font and try something different. We wanted our soap to look modern, young, stylish and unique. So we used fonts to reflect this. I think the style which we created for our soap and website is also quite sophisticated, considering the soap has teenagers for characters, they are mature, and the neat style reflects this.

6: Storylines:

In box 6, I have included images which relate to the storylines which we have included in our soap, and the kinds of storylines and issues that will remain in our soap. I have put an image of maria looking miserable to show the effect her storyline of rape is having on her, and I have included religious symbols to show a clash of religious beliefs and how, this represents the storylines of religion and how it can sometimes cause problems for young people if they are in a relationship with someone from anothe religion and are finding it difficult to follow theirs. We definetly kept to the conventions with storylines. Storylines in soaps are nearly always very dramatic, so we started off ours with lesbian issues, rape, one sided celibacy and religion issues, as well as an arranged marriage. This is quite alot going on for our characters but is not too extreme. Its is extremly realistic, and of course can happen to anyone, so these storylines are also to raise awareness of such issues.

7: Themes:

In box 7, I have typed a variety of words just to how the kinds of themes and emotions that run high in Liberty. It is a very modern soap, so it has issues with relationships and what comes with them such as sex, love and troubles. But it also has university life because the characters that are students in our soap are about to attend university and people of this age which are in our target audience will be able to relate to how these young people cope with their new environments and independancy. Some of these themes are present in every soap, but we built on the conventions for this and had university life to our soap, and party life of teenagers. It is the relationships between the teenagers that our audiences will be seeing.

8: Characters and how they are introduced:

We started off our characters with dramatic storylines to introduce them to our audience at the point in their lives when they are most troubled- for our audiences to see them in their true colours. But also to start off our soap with alot of drama and interesting storylines within all the characters to draw our audiences in. This way- with the big storylines, they will continue for a very long time and the smaller storylines will begin to interlink as the soap progresses and our audiences will not get bored. We built on the conventions for this. We did not want any of our characters to be boring at first, so we made sure that every one was introduced through their storylines in an interesting way and that our audiences can begin to tell what they are like as personalities.

9: Soundtrack:

We found the music that was right for our kind of soap and the episode it was on the london grid for learning website. I have put words and pictures that describe the kind of music it is in box 9. We kept this simple and kept with the conventions of soundtrack. We only muted some scenes, but the scenes where the audience needed to hear what was going on, we had the music on more faintly, and then more loudly when there was no dialogue.

Evaluation: Our final trailer on youtube

*We used slight special effects to show dizziness and blurry memory.

*We used props to achieve our storylines within our trailer- such as the fizzy pill.

*The lighting when Dervish and Maria are talking is dark, so if we were to do this again, we would try to change this so it was more light, but it is ok as it adds to the serious tone of the conversation.

*We cut our film appropiatly so that errors such as looking at the camera were not included.

*We made sure that the kissing scene between Shiffa and Joannah looked realistic enough to convince viewers that they are in love.

*The party scene was created with a multi-coloured light spinning ball and that it was dark, like night parties usually are.

*We kept traditions when Shiffa and her mother were praying, bowing their heads onto the ground, as this is how Muslims pray.

*The music changes slightly, in time with the film so that everything works in harmony with itself.

Overall, we are very pleased with what we have managed to acheive and think that our trailer is quite good. But if we were to do it again, I think we should include the broadcasting times at the end of the trailer to let our audiences know when it is playing.

Starting to edit our trailer and sneak peak

Together as a group, we took a vistit to the CLC again so that we could make a start on our editing and finish our website.

It did not take long to finish our website. We made the fonts to house fonts, added the sneak peak and games.

Then we began to edit our soap, so we started saving our trailer onto the mac, but the battery ran out on the camera once it was almost finished which meant that we had to go back to school and start to edit our film all over again. It took a long time, and we had a few technical difficulties, but we managed everything in the end.