listing magazines (research)

Part of my coursework is to create the front cover of a listings magazine for the new soap, after getting an understanding of the basics of soaps, i now want to research into the different TV listing magazines to help me to identify the conventions of these magazines.

• Listing magazines are based around this weeks biggest soap storylines, they will include features from all the main soaps: Eastenders, Corination Street, Emmerdale, Hollyoaks, Home and away and Neighbours.
•  The magazines promote the programme as before it is shown on TV, major story lines will be told in these magazines. 
• These magazines also encourage their target audience to gossip between themselves about their views on what is happening and what they think will happen.
• Many dedicated soap watchers will buy these magazines weekly, in order to find out about all the storylines this week, before they actually watch the episode.
• They often feature interviews with the characters in the biggest storylines this week, this enables the reader to get a connection with the actor and understand what it was like to film the scenes.

Current Listing magazines

Inside Soap:
Inside Soap is a weekly UK magazine, released every Tuesday. It covers current and future storylines in soap operas shown in the United Kingdom.
Inside Soap traditionally provides interviews from actors who play characters in the soap operas and outlines current storylines; occasionally past storylines are included in featurettes. Readers are invited to email their questions to soap stars and entries are published in interview format. Soap stars' personal lives are also covered, including tips on fashion and where to purchase clothes worn by the stars. A weekly TV guide is also provided

All About Soap

All About Soap is a fortnightly UK magazine, realeased every Tuesday. It is similar to Inside soap and features the same storylines.



Soaplife

Soaplife is a fortnightly UK magazine, released on Tuesday.

Conventions of a soap opera (research)

I decided to start of by looking at the conventions of a soap opera in order to help me create a plot and get a general understanding of the basis of my coursework. I watched bits of various soaps, for example Eastenders, Coronation Street and Waterloo Road, and used the interent to indentify the conventions.

The general conventions:

•  soap opera plots have open ended, there are several storylines going on at one time. There can be three, four and sometimes even five, storylines in one episode, and each storyline will include different people.
• There is no closure to the soap, as one storyline ends, another will begin. 
• More populare soaps such as Eastenders, Emmerdale and Coronation Street have episodes aired four or five times a week, oftened each episode will last 30 minutes.
• When a big storyline is reaching its climax often there will be a longer episode, usually an hour long.
• The soap will usually be based in a specific area of the UK, for example Eastenders is set in Walford in East London.
• The soap will be based around a group of characters, in some soaps its based around a number of familys, where as Waterloo Road is based around groups of different students and teachers.

 

Narrative Themes:

• Soaps often deal with serious themes, such as muder, serious illnesses, domestic voilence and sexuality. They focus on real life issues that are effecting our society today.
• For example in Eastenders the Masood family found out their son was gay, as Muslims they responded very harshly as this is not accepted in the Islam culture. However in todays society Muslims coming out as Gay is becoming more common, so this is why Eastenders had this theme. 
• Because of the use of social realism in soaps such as Eastenders helplines are used when things which may disturb or affect the audience are shown. Using social realism is effective as it allows the audience to get emotionally connected with the characters and they are able to go through traumatic and exciting experiences with them. It can also let the audience know how the character is feeling especially if they themselves have experienced it
• General themes include: unemployment, drug and alcohol abuse, racism, different cultures, bullying, crime, adultry and underage pregnancy.

Settings:

• In soap operas there are always central meeting points used; this is a place where all characters go regularly and allows their stories to intervene,there may often be more then one meeting point.  Central meeting points are public places such as the local pub or a shop or sometimes just the street. For example 'The Rovers' is a popular central meeting point in Corrination Street as this is based in the centre the street and is a pub that almost all the characters visit to socialise in. Places such as these allow characters to leave their individual stories and involve themselves in the other various stories around them. This is by the use of gossip between them. Often the biggest storylines will include scenes in the central meeting point.
• Soaps have a number of different sets, they often have public places such as cafes, pubs, parks, night clubs, and a school. In these scenes there are often a number of different cast memebers, but they also have settings which are more private, the most common are characters houses.

Music, Lighting, Camerawork:

• Music is very rarely used in soaps, you may get background songs in places like the cafe or the pub and even then they will modern songs that are on the radio at the time. This is because the idea of soaps is make it as realistic as possible, so they do not include soundtracks like films
• Soaps do have a theme tune, which will play at the beginning of the soap and sometimes also the end.
• Lighting is realistic, so there is always natural lighting for that scene.
• Camerawork is fairly basic compared to movies, if there is a conversation going on over the should shot is common. However when a scene is reaching the climax, for example a murder is about the happen lighting and camerawork will often change in order to create suspence and tension.

Brief decisions (planning)

I have looked at all the possible briefs for this piece of coursework, and have narrowed it down to two possible choices: - A promotion package for the release of a new album, to include a promo video, together with a digipak for the albums release and a magazine advertisement for the digipak - A prmotion package for a new soap opera, to include a TV advert, together with a listings magazine front cover featuring the new soap and a poster for the soap. I do prefer the soap opera idea, at the moment, as I think this is something I havent looked at in media before and would therefore be a challenge but also enjoyable. At the moment I am thinking about doing a soap opera aimed at teengers, based around a group of teengers life. I will look at current soap opera's such as Eastenders and Waterloo Road, as these two are similar to my potiental target audience, before I start my coursework to give myself some inspiration.