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.
- 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.
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