Potential Soap Ideas – Planning (only certain elements used)
Setting: Town, and also potentially using a more rural setting alongside this – such as the outskirts. The soap will be set in modern day society.
Character 1 – Male, a potential murder suspect. He’s believed to be a troubled teen due to personal, family issues. Due to this he appears extremely jaded.
Character 2 – Female, town’s gossip. She knows the ins and outs of the town, yet that doesn’t mean her information gets exaggerated or bleary from time to time.
Character 3 – Female, slightly ditzy and paranoid. Believes that everyone thinks she’s the murderer even though that’s simply not the case. Even begins to leave ‘clues’ for the police as if she herself is the murderer yet writes the notes/messages in a different style to her own. This is just an attempt by herself to reassure her that people don’t suspect she’s the murderer. – Schizophrenic.
Character 4 – Male, extreme countertype. A weak character physically and appears placid. Yet is he? Looks can be deceiving.
Character 5 – Female, anti-social. Leaning towards a more goth/emo nature yet it isn’t quite made clear. She’s also being drawn towards self-harm. Becoming slightly schizophrenic; could a voice inside her head push her into murder?
Character 6 – Male, murder victim. Alive for part of the trailer, he was loathed by mainly everyone within the previously idyllic town.
Whilest our actual trailer does not follow this exact storyline, we have included certain character profiles and ideas from it.
Whilest our actual trailer does not follow this exact storyline, we have included certain character profiles and ideas from it.
Locations:
Local park/recreation ground- Main meeting place for characters in our trailer. Desolate in Winter, busy in Summer
House - Different rooms can be used depending on the character to represent different homes. Here is where they feel they can act ‘themselves’.
Town Centre Sundial – Exact centre of the town, another meeting place for characters – place where most storylines are started or explored in further detail.
Desolate Woodlands – Place where the murder was committed. Isolated location portrays feelings of the unknown.
Character Names and Their Etymology- final characters
The character of Lilith, who is our central character, is used on both our magazine and poster. Her means "of the night" and gives her a jaded, mysterious effect. This further relates to her inner turmoil - should she stay with her boyfriend, Corbin, or is a lesbian relationship with Bellona too seductive to resist?
The name Bellona itself means "to fight" and this links to her ongoing battle to woo Lilith over from what had previously been a one off lesbian fling into to a full blown relationship. On the surface she appears to be a well-rounded girl, yet underneath it all she is filled with darkness and murders her boyfriend in cold blood.
One thing that should quickly become apparent to the viewer is how Bellona’s twin sister acts as her somewhat alter-ego. The main difference between the two that is not physical is the fact that her twin is unable to hide her problems deep within herself. The physical difference between the two is shown with her different hair colour closely relates to her name Keaira, which means "dark", and her dark side is vividly shown with her obvious signs of schizophrenia.
We realise that giving out characters such odd names may make the Soap a bit different and make the characters hard to relate to at first but we are sure that giving them connotations is the right idea and if the soap were to be actually made obviously there would be more characters with less unusual names. However we also picked unusual names that can be shortened down. Lilith would become Lily, much more common. Bellona would become Bella and Keaira, while spelt in this way is very strange, it is not a hugely uncommon name when spoken and not read.
Our Soap Magazine
For our magazine cover we have chosen to give it a light blue back ground. We made this decision as the colour is light, relaxing, gender neutral and non-offensive so it is a good colour to put controversial issues on. We also noticed that two other magazines, ‘TV Choice’ and ‘TV Mag’, also have a similar light blue background.
Looking at lots of TV magazines is where we got our inspiration for the colour scheme from. They often follow a similar colour scheme to ours, with red, blue and white often being in a lot of them. The red, white and blue of the soap magazine has very patriotic connotations and continues with the very unique style of British soap opera’s.
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| Magazine Header |
For the title we used the red and white theme for the text to make it bold and stand out.
Other colours we have used for the writing are pink and yellow. We noticed that these were also used often on magazines as the colours are bright and eye-catching and they make the words easier to read.
We used a starburst shape to advertise “hot telly week” as we saw this feature on another magazine and thought it would be a good way to take up space and it would draw the readers in.
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| Hot telly caption. |
We use the main character in the soap, the character of Lilith, as the central figure in the TV Mag to make the readers understand that a lot of the storyline revolves around her and she will be a very important figure. She has a white glow around her outline to make her stand out from the page and we noticed that a lot of other TV magazines use this technique.
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| Main character: Lilith |
Her Costume was specifically chosen as the varsity jacket is in fashion at this time, making the character instantly appealing to the younger, fashion conscious generation. The top, which has “passion” written on it, was also specifically chosen for the connotations it has and the fact that it relates to the storyline. The fact that both pieces are so dark hints to the dark nature of the show and the fact that even though the character is smiling something darker may be going on.
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| Lilith in the passion T-shirt |
