Soap Trailers
For research I looked at a variety of current soaps to analyse features of their trailers for upcoming episodes, focusing mainly on shot length, and camera angles.
Soap Trailer | Length of Clip (seconds) | Amount of Shots In Clip |
Coronation Street – Siege Week | 30 | 20 |
Eastenders – Christmas 2009 | 36 | 12 |
Eastenders – Sam Mitchell Returns | 40 | 14 |
Coronation Street – Becky and Steve’s Wedding | 98 | 40 |
Eastenders – Kat and Alfie | 61 | 25 |
Eastenders – The Jackson 5 | 60 | 62 |
Hollyoaks – 1995 Launch | 16 | 16 |
Hollyoaks –Christmas 2008 | 20 | 15 |
The average amount of shots overall per trailer is 26. The average trailer length is 45 seconds. This works out to close to one shot for every two seconds of footage. However I did notice that when clips were drawn out techniques such as tracking shots or panning shots were utilized more often, as opposed to when the action is fast paced, here the close-ups of the characters on screen are far more prominent.
This trailer is a trailer for the return of two of EastEnders characters that were once huge parts of the show and loved by the nation. Their return was an eagerly awaited one and EastEnders used this as an opportunity to encourage more people to view the soap. The trailer has been deliberately designed to be an original piece of media that is not just clips of an episode thrown together, but has its own theme and narrative.
The trailer starts with a low angle establishing shot of the Queen Victoria pub which is burnt down and boarded up, the street it’s on is completely desolate. The fact that this trailer starts outside the ‘Queen Vic’ instantly tells the audience that this is a trailer for EastEnders as the pub is an indexical reference for EastEnders because it is the main meeting place and a lot of important scenes have happened in the past in that one place. There is a newspaper blowing across the street in front of it. The mise-en-scene of this is the first hint to the audience of the Wild West theme that the trailer follows as the newspaper echoes the tumbleweed that blows across in desolate towns in westerns. This suggests that the town is a sleepy quiet place but something is about to occur which may disrupt the peace. In the back-ground we can hear non-diegetic 'tinkling' noise. This sort of noise is often associated with magical or mysterious things continuing with the idea that all is not quite what it seems and that something is about to happen.
There is a high angle shot of a sign swinging back and forwards and then it jump cuts to a close shot pair of pointed toe boots walking across the street. The camera appears to be on the same height level as the shoes, making it a worm’s eye view shot. The camera is also tracking the action of the feet walking to capture the audience’s attention and not hint at who the character may be.
As the scene goes on we can see that the clips have a more sepia tone to them than normal soaps do. This editing technique has been used to also give the trailer an old western feel. We have been looking at doing a similar thing in our trailer. Although we are not using the same technique we’ve been looking at perhaps using colour drain and contrast of some clips to make them fit in more with our trailers theme.
There is a shot of an almost over the shoulder shot of a different character peering out from behind her blinds before quickly pulling them shut. This echos the old western theme of when a 'baddy' or stranger rolls into town and everyone shuts their doors and hides. It also hints at how the relationship with the two characters are. Or even perhaps how every character on the street feels about the returning character, as we later see people stop and stare or turn away from the character.
The camera jump cuts to a shot of the front of the characters feet. We get more of a view of them and we can tell that they are the tanned and toned legs of a woman. The music gets slower, then the character drops their white, animal print purse on the floor, from this mise-en-scene we are shown that it is definitely a woman as no man would carry a bag like that. The camera tilts up and the audience are slowly shown that it is the returning character of Kat, who left the show a few years before. She has obviously been away somewhere hot from the way she is dressed. She also has the appearance of a stereotypical 'Londoner', with her large earings and animal prints.
The music changes, with some heavy guitar strumming coming over the top of the tinkling nose, this sound is very typical western and at this point we are led to the characters on the street’s reaction to her return.
There continues with some other very stylistically western shots, the dropping of her jacket/ shawl, the peering through the blinds, the removal of an item from some sort of holster or side bag style thing. However this being a typical British soap, we can see that it is not a gun but a make-up mirror and then the character opens her mouth and produces a very stereotypical cockney accent asking “where do you get a drink round here?”
EastEnders fans would take that bit of diegetic speech as a pun, as it relates to the burning down of the pub a few episodes prior to the characters return. There is a shot of said burnt down pub just to show new or potentially new viewers that it was a pun and then the camera jumps back to Kat.
Another voice comes in with “I think you’re gonna need one” and Kat turns around. This is then what the trailer has been building up to; the typical western standoff. Two characters are now about 10 yards apart on a desolate road. The editing then jumps to a low angle shot of a man who is hard to see due to the shade from the bridge and his big hat. The low angle gives him a sense of power and the inability to see him gives a sense of mystery.
The music gets more rapid as the character slowly walks out of the shade and it’s revealed to be the man Kat left with, Alfie. There is then a very low angle shot from behind Kat’s legs, through the middle of them to show Alfie fully and emphasise the western theme. We can see that he is also dressed like he’s in a western, or has just come back from a different country. The through the legs shot also hints towards some sort of sexual chemistry between the two characters, hinting at their past relationship.
The separation of the two characters could represent a few things; that either even though they left together and happy they have come back with a lot of problems or are even separated. Or it could hint to the fact that they themselves are going to cause a lot of trouble for the square, like a gun fight does in a western. The separation could also possibly be a clever ploy by the advertisers. It makes the viewers want to find out what has happened between the couple, if they have fallen out, if they are still together and why have they returned, none of which are answered in the trailer. It is clever hooks like this that draw in more viewers and we need to incorporate a hook of our own into our trailer.
There are then close-ups of the characters faces, jump cutting to the parallel non-diegetic theme tune of EastEnders. The close-ups get closer each time, drawing the viewer in before it finishes on a shot bird’s eye view of the two characters standing face to face with the EastEnders logo fading into the middle of the street.
This is a very good trailer as it is visually very interesting, it is quite unusual for soap and it leaves the viewers with a lot of unanswered questions that will only be answered if they tune into watch. It is quite short and it doesn’t go into much detail, which ours will have to do more of. We need to establish a bit about our characters in order to get viewers to tune in. EastEnders doesn’t have to do this as the old watchers will already know about these characters and the newer viewers will have seen the reactions from the characters they already know and feel intrigued to find out more.
In our trailer we are planning to use a similar thing where we have clips filmed on the street where it’s set that are entirely unrelated to the soap, but in ours it will be used as almost a framing narrative effect and also unlike the EastEnders trailer ours will have clips from the actual soap, they will just be edited to give them a more visually interesting look.
Magazines
The Soaplife cover is centred around the theme of love for that specific week. Although the soap cover has a few bigger people on the front cover, the magazine hasn’t got a main character or plot line on the front page like most soap magazines usually do. This makes it unusual; however it instils the theme of “love shocks” into the readers mind. There is a lot of red on the magazine to keep with the theme of love. All the important eye catching stuff is in bright yellow to draw the reader’s eye to it. There is also a lot of exclamation marks on the page to make the headings seem important and shocking
Emmerdale Beyond the Grave trailer
This trailer starts off with a close up of someone dialling buttons in what seems to be a payphone. This is a movie technique and connotes the idea of secrecy and bad deeds going on. There is a voice over from what sounds like a conversation and this helps the trailer to flow from one scene to the next where the woman is actually talking. We have decided we would like to use this technique of drawing speech out over scenes where no one is talking in our trailer to give it a more fluid feeling.
The jump cut leads to a 2 shot of two women, one of the being the speaker, who is carrying flowers in. Then there is a non-diegetic sound of a narrator saying “a gift from the grave...”. This piece of speech is dark and ominous and sets the scene.
Next is a super close-up of a credit card being pulled out a wallet. There is a shadow over the credit card. The scene was probably purposely light this way as to continue with the mysterious, dark tone of the trailer so far.
The jump cuts continue and in the next shot the camera tilts up to show a woman’s face looking scared. The shot then fades out. This fade is used to make sure that the audience have the image of the shocked woman’s faced instilled in their mind for longer.
There is a sense that the flowers, that usually connote romance and happiness, have a very dark and ominous feel to them as there is another shot of another woman looking at the flowers where the camera tilts up from the flowers to see her scared face.
The trailer jump cuts back to the first woman looking very stressed out. This continues to show the reader that the flowers are important because they are a bad thing, not a good thing.
The speech now continues over the top of the clips, sometimes becoming diegetic and sometimes staying placed over the top of the clips as a way to create fluidity ad well as confusion within the audience. The police are also shown as a way to draw the audience in and intrigue them. If the law is involved then the storyline must obviously be a good one.
The jump cuts between characters continues to create a feeling of excitement and action within the trailer. The action continues with a match on action of a woman storming out of a house and throwing the flowers at a car. This is a slightly violent scene meant to intrigue the audience.
Next the trailer switches back and forth between two characters in multiple scenes together. This idea that not many people have to be involved in a trailer and a storyline for it to be exciting is one we would like to explore in our own trailer.
Then the pace of the trailer shifts. It reveals to us two completely different characters. Through midshot’s we see one saying “be nice” while the other replies “oh I intend to be”. This declaration has a very sinister edge to it and as the clip fades out and then into several clips of people who appear to be in despair .This technique creates an almost visual heartbeat effect which creates tension and excitement within the audience. This is a well used technique and would be something to think about putting in ours, or for us to include at least one fade somewhere in our trailer.
The trailer goes back to the man who then says “don’t you worry” this is dramatic irony as the audience have already seen there is plenty to worry about in the future. At this point the narrator again comes in giving information about the soap before the scene jump cuts to information on the shows timings that is written, not spoken.
