Our trailer creates meaning by forming the frames into a narrative sequence. We created our trailer to tell the audience what they would be expecting, this is typical of trailers as it gives the audience a feel of what is too come, for us it would be relationship stories, bullying etc. To make the frames flow into the narrative sequence, we used straight cut which are also a code of trailers, we used this code because we felt that this transition would be more relevant to our target audience. The straight cuts suggest that this soap will be quite fast-paced and too the point which our target audience would be more interested in, that is why we followed that particular code. As our trailer is set in a school, the mise-en scene used was school uniform, school buildings etc. to represent our school accurately. The mise-en-scene reflect our target audience as most of them would still be in school, so it was important that they could relate to our soap as they would be more likely to watch it, we found this out from our questionnaire. This follows the convention because soaps to an extent aim to reflect real-life situations such as ‘Byker Grove’ and for ours to be realistic as possible we would use the school mise-en-scene We have utlised a variety of camera angles such as pan, mid-shot, close-up etc. This is because we want to give the audience something interesting too look at.

TV listings- our TV listings magazine, ‘TV List’ follows a convention of using several stories on the front cover, this is because the TV listings magazine wasn’t specific for our soap as the TV listings magazine promotoes all broadcast televison programmes. We constructed this by researching similar texts such as ‘TV choice’ and ‘What’s on TV.’ They also display various stories from other programmes which we incorporated as well.  The convention is promoting our tv soap in the front cover and double page spread, as our TV soap is being promoted. We followed the convention of using an image of our soap as a dominant image of the cover, we also used the code of eye contact this is because it is a technique used to persuade potential readers to purchase the magazine as the actor/s are looking at the audience.  We also found from our questionnaire that people appeal to a dominant image with some smaller ones rather than lots of mini-images, so we took this on-board as well as our similar media texts.

Poster- As there are a lack of posters for soaps it was hard to follow the conventions for it, so we used other posters advertising a new drama. We decided to construct the poster to introduce our characters as then there is a familiarity when they watch the soap because they feel like they have seen the poster before and in the poster they understand what kind of character they are and what rites of passage will follow, which in a sense is a convention of posters as for new soaps/dramas it is important to introduce the characters so the audience have a chance to decide whether they would be interested in the programme. The costumes represent the teen audience as they are in school and are wearing a school uniform which is a convention of our soaps, being that soaps aim to be realistic as possible and for us that would be the people to wear school uniform. There are a variety of poses such as ‘couple in love,’ ‘nerdy’ etc. To show our diversity in our characters, as like teenagers they are diverse. This also follows the convention that teenagers are different and the poses reflect this.

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

I used Final Cut on the Apple Mac to help construct my trailer, as the frames were used together to help construct my narrative sequence. This is because I placed the frames in order to construct the narrative, I also used the transitions of a straight cut because I wanted the sequence to have a flow without being interrupted by a wipe or a dissolve as it would be as well unnecessary for my trailer. Also, Final Cut allowed me to have a good pace throughout my trailer, as I sped the actions up sometimes and slowed it down as this would interest my audience more. With the combination of Soundtrack Pro, I was able to have sound with my trailer, this helped make my trailer more effective as the audience could associate the sound with future episodes as it gives a feel of what is to come. A camcorder was used also to help construct our trailer because it allowed us to film the sequences in various angles for our narrative. This is particularly useful because it allowed us to have moving image which the trailer needed to have. As well as the trailer, we constructed our poster and TV listings magazine using media technologies, Microsoft Publisher was used for both as it would enable me to create a successful poster and front cover. Within this programme, I used cropping to resize the images so they were right for the print publication, also I used the lighting tools to try and get the most realistic photos for my print publication.

I mainly used the internet in terms of planning, so we could research other trailers and print productions online, via youtube, google etc. This enabled me to look at other trailers and see which ones would be most effective for my trailer, and most suitable for my target audience. Some inspired me to decide what to put into the trailer as there were certain storylines such as relationships which I found was popular. I also used the internet to look at the variety of posters and TV listings magazines. However, for posters there was a lack of posters because everyone knows about soaps and it’s not entirely necessary to promote the soap unless a big storyline comes up, so we looked at a variety of posters such as music and film, to give me ideas. There were a lot of TV listings magazines available which helped as then I was more aware of what to put into my TV listings magazine, as there was a variety to choose from. TV Choice, and TV Quick seemed like popular options for TV listings magazines, so I adopted the codes and conventions from them.

In the evaluation stages, it was important we got as much feedback as possible in order to make our coursework stronger, for this to happen we uploaded our video to YouTube and asked our friends/family and anyone else willing to do it for their opinions. We also uploaded our video on Facebook so our friends had easy access to our coursework, as well as our TV listings and poster because then we could get as much feedback as possible.

How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary text?

My combination of my trailer and ancillary texts is effective because they have a consistent house style, of a similar colour, similar informal language and similar characters on each of the media texts. Also what is consistent about the texts is that they are wearing the same clothes, so all the texts have a similar familiar feel to them. IPC media would promote our TV listings magazine because they also produce a few others and of the same genre, and the BBC would produce our soap. Although they are not of the same institution they are both similar in the sense that they both produce entertainment media texts.

We found from our audience questionnaire that our audience liked our characters because when asked ‘What does or does not attract you about the soap?’ a lot of people liked our characters as they felt they were easy to relate to and thought our characters were interesting. This helped support our view that our characters were relevant to our target audience and before in our audience research we chose the characters that the audience would be more interested in, such as the ‘bully’ etc. Our previous audience research helped us influence what characters we were going to pick because our target audience told us what characters they would be more appealed too and we used this information to create our characters, so our target audience would enjoy our soap more. They also feel that because our characters are from a school they can relate to them more as the majority of our target audience will also be at school.

What also appealed to our target audience was the storylines, this is because our storylines were also ‘relatable’ and looked ‘interesting.’ This again, helps strengthen our trailer because the target audience are interested in the storylines and said that was a ‘key factor’ of why they would be watching it. Prior to this, we gave our target audience the opportunity to tell us which storylines they would be interested in, from this we found that ‘relationships’ was the most popular rite of passage. We took this on board when creating our soap and decided it would be relevant to include relationships in our soap as that is the storyline our audience are most interested in. One of our questions asked whether the individual ‘could identify any storylines’ and the most popular answer was relationships, for us this suggests that we have made the right choice in including that particular storylines as it has proved to be popular.

Another popular answer which popped up when they were asked ‘what features did or did not attract you in our TV listings cover?’ was the font and colour used. This is good because the font and colour say a lot about our target audience, although our target audience is primarily girls, we wanted to try and target boys as well. Through our audience questionnaire, the boys thought they would watch this. We wanted to use a bold font as this was found to be the most popular font style in our audience questionnaire.

Our TV poster received a lot of successful and positive feedback as people liked the idea of using several characters in the poster, and using the characters within the letters as it interested them more.