Content
For our Soap Scene, we tried to convey a common storyline in most everyday soaps, and that is school issues. Our storyline focuses mainly on a boy, played by Chris, who is getting bullied at school, the storyline begins in the corridor, the boy (Chris) is on his phone when he walks past the bully (Elliot), the bully asks him 'what are you looking at?', this helps to give the audience the effect that something is about to happen. The bully then takes the boy's phone and then throws it into the girl's toilets, causing the boy to run in and retrive his phone, as he picks up his broken phone, a girl (Lily) see's him and then runs out screaming. We then editited the footage so that it fades into the next day, a scene between the boy and his father (Elliot), having been reported by the girl, they have been called in for a meeting about the incident, they start by disscussing the incident with the father questioning the boy's reasons for being in there, the boy does not say much, this gives the audience the effect that the boy is quite a shy person that likes to keep his feelings and opinions to himself, we then used a bit of comedy to lighten up the scene, the father tells a joke which the boy dissaproves of, causing the father to slap him to the ground, this leads us on to the final scene. The headteacher (Rhianna) appears in the waiting room, then leads them into the interviewing room, the boy is asked numerous questions, and the father is shown a statement by the girl, the boy then reveals the real problem, he says that he is homosexual leading to the fathers horrified look, this corresponds with the text 'to be continued ...', to create a cliffhanger that leaves the audience wanting to see more.
Riannas Evaluation :
There is a lot of things that help create a meaning in a soap, for example. We used colour to show the realism of a soap. This connotes a sense of being real and it being set in real life. Language used by the actors was reasonable because we didn't use slang expect for when the bully said 'Gimme your phone' this connotes teenagers and bully's. It helps the audience understand that they're young. We didn't use music in our soap extract because we wanted it to be realistic and so if we were to put non-digetic music in would make it look and sound fake. The costumes were thought about because we wanted the bully to be wearing a hoodie, the Father to be wearing a smarter jacket and the boy to be casual smart. The actor playing the teacher (me) was wearing jeans and a jacket. This probably wasn't the best way to go about it as teachers tend to wear smart clothes. As this was the only thing we had that's what we had to work with. The set of our soap was of a school, The school doesn't look particularly clean or looked after but i think this worked well along with the rest of the scene. We didn't use many props apart from a piece of paper that we called the 'statement'. One other prop we used was a fake phone that we used to help tell the story that chris was in the girls toilets. This worked well as it looked like a real phone and helped us explain the situation better using close up shots to explain its importance to the story line.
My Evaluation :
In my group my theme is narrative , our soap is a open narrative becuase the story can keep on going , soaps on the tv such as Eastenders are an open strand becuase the use cliffhangers to keep us interested . Our soap deals with characters are in a single strand becuase it shows a storyline about other characters but our soap could also be a multistrand if we showed other storylines happening to other characters
.Multistrand examples : farther splitting up with mother , teacher in money problems in debt . Our soap tries to achieve a sense of true to life as posible ; soaps have dramatic highlights but also try to present reality to keep us interested . We tried to make our soap to as close to life as possible by including a problem that happens everyday at school , in our case it was bullying that we showed but there was a problem which was that ; the teacher "Rianna" and the parent "Elliot" thought that "Chris" was looking at a girl in the toilet . We showed that Elliot is a bully before any action was created and showed in the scene because of the hooded jumper that he wore and the slight , slow movement of him when he is following "Chris" . This representation connotes to the audience that he is going to do something to the student being followed , and he isn't a very nice person . We showed the characters reaction by having close ups of there face which could also show something is going to happen and create an affect to the storyline .
