The MAD House – Evaluation

Brittany Graham

In what ways does your media product use, develop or

challenge forms and conventions of real media

products?

The purpose of a soap trailer is to entice the audience and introduce exciting new storylines.

Most soap trailers follow the same basic conventions with several strands of narrative, music and often a voice over. There is almost always a website or a channel logo on the screen to plug the channel or to gain interest on the internet.

Producers also want new audience, so challenge conventions to make trailers more interesting.

Trailers also change accordingly to target their wanted audience.

Conventions we followed

Several narrative threads. Soaps, in their nature follow different people and intertwine different stories often with a one setting to tie them all together. We have 5 narrative threads, all connected by the fact that they are in the same school setting.

Graphics and Logos Soap trailers often use graphics because it draws attention to individual characters and keeps the trailer at a good pace. Often soaps with a less serious story line use these.

LogosChannel logos are often used and present during the trailer because trailers are shown not only on the channel they will be shown on but also on social media sites such as, YouTube and Facebook, the logo makes sure the viewer knows what channel the programme will be on.

Music and Voice overMusic is used to keep the pace of a trailer.

In this Eastenders trailer, they are trying to create a mystery and therefore have slow eerie music.

Whereas in this trailer, they are using the music to tell the story.

We tried to use the music to time with the graphics to give it anPunchy effect and we also used the song, ‘radioactive’ because its lyrics imply dangers and

Explosions.

Conventions we Challenged

Most trailers consist of lots of short shots and quick cuts. We choose to use more long continuous shots for several reasons. In a practical sense it was easier to do this because it meant we could only have to use one location. As well as this we wanted the audience to feel like they were part of the action and therefore become emotionally involved with the characters and therefore continue watching the soap.

Hashtag

Hashtags are used in attempt to gather more interest and promote the trailer towards new viewers in hopes that they will watch the trailer and then watch the programme.Most trailers we looked at had the website at the end however very few had a hashtag. We felt that we would be able to reach our target audience (15-23) more successfully if it was present on social media rather than having to log on to a website.

Ancillaries

We wanted our magazine to be instantly recognisable as a soap magazine, to make the buyer feel comfortable in knowing that they know what they are buying is risk free and will deliver what they expect. We used bright colours to make it stand out on a shelf, as well as lots of articles featuring lots of pictures from different soaps meaning that anyone will find a programme they like and want to watch more of.

Billboard

Soap billboard's vary dramatically depending on what soap and what storyline they are trying to portray. We used the conventions from a ‘whodunit?’ Eastenders story line because we wanted ours to show the mystery of our main character and intrigue the audience. However we did follow the convention of showing the channel logo and also used the hashtag previously used to gain more attention.

Conclusion

Overall we wanted our media product to be recognisable as a soap and fit into the genre well, this will also keep current soap fans because they know it is a concept they like and are comfortable with. On the other hand we think that we do successfully challenge some of the conventions that would attract not only our target audince but also people new to soaps.

How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillaries

Synergy across 3 products

It is import that all of the products are apart of the same brand so the viewers will recognise the

brand, leading them to buy products, log onto the website and follow the programme on social

media.

The mise-en-scene of both our trailer and our billboard are both set in the same school for continuity and we have also used the main character because she is the most recognisable for the audience. We have also used the same red for our title and ink/blood spots on our two products because red is a semantic code for danger (shown in the blood), mystery (who is she? What did she do?) this is a hermeneutic code and its also a symbol for lust which is shown in the staff room scene.

Our magazine front cover is not obviously synergetic because we wanted to keep with conventions of a magazine front cover. However we still used the red writing for continuity. We also used the same title (She’s Back!) on the front of the magazine and the billboard so we would have clear story line, and The Mad House is in bold font so the name of the programme is clear, we wanted to ensure this because it is also our hashtag. But mainly we wanted our magazine to be bright and stand out on the shelf.

Conclusion

Overall we are happy with how our products look together. They all follow the conventions of their individual styles yet they all synergise to create a recognisable ‘brand’. This would create more ‘buzz’ not only people talking but also on social media.