New Ideas...

We are coming across alot of problems at the moment such as our film isnt up to the level that we wanted and so are looking at new ideas . We found out that we have to have aproxiametly 2 mins worth of footage, so we have looked into several ideas such as:
1. three episodes of the same story line
2. Different shots of the same stpryline trailer
3. A new Trailer/storyline
4. A trailer for TV and atrailer for the internet website
5. Two trailers and a snippet of the actual episode.
Most of these ideas would take up alot of time that we dont really have. We have decided to do number 5. The two trailers and the snippet of the actual episode. This might work better as we can film the footage that we have done before so that it is better and that we have more. Also our second trailer is going to be a trailer of the episode before when the wife is at her mothers grave and she is placing down a picture of their wedding day that she missed. This is all to help with creating the relationships between everybody.

Tomorow morning we are planning to finish our filmimng so that we have all of our footage we can then spend like half a day editing it all together. once we have this we can then add all the finishing touches such as sound track and subtitles/slogans. Then we will have finihsed our trailer and can focus on the magazine and poster... We have also decided that we are going to make the poster more of a billboard kind of poster. and we have thought of maybe having a picture of each of the charcters stood at one end of the billboard each and then having the logo and slogan in between them both.

Attempt....

It has sort of worked....?!?! i would have to really take my time to get the picture exactly cut out right for it to work but other than that it doesnt look too bad... but i prefer the others as i think that it would be too much bulk banner kinda of thing as we are using it for our title as well!! This is something that me and my partner will have to think hard about as it could loook effective aslong as we get it right!

Brain Wave!!!!!

I have had a brain wave........
With the picture with the banister, i could carefully cut out the hands adn then make so that they are standing and leaning over a banner... that could possibly have the slogan for the soap written on it....?!?!?!

Take 3...

Even though we picked this one as one of our three that we liked best , i think that this one would be hard to use for rhte magazine as it has a banister in the picture and it is quite a main feature... although we could easilly get rid of it we would need to replace it with something else in the magazine front cover as otherwise it would just look like they were standing on nothuing and trying to reach for something. >>>>>

Magazine Take 2...

This is a second look at our magzine... i have tried different styles and changed around the pictures to create this idea... at the moment i am just trying out different ideas so that when it comes down to the final one, we have lots of differnt bits we casn choose form as we can put one together from all different ones iof thats what we both agree would loook best!

These are some of our favourite pictures of the couple.... These are the ones that we have chosen to try out on the magazine front cover.

Magazine...

Now that we have taken the pictures of Ben and Christy we have saved them and edited them into the magazine front cover to see what the finished picture would look like... at the moment i have this.... i changed the plain background colour to some sort of fancy pattern that i found on the internet.

Filming...

Over the half term holidays we spent a whole day filming our soap trailer. WE created the scene with christmas decorations up aorund the living room (my house) and got some brown boxes filled up with childhood toys and ornaments that would add to the eefect that we wanted to create. The day was quite productive and we got alot done, we dont have a lot left to film now, just the end part and some finishing touches to the other parts. AS we are filming a part witha birth cirtificate we had to restart filming all over agin as we started with our actor called Jack then had to change him to Nck as that was the name on the birth cirtificate that we found. Now that we are back to school we can organise another day to finish the final touches and then begin on the editing of the movie. WE also took several pictures on this day also, as this was for our magazine as we needed a shot of the couple to go on the front cover! so we have alot of stuff to sort thru when we get back....

....

I have made three more example to go onto our magazine front cover... at the moment they are just practice examples as we obviously need to test different colours and other effects but atm it looks like this>>>>>

I now need to practice editing the images so that they can over lap... for example we are going to have a shot of the couple standing togther, so i ma going to find a picture on the internet to cut out and try and work into this magazine front cover!

Plan...

We have planned our next two weeks out so that we can take the pictures of our couple and start filming, this way we can finish our magazine front ocver and focus on the filming and editing of that.

• WE are going to take pictures of our couple, hopefully tomoroow or monday


• WE are filming at location on the folowing monday or tuesday


• WE have decided on colour themes of red, or white dress for Christy, and Black or white shirt for Ben, as this is like the style for a front cover.

Baubel

We have decided to create two magazine front covers, with a few slight differences so that when it comes down to the end, we can choose a favourite or even create one from both.
I created a image from Emmerdale today, using the blur tool and Opacity in Photoshop, i created this image for one of our three original soap story lines. This is taken from The storyline of Victoria, when she fell through a iced over lake last christmas.
I tried lots of different styles, and harshness so from two different baubels i have decided to go with the lighter one as it looks better on the background of the magazine cover!

Practice Shots...

Today we spent some time taking shots of different quick and small events to give us an idea on different techniques we could use. These practise shots will be quite usefull because now we will be able to edit them together to get an idea on best visual shots such as handheld or on the tri-pod. We shot different angles of wlaking through doors and also one of our parts that we are going to have in our trailer which is the tension building bit at the end when the woman drops the birth cirtificate. WE tried different angles and we will choose the best but we did find that paper would be a problem as it doesnt fall flat so we would have to think of other ideas such as card or doubling up the layers of paper.

Story Board ideas...!!

Quick overview of shots and angles we could use
• Starting off with a black out
OR
• The advert/logo of whatever channel it is going to be shown on.
• We could start off with a through the window shot of the couple looking though the box and maybe somehow add the effect of it snowing to get a feel of the time of year!
• Maybe a close up of a wedding photo they have just picked up showing they are married.
OR
• Have a shot of pictures along the fire place. Go along the mantel to show other pictures of family holidays, etc, the mantel piece will be covered in Christmas tinsel and lights.
• Mid shot of them looking though and her picking up a piece of paper
• Move straight to a close up of her face as she realises what it is!
• Maybe then Move to him with a close up with him saying something like “what is it!”
• Then move in to a long shot (so we can see her full body) with her about to drop the paper. In this shot I’m not to sure yet of the position of the camera I have three options and want to pick the one that will have the most dramatic effect.
They are –
1. Having the women standing face on towards the camera
2. Having the women side on facing her husband and having him in the shot
3. Having rear view of the women facing her husband.


• To add to the mysterious effect the camera will then follow the paper to the ground as it drops.
• Finally finishing with a close up of the paper to she that it is a birth certificate with her husbands name on it


Music and voice over for advert
Music and voice over
• Christmas music, playing throughout the sequence
• Not to sure what song yet but we were thinking of having one which is quite slow or maybe even a Christmas carol
• Voice over examples:
• “Christmas is a time for family, but you never quite know who that might be”
• “Christmas is a time for family, however they might be closer than you think”
• “Christmas is a time of happiness but would you be happy?”
• “Christmas is a time of happiness but that doesn’t mean there wont be surprises”
• The voice over is going to come in quite near to the end maybe around the shot of her looking at the birth certificate before she realises what it is.
OR
• Having the voice over start when he see a picture of the wedding and then have a pause and then finish when it’s the shot of the birth certificate

We don’t have to decide on any of this just yet though as the music and voice is one of the last things to add. And we don’t have to add this until the whole thing has been edited

I have produced an example of what our idea would look like... this is a present that i have blurreda picture over the top of. I would write a caption across this such as "Love is the best present at christmas" and we could have a slogan towards the top of the magazine saying something along the lines of love at christmas, so that we get an idea of the themes in the soaps. >>>>>

After looking at the magazine We Love Telly (shown below), i have been trying to think of other ideas for how to present our other original soaps, like the baubel idea i have found several different christmas icons, some that would be perfect such as the christmas stocking, others quite hard like the angel face for example. But these are just ideas as we want ti to look original.

Out of the Tens of Teaser Trailers that we looked at our favourite one was this Eastenders trailer. It has the best kind of ideas that matched ours with the voice over and fading in and out of focus.

These are two examples of our title page... one in BLACK and one in WHITE, we both created one as it is a vital part to our magazine.

This image (>>>>>>) is a good example of how we are thinking we would like ours to loook like, we like the white big, bold writing that is at the top of the page. WE used this idea to help create our own magazine title. WE know have our finished title for the magazine. Once we have our pictures taken from our scene then we can start to create the presentation for the front page!

The use of christmas icon (baubles) for the picture places is very unique and is a good idea for us to work on. Also the snow in the background.

Looking at exsisting tv magazines... christmas editions you can see similar patterns like their normal title but with christmas icons around, christmas slogans and all sorts of different christmassy colours. these are a few examples:

It tok me several hours this morning trying out different software to help me create our magazine. I am using Photoshop and Illustrator, using photoshop we came up with this design that will be our title of the magazine... I chose the font and using photoshop merged the images so that they over lapped to create this christmas themed picture.
PROBLEM: I am finding it really hard to user the software as i have never really understood how to use it... i cant get it to do things that i wnat it to.. but now that we have our title we can start to add the colour and pictures of the other soaps, with slogans of storylines.

THESE THREE PICTURES ARE EXAMPLES OF WHAT THE TITLE COULD OOK LIKE WITH CHRISTMAS ICONS ONTOP OF THEM!! EVEN THE BASIC CHANGES LIKE WHAT t THE XMAS HAT IS ON COULD MAKE ALL THE DIFFERENCE!

TV TALENT!

These are a few of the ideas that we have come up with for font styles for our magazine cover... AS we are doing a christmas edition we are going to photoshop some sort of festive icon such as a xmas hat or holly or something like that....

Decisions.... Decisions... Decisions...

We have decided on who is going to act in our soap opera, it is going to star two students from my Alevel drama group. We now need to decide on some sort of script, place of shooting and all the sorts of props and things we need to be in the background.
Name: The Valley
Setting:Living room of a house, that is filled with boxes of things that might belong to an elderly person such as orniments, pictures of the war etc.
Actors: Ben Dowling and Christy Grimes
Tv magazine name: Tv Talent!
Now that we have everything sorted we can start by creating some sort of script and begin filming... Once we have the trailer for the soap sorted w can use the clips to take still shots to put on the tv magazine and also on the poster.

our teacher has just made us realise that there is already a tv magazines called TV TIMES! so we need to reconsider what we call our magazine...

Our third part of the project is to create a poster for the soap, but atm a PROBLEM is tht we cant find any exapmples...??!!??!!??!

Tv magazine...

I have been looking at ideas for the second part of the project which is creating a tv magazine that has got pictures from our soap and exsisting soaps, so i have looked at different styles of font for the title, i used TV TIME as an example for the font types. AS we are picking a chritmas theme for the soap, the tv magazine will have to have chritmas themes on the front cover too...

Story line ideas...

WE have come up with several storyline ideas now that we have looked at exsisting trailers... there are the obvious ones like
1)Whos the father of the baby
2)Affairs
But we thought that we wanted something less obviuos and something that is rarelly done on exsisting soaps. So we came up with the idea that a husband and wife turn out to be brother and sister. We expanded this idea to come up with the plot.

The wifes mothe rhas just died so they are clearing through her stuff, The husband and wife are searching through boxes that are lieing in her mothers house. They come across a wedding picture of the pair ( this is to make it obvious to the audience that they are married)then as they keep going through random hats and gloves etc they come across a birth cirtifcate... with the husbands name on it.

WE are thinking that we will have to have a close up on the wedding photo or invitation because we need to make it obvious that it is his name. Also we have come up with angles that we are going to use, for example for tension and a dramatic ending we are going to have the wife drop the birthcirtificate on the floor, and have a zoom in on it to see what she was staring at.

As we have just looked at original trailors we have come to the conlusion that we are going to have the trailor/ episopde based in christmas time due to the fact that all the best and exciting storylines come out at chritmas time. So we are going to use some of the ideas from exsisting trailers such as:
1) Xmas music
2) Slight voice over ex. "Who's the daddy"
3) Flash up of words, such as " loves the dad.... loves the son"

More research...

WE have decided on a stpry line for our made up soap including particular angles and visual shots, we are yet to think of a name for it, something along the lines of... THE VALLEY!! but were not quite sure. we have looked on the internet for different exsisting trailers tyo get ideas for elements such as voice overs and effects.

I have made a presentation on The soaps Emmerdale and Coronation street to help me with the faactors that i need to consider when making iour soap. Such as, Auidences, cast, characters, setting,places.

I am going to do a presenation on already original soaps such as Coronation Street and Emmerdale, this will help when we come to chosing topics for our own soap opera!!

A2 Media Studies Production Portfolio

5. A promotion package for a new soap opera, to include a TV trailer,n together with two of the following options:
a listings magazine front cover featuring the new soap
two hyperlinked webpages (with video extract) for the soaps website
a poster fro the soap
This was the breif that we ahve chosen, i am working in a pair, and have yet to chose witch three of the four parts to do.
My partner is Sascha May