What have you learned from your audience feedback?

Main character; Summer
-          Very liked as people found her down to earth and causal. In my eyes a main character must be likeable otherwise the audience will not want to watch the soap they are in every day

-          Audience could easily tell that she is the main character because she was in the trailer the most. Other characters also mentioned her name for example a random student from the soap opera said “Oh Summer Howard; she’s well fit!”

-          we really wanted to attract boys to our soap opera because stereotypically talking, most soap operas are watched by females. Therefore by using the character of Summer and casting her as an attractive girl we were able to attract boys as they liked watching Summer.

-          When doing our questionnaires we found out that most responses from our male participants who said that they watched soap operas did so because of “the fit girls!”

-          We also ensured that the main male character was good looking in order to attract female watchers

Acting not that great
-          A lot of our audience did mention that some of the acting in the scenes did not come across as realistic. This was a major issue as the main intention of soap operas is to create a realistic atmosphere. We knew this would be a problem as we did not have a budget to pay professional actors so we had to use people from our school. All the students that we used had no professional acting background therefore it was really hard to get them to concentrate and they frequently did mess around. However in the future to avoid this we would either pay professional actors or ask people with an acting background. 

-         In our trailer one of the major mistakes we made was that we didn’t include names for our characters. For example many characters mentioned “Summer Howard” so it was extremely clear who Summer was, but none of the other characters names were mentioned. This caused our audience members to be misguide and they had many questions as to who was who, who was a main character etc. Minor characters that were representing the rest of the school were mistaken for major characters.

Storyline feedback
-          Students all agreed that the issues we covered all related to their age groups for example bullying; this is everywhere especially when you are new to the school. Our audience member’s commented that it was a very good idea to include this storyline because everyone would either felt sympathy or empathy.

-          Adoption- our feedback told us that it was a slightly risky using this storyline as it’s quite a sensitive issue, however they were glad because it was different and effective. We included it to attract interest as we felt by showing a glimpse in the trailer; our audience members would feel intrigued and want to watch the rest of our soap opera to find out what would happen. We wanted to show this topic in a positive way rather than a negative light as it’s a normal issue which should be covered more in soaps. We also wanted to raise awareness of different issues.

-          A member of our group wanted to include a rape scene; we all felt that this was too extreme. However we did pitch this idea to our group in a presentation and afterwards every single person said that it wouldn’t be suitable for a first trailer and we would be taking things too far if we included that.

-          Gay scene- we didn’t make this too obvious on purpose but we wanted to interest people who would perhaps be confused about their sexuality. We included a scene where we had two characters in the toilets telling each other that they had secrets to tell. When watching this, some of our audience members might have been thinking to their selves “Oh they’re trying to come out” We were also touching on relationships to appeal to everyone because relationships are always happening. We also included a teacher and student relationship because we wanted to have something a little scandalous; many people might think this is too unrealistic however student- teacher relationships do still exist! 

-          We wanted to change the perceptions about teacher-student relationships. For example I personally felt that if the teacher is a male and having a relationship with a female student then it’s always seen as more horrific; however if the teacher is female then they aren’t thought of as harshly. 

Production feedback 
-          We were told that our trailer looked very realistic as the storylines we covered were relevant. Our audience feedback told us that they liked the order of our trailer as we didn’t just put all the same scenes together. For example we scattered all the different scenes around; we incorporated the “Adoption” scene with the “Secret” scene because we wanted to keep our audience on their toes.

-          In an actual soap opera episode there are always different storylines occurring at the same time

-          However there were some moments of shakiness within filming which the audience picked up on. In some of the scenes we did like the shakiness because we wanted it to appear sort of as a school project; most of the scenes took part within the school and we used a lot of members from our school. Our main character Summer was at school and we wanted it to come across as if we were following her life. The shakiness of our filming also mirrored a double meaning; not everything is perfect in Summers life and it never is in reality! The shakiness would also be a contrast to other soap opera trailers which are all slick and smooth. By making our trailer down to earth and sketchy we hoped it would appear more realistic and attract audience members. 

Music feedback

-          I think this was the most successful choice we made as when choosing our song we chose it from a teenager’s point of view so that we knew our audience members would like it. Our song choice (Skinny love by Bon Iver) was quite emotional and when watching the trailer you sort of get lost in it

-          Our music was very parallel; a lot of the scenes and action relates directly to the song and lyrics. The song highlights all the different emotions and issues such as Summer getting bullied and the love scenes. Everything appears more meaningful.

-          Theme tune; we didn’t think it was necessary to have a theme tune and we decided to choose a popular song instead because when doing our research we found that other soaps similar to ours (such as Hollyoaks) always used new and current songs.

Relationship between Summer and Lukas
-          When our trailer was watched many people had smiles on their faces and were “awing” at the scenes between the two characters’s as they liked the relationship we had portrayed. They wanted Summer to be happy and hoped that Lukas would be right for her. However as soon as they saw that Lukas was cheating on her with her mother everyones perceptions of Lukas changed as they began questioning what he really was about

-          We didn’t want to cause any paranoia but our audience are students their selves so when they saw the teacher-student relationship it sparked off ideas in their head as they thought “OMG this could be happening in our school” etc. we wanted to touch on an issue that our audience members would relate to

Wide range of issues covered
- Our audience members commented on how our trailer covered a wide range of different issues and topics. For example relationships; we didn’t just include boy girl relationships but we also touched on homosexuality and teacher-student relationships. We included bullying, adoption, cheating, moving school etc.

 

 

“I really liked it I thought it was really good. I loved the song and I love the beginning part with Katie I think there are really good shots and you can clearly see the relationship between her and the character Glenn plays.”


“I also really liked it. I thought the short snappy scenes were really good because it creates more of an effect as you don’t end up getting too bored of each scene. The storylines are also really clear and easy to understand.”

“I like the way the same character was used at the start and the end. It links the whole soap together.”

“I like how the characters were talking about the main girl in the beginning as it makes it clear that that is the main storyline.”

“I really like the interaction of the characters and relationships shown as I think they work really well together.”

 “What I like stylistically was how the scene at the beginning and end was almost whitened out; it’s a clear convention and it makes you focus on that one character. However some of the dialogue was hard to hear and there was occasional background noise however the music was superb and excellent parallel sound.”