Analysing Soap Opera Trailers - Hollyoaks

HOLLYOAKS

The show Hollyoaks is aired on E4. The show is shown on E4 on weeknights at 7pm. This is the prime time for soap opera’s to be shown during the week. The show is also shown on channel 4 at 6:30pm this is the repeats of the night before episode. The main target audience for Hollyoaks is aimed at people aged between 16-24.The show likes to have a heavy focus on students and their l ives which makes me believe that the how wants to target students from all different backgrounds which is why they use such diverse storylines in hope to connect with a large audience. The show mainly aim to target females mainly this is because the stereotype that surrounds soaps is that women are more likely then men to watch a soap opera.

The audience would l ikely be from the socio-economic grouping of c1, c2 and D. The majority of the characters are in group D as they are semi and unskil led manual workers, such as the McQueen family, the other characters relate to groups c1, and c2 as some characters run their own business and some characters are skilled manual workers such as Trevor.

HOLLYOAKS – TRAILER SIX WEEKS OF SUMMER

In this trai ler the characters personal i t ies have already been establ ished and the audience has already been able to establ ish a connection with the characters.

The trai ler doesn’t focus heavi ly on one main issue/plot and instead has a lot of mult i -strand narratives. In the trai ler we can see a storyl ine that is going to be coming up in the next few weeks for at least every character in the show.

At the beginning of the trai ler we can see the Hol lyoaks t i t le with the slogan of what the trai ler is al l about which is ‘s ix weeks of summer’. This needed to be a main focus at the beginning of the trai ler so that the audience are able to antic ipate the six weeks that are going to come. As wel l as this the trai ler uses non-diagetic sound by using background music to add a summery feel to the trai ler. This supports the main theme of the trai ler which is a l l about summer.

One key moment was r ight at the beginning when a sound bridge was used, this was used when the character says “Why do I get the feel ing you're using me to get Esther’s baby”. Whi le the audience hears what this character is saying we see a visual which shows two cl ips in which both of the characters who are in the first shot are pictured doing something which revolves to that part of the storyl ine. This plot is only highl ighted for 2-3 seconds which gives the audience the opinion that this storyl ine wi l l not be a major storyl ine that wi l l come up in the summer.


The trai ler also features a plot in which a young teenage girl is having a relationship with an older man who is seeing the girls father. The scene starts with the older man tel l ing the younger gir l that he loves her in which this is a lso a sound bridge with a cl ip of the older man kissing the younger gir ls mum. This shows to the audience that there is going to be a strong focus on the jealousy of a young girl over the fact that her mum can have the guy that she l ikes. This is a key theme that I would l ike to portray as I feel that the target audience that I would l ike to target to would l ike the dramatic scenes that would come with the storyl ine. Although the audience may not be able to relate entirely to the specific scenario of the character they wi l l most l ikely be able to relate that scenario to something that they have experienced.

As a whole the trai ler uti l ises the use of a sound bridge. A sound bridge is used with dialogue to help narrate what is going on in the scene. In another example we see another girl get into the bed of one of the boys as she says his name we see another scene in which another gir l is ta lking about how she is having problems with that boy. The use of these two scenes being played back to back al lows the audience to understand what is going on and who could possibly be the main cause of these problems.


The trailer uses many technical aspects Including the following:

Editing: The pace of the trailer is fast we see a lot of action happen in a short amount of time. This is predominantly used to show the different multi-strand narratives that are going to take place in the episodes to come. This is Hollyoaks foreshadowing to the audience of what is to come in a few weeks time. This is an effective technique to entice the audience as the audience will be looking out to see if they can work out what will happen to their favourite character’s in the weeks to come. The scenes that we see are very short, the whole idea of this is so that the audience are kept guessing ‘what happens next?’ this is a way for the show to have returning viewers as they want to be able to hold up an audience.

EDITING

Sound: At the beginning of the trai ler we hear diagetic sound in the use of background music. The music used is very happy and adds to the idea that summer is mean to be a good and happy time. However we see that in the cl ips the characters are not happy and are defiantly not having a good time. The trailer uses a lot of sound bridges in order to hurry the narratives along. This also allows the show to be able to show multiple clips when playing only one piece of dialogue, this is essential to be used in a trai ler so that the show is able to show the mult i-strand narratives as proposed by Levi Strauss.

The trai ler also uses diegetic sound as it uses dialogue. This is mainly between the characters in the scenes who are talking to each other. This helps the narratives to be told.

Another way that diegetic sound is used is by having sounds such as car wheels screeching and the sound of leaves being crumpled on. This helps to create verisimilitude as the audience know that this is sound which the characters can hear in their world.

The trai ler also uses non-diegetic sound as it uses background music which is played throughout the trai ler, this is played at a low volume so that the dialogue is the main focus of the trailer.

SOUND

Camerawork: The trailer never uses an establishing shot which I found quite odd. For returning viewers not using an establishing shot is fine because they are familiar with the location and places that action may take place. However this is not appealing to newer viewers as they don’t get a sense of location and aren't able to start to relate to the characters or the locations in the show. The trailer uses very minimal camera angles but has a hefty focus on mid shots, and two shots. Those are the two main camera angles used throughout the trailer. The trailer also features other camera angles such as a low angle to show a character as weak and a high angle to show a character as strong and one long shot is shown throughout the whole trailer.

The trailer uses a low angle when we see Robbie knock his brother off of a cliff. This is something very unconventional to see in a soap as it breaks the verisimil itude. The low angle helps the audience to see that Jason is the stronger character in this situation.

CAMERAWORK

The lighting in this trailer is very natural. This helps to create verisimil itude as the settings that are used are familiar to the audience which helps them to relate to the characters. Very l ittle artificial l ighting is used throughout the trailer the only artificial l ighting used is the l ight from lamps in the houses.

The clothes that the characters wear are very similar to that of what the audience would wear. This is done so that the audience are able to relate to that character. This helps to reinforce the verisimil itude of the soap and helps the audience to relate and escape from their everyday l ives. We see Jason in a Police officer uniform which shows to the audience that

The props that are used in the trailer are things such as drinks, cars, bags etc. These are things which the audience would see and use in everyday life which helps to create verisimil itude as the audience start to believe that they are watching real l i fe.

MISE-EN-SCENE

The way that the trai ler entices the audience in and makes them want to watch the show is by briefly showing small cl ips of the major plot l ines that are yet to come in the soap. This is an effective technique as the audience wil l want to know more and as long as the audience are questioning and wanting to know what is going to happen next then they wil l be able to keep a repeat audience.

In conclusion I feel that this trailer fol lows the conventions of a soap opera as we can clearly see the mult i-strand narratives that are going to go on throughout the show. This is a key aspect of the trailer because it shows that there are a lot of characters that are in the show. The main idea of this show is to create veris imilitude (realism) as most soap operas are devised as an escapism from real l i fe they need to show stories which the audience can relate to. Hollyoaks does this by using issues that their target audience may face, because they have a niche target audience they are able to focus heavily on getting the message that they want to across.


Analysing Soap Opera Trailers - Hollyoaks

Design