Last Year's Soap Trailer (Valley Hill)

This trailer for a soap made by last year's media students follows similar conventions to real soap trailers. It outlines the plot well and gives the viewers an incite into the mentality of the characters in it. Mise en scene has been used well as the character who dies at the end is wearing black, symbolising death.


The actual plot works well for a soap opera as love and deceit are popular plot lines in modern soaps. One small thing I don't think worked well for the trailer was that all of the characters were shown shooting a gun at one of the male character. It seemed a little bit like they had circled around him in some western movie-style stand off which seemed a bit odd for a British soap trailer.


The dialogue works well in the trailer to show the conflicts and relationships between the characters, however some of the sounds didn't flow too well and it could of done with some music for irony to fit one of the sound convention of a soap trailer.


The mise en scene in the trailer is very simple but appears to have some thought put in. The clothing of the character who finally dies is all black- black connotes death and the female character who is shown as one of the people who possibly shot him at the end is wearing red, implying that she is a sinister character. The actual settings seem quite well thought out as well, with the subway being the place where the male antagonist finally dies. This seems like quite a well thought out choice of place as subways can sometimes connote danger, as they are the sort of place where it's hard to see what's actually going on from the perspective of someone not in the subway. The back alley also seems like a good setting choice as it's out of the way, showing the two characters in love are trying to hide it. I think the use of a food tech classroom wasn't very well thought out, especially since it appears that someone has hidden a £1,000,0000 cheque in a school cookery book. This scene looks quite rushed, as though they used the room as a last minute resort to get their filming done.


The sound used for the trailer works at some points and doesn't at others. although the music used kind of fits the shooting scene, it appears poorly edited making it quite off-putting. The actual dialogue used is quite effective, however as it gives a good insight into the story without giving too much away. It makes the audience feel like they already understand each character before seeing the episodes.


The narrative used has a very similar effect to the dialogue- it gives a strong insight into each of the characters feelings without giving away too much information. It also gives the audience an idea of what is going to happen but leaves mystery so you'll have to watch it to find out the conclusion.


The titles are quite nice as they back up the use of dialogue and narrative, helping to really connect with the characters before even watching the soap as well as provoking the question 'who done it?'. All of the use of titling is quite unconventional for a soap trailer as they are used as a kind of backbone to help the audience to relate to what's happening. This isn't usually done in soap trailers as they usually try getting the story across using sound and narrative. The end titles are also quite unconventional as they give no information about the channel the soap is on and there is no proper logo for the soap. Just the name in a very average font and in black and white.