Soap Opera Conventions: Lighiting and Mise-en-Scene, and Iconography Conventions

Lighting and Mise-en-Scene
Lighting within soaps is usually naturalistic as it represents the real world, and the lighting is rarely symbolic or expressive.
The mise-en-scene is very important; this includes the decision on costumes, interior and exterior design, props and layout of shots used in order to remind us who the characters are and create representations.

Iconography
Iconography originates from the study of art, it focuses on image analysis and deconstruction of a genre. It is  used in order to convey significant meanings, within soaps iconography would be used in order to express storylines and settings. This may be shown through the use of colours (natural lighting within soap and non-edited so will only include mise-en-scene such as clothing), composition, hand gestures, poses, and facial expressions (heavily used within soaps, usually shown through close or extreme close ups).

Iconography may also be things we expect to see within a soap, this may include the setting or mise-en-scene of a soap; an example of a soap setting may include homes, shops/businesses, and communal areas such as a pub. Examples of iconography with mise-en-scene may be a cafe, viewers would expect to see kitchen appliances, food, customers, and other feature people mat expect to see within a cafe.