Group Planning: Equipment

In order to create our soap we used both hardware and software in order to capture sound, footage, and edit our material to complete our soap trailer. This was an important part of our project as much of the software which I used within the stages of editing helped to challenge soap opera conventions. Below is the equipment which we used to create our soap trailer and why.
 
iTunes:
We used iTunes in order to obtain a sound track for our soap. After searching for a suitable soundtrack for our drug scene in the trailer we chose; The Prodigy - Firestarter.  The key reason for this is because it competes with Hollyoaks, as they too use diegetic sound through the use of soundtracks within their soap, which avoids soap opera sound conventions.

Apple Final Cut Pro:
I used 'Final Cut Pro' to edit our raw footage for the soap. It was a good program to use as it supports HD audio and footage. It was a good software to use and where I found the theme song w have used for our soap, it also provided good wide-range of editing tools which is mentioned in the post: 'Group Planning: Editing Techniques'.







Apple Mac Book Pro:
For editing our footage we used 'Apple Mac Book Pro', we used this hardware as it supported the HD footage which we had captured. It was also very good for editing as it had many features and was easy use.

Olympus Voice Recorder:
Our group used a voice recorder in order to record a voice other. Our voice over was a tag question (how would you solve your issues?), this was used in order to attract the target audience to watch the soap. Voice overs are non-diegtic sounds which often appear on many soap trailers as they are used to inform the audience what time and channel the soap is being aired.


Video Camera (Sony HD Handycam):
We used this camera to capture footage in HD, it also captures HD audio however we did not want to include any dialogue within our soap trailer as we planned to use title screens in order to show what was happening on screen. We have also used this camera to take photos of locations and actors which we have used within our soap. As the camera was small it made it easy for use to shoot a range of different camera shots, and was helpful for shooting point of view shots.



Tripod:
We used the tripod in order to make our shots steady, it was also effective when capturing our panning shots within our trailer which are used to follow the navigation of characters.

Group Planning: Props

All soaps use props in order to create a visual affect, and realism. They can also be used in order to link storylines which is something we have tried to do within our soap. They can also be very important and lead to clues within storylines which engage the viewers thoughts. Below are the props which we have used within our soap and footage for our trailer.

Drugs: 
Drugs were the main prop for out soap trailer, this is because the drug scene was one of our main storylines within our soap. For our drugs we used traditional table salt. whilst shooting the exchange we really wanted to emphasize the drugs,we done this through extreme close ups on the prop and used slow motion within editing, this goes against the editing conventions of media, which is something Hollyoaks also do.

 
Phone (Samsung Galaxy Note):
In order to link the storylines within our soap trailer we chose to use a phone. The use of phone texting is something we wanted to include as it introduced a new character in the trailer. The phone which we used in order to show the message was the 'Samsung Galaxy Note', this was a good prop to use as it feature a large display screen that displayed the text font in a large font size which is easily readable in the point of view show which we used.
 

Ladbrokes Betting Slip:
For our financial issue storyline we wanted to include betting as our character is a teenager and unlikely to have and debt issues such a household bills. we used the prop in order to show that the character within the scene has lost their bet. We planned to show the betting slip from a point of view shot in order to show that he had lost the bet, however we felt it would speed up the trailer if the character through the betting slip on the floor in anger which connotes that he lost the bet, we showed this through a mid shot of Mark leaving the betting store.

Group Planning: Music

We began initial research on music within our media sessions. Our group took soap music conventions into serious consideration before making a decision on where to source our music and what tracks to use and why. As Hollyoaks is our competition I felt it would be a good idea in to see how they use sound within both episodes and trailers, it was clear to see that Hollyoaks challenged media sound convention through heavy use of non-diegetic sound, which as editor is something i wanted to implement within our soap trailer. Below are the images and description of our sources of music which I used in the stages of editing.

Itunes:
We used itunes as we wanted to use a soundtrack within out soap as this would be non-diegetic sound and something similar to what Hollyoaks use. We did not want to source out main theme from Itunes as they only provide soundtrack to purchase.






Prodigy - Firestarter:
We purchased this song as a soundtrack to use from Itunes, we felt that this was a good song to use within our soap trailer for our drug scene, this is because it enhanced the negativity through the loud bass. The bass of the soundtrack is also useful as it captures the attention of viewers from the sudden change from the theme song.



 
SoundCloud.com:
In order to find a theme song for our soap we decided to use sound cloud; a community website where users publish their own tracks. Unfortunately we could not find any suitable instrumental tracks to use as they was mainly from the Hip-Hop or Rock genre which we knew wouldn't relate to our soap, storylines, or characters involved.

Apple Final Cut Pro:
Whilst editing I still could not find a suitable track for our theme song from any of the sources above, however as all of the default tracks on this software were instrumentals, I decided to go through the tracks whilst watching the footage and chose the track which matched the best with our soap.






 

Group Planning: Risk Assessment

For our recording of the soap trailer we had to carry out a risk assessment regarding scenes within the trailer before shooting. Below is Part A of our risk assessment form.
 
For this part of the risk assessment, we basically gave an outline of our organization, this included company information, team members and actors within our footage. It also includes locations which we plan to use and which risks there may be.

The next part of out risk assessment was Part B, below is an image of the document which we created.



For this part of the risk assessment we analyzed both activity and location hazards and risks, we then said how likely the risks are to occur and looked at the controlled measures of hazard.

The next image is an example of a hazard list which we had obtained from (http://www.screenhi.co.uk/production/risk-assessment) in order to used as a template, however we did use this example in order to check the hazards which were involved within our project.