New trailer plan. Group effort.

Note: Each dialogue the boss speaks she will be wearing different clothes to show the different days that the redudencies were being announced.

Employee 1 - happy

"Hello"

lights cigarette

Employee 2 - confused

"So hows everyone working downstairs"

lights cigarette

drinks coffee

Employe 3 -nervous

*nodding* "It's a hard time now"

lights cigarette

drinks coffee

typing on keyboard

"I wanted to let you know"

lights cigarette

drinks coffee

typing on keyboard

puts cup to the side

Employee 4 - worried

"These are the expected figures"

lights cigarette

drinks coffee

typing on keyboard

puts cup to the side

"We can't afford to go the way we're going"

lights cigarette

drinks coffee

typing on keyboard

puts cup to the side

stubs cigarette out

Employee 5 - crying

"I'm going to have to let you go"

lights cigarette

drinks coffee

typing on keyboard

puts cup to the side

stubs cigarette out

Zooms out to Boss sitting in the chair completly exhausted

Verve House appears center stage as if being typed.

.End.

(written by zoe)



I (Aslihan) was inspired by the camera movement on an advert which we all agreed would work in showing a stressful and repetitive situation. This is the part of the advert:

This clip shows a man doing the same deal with two people and it shows that they are in the same situation. We wanted to create an effect where people were going through the same situation in our trailer (getting fired). We also wanted to emphasise on the stress of the boss who is doing the firing and how difficult it is for her too. The target audience would know how the employees would feel either they were in the same situation or knows someone in a similar situation - because of the current recession. So, we wanted to include the boss's perspective too for the trailer and how repetitive and emotionally tiring it was.

(Aslihan)

Checklist for filming tomorrow!

Costumes
- Aya: 7 different tops/scarfs (top half will only be seen)
- Everyone must dress smart.


Props
Cups
- Everyons should bring 2 each, do not ring matching cups

Cigarettes
- Vogue

Ashtray

Business related newspapers
- Not The Sun but maybe The Times

Letters

Cheque book

****Production schedule and shooting script must be complete****

Written by Zoe.

Group Meeting 17/11/09 .zoe.

Agenda

Website preparation
-Asign tasks
Filming preparation-Asign tasks
Evaluation focus group
- group discussion

Minutes

Website
- What's being communicated (ideas, feelings or both)
- How its being acheived
- What is being sold
- How is this acheived
- Entertaining, Educationg, Marketing (combination of all three)
- Everyone must design a draft for the home page of our website and present this on:
Thursday 19/11/09

Focus group
-Agreed that the PA is not gay
- Show the main effects of the recession effecting the business. Showing the boss speaking with individuals about their redundency
- Accountant showing the balance sheets
- Boss shows order forms/estimated figures to employees

Filming
Due to our focus group we were informed about many things which we otherwise pressumed inacuratly. We shall present a small video to highlight the focus group discussion. This will be done after our filming.
Our original ideas for a trailer have no been changed. See other post for detailed specifics.

Written by Zoe.

Research: soap website research (Aya)

I have looked at both the Eastenders and Cornation street website, in order to gain an insight into how they are constructed so that when we come to making our own website we can make the layout of the our website not only attractive but also typical of other websites. I am going to be focusing mainly on the layout of the website, looking at things such as house theme, layout and colour theme.

Eastenders has many features as part of it’s website. These include features such as voting poll, Eastenders news, weekly quiz, a ‘your say section’ as well as the typical latest video highlight section. Video highlights are part of many other soap websites such as Coronation Street. This allows the viewer to catch up on missed episodes. As we discussed during deciding on our scheduling, the scheduling s not as important as it used to be in the past as the internet has allowed viewers to catch up on episodes. So in other words viewers decide their own scheduling time depending on their conveniences and so by including the latest video highlights on our website, we are encouraging this view.

Eastenders has a very clean and neat layout, as shown through all the different features being placed in outlined boxes. The websites focuses on the use of one font. This is shown bold in some instances, such as the different feature headings (vote, news etc). The Eastenders website has a distinctive light grey and black colour theme. I don’t think the website layout is particularly eye-catching as much as it is neat and simple. however, it is obvious that the main website feature is the video highlight section. This is shown through it’s size proportion and the fact that it’s above all the other features. Coronation Street on the other hand, has a much more colourful and cluttered house style. The coronation street website has a background of the soap location, wethearfeild as well as close-up of building bricks towards the bottom of the screen. This could be to emphasise that the soap focuses on working class Britain. The font colour is pink and green as well as black times new roman black text. Interestingly the layout and house style of the Coronation Street website is very much like a soap magazine cover in it’s choice of text, colour and cluttered layout.

When constructing our website I think we should have a neat layout with a colourful background. However, I don’t think that the colour theme should be as bright as the colours used on the Coronation Street website. This is due to the fact that our primary target audience, are people ages 20-40 and therefore they will not be interested in a teenage style bright and cluttered website furthermore, having a website like this will not reflect the style of the soap.

posted by Aya

Poster ideas (Done by Serhan and aslihan)

The first three posters show dominant female characters. We want to emphasize on this idea on our trailer on empowering women. It has elements of film noir because of the silhouettes and shadows. i think this is a good way in showing that there is a "dark side" to the business in some way. The idea of a woman holding a cigarette is quite good because of the masculine elements it has.

The banner across this poster reading "tha office" is a good example of representing the narrative for this production. the it skills used is good because they have manipulated the image by adding paper clips on the banner (emphasis on office props and incorporating it with the poster).

This poster is of a postcard format. It is not a film poster but the effectiveness to the audience is good. It is satirical as the writing glamorizes it but the picture gives a different impression, as if to say "no, this is the truth". it is fun to look at too because it sends this message and also it is something someone could keep.

Again, women are given a different representation to looking more powerful and independent in the "Crooked Business" poster. this is a poster of a short film. the lettering is effective because the 'e' is "crooked"

Risk Assesment for Verve House. Zoe.

Overall there is a low risk when undertaking our filming session at Verve House.

Written by ZOE.

Pitch!

Me(Zoe) and Aslihan began by writing down a few words that are relevent to our soap idea and then chose three that summarise best and give the better narrative image.

Office, Recession, North London, Business, Money, Glamorous, Trampy, Fashion and Competition.

Final idea.

Fashion, Office, Recession

What do you think?

Research: New poster idea (Aya)

In addition to the previous poster ideas which I have posted on the blog and discussed with my group, I have come up with a further idea.

The image in the right of the frame will be the boss sitting on a chair with her back towards the audience. The bosses head will be visible in addition to her hand putting out the cigarette. This is so that the audience can straight away establish that the soap features a Muslim boss, and ultimately goes against typical stereotypes. The cigarette will be used to symbolise that the prosperous business opportunities that existed five years ago have also been burnt out, along with the cigarette. In addition to this, smoking further emphasises that the current financial climate had left businesses stressed, under pressure and troubled. The boss will be looking out of a window at the stocking taking place and ensuring that everyone is working properly. The focus of the whole poster however, will be a canted shot of a newspaper article about the financial recession. On top of the images will be the name of the soap and a catch up line associated with the recession. I think the colour theme for this poster should be dark reds blacks and beiges. The most important thing in my view is that the poster colours are toned down to reflected the mood the financial depression creates.


-Symbolism and the messages explained above will be shown through featuring smoke because statistics have shown that smoking increases at times of pressure. Whilst undergoing secondary research i also found a study showing that over two million people are delaying planes to quit smoking due to the stresses that the recession has created.

-Coco channel has used a similar idea to mine. In that the poster they have created portrays a stressful and negative atmosphere through featuring smoking and using dark colours.

Wrtten by Aya El-fouani

What do you think?

Research: focus group preparation (famouse storylines by Aya)

In preparation for our focus group exercise we planned to refer to past soap storylines, which were relatively famous. This would then allow us to ask questions related to the storyline, such as why is the storyline famous and if it attracted them further to the soap or if not, why not? As well as primary research (asking people), and using my own knowledge about what the most famous storylines were I also used a form of secondary research; chat forums related to soaps. Below is a list of the most common famous storylines as well as a storyline outline, for the two storylines we are going to refer to in our focus group handout. Alongside the storyline outline is a few related questions we could ask....

Eastenders-Who Shot Phil?, fairground disaster, Zoe finding out that Kats her mum, Ethel and Dots euthanasia, Little mo attacking Trevor.

Coronation Street- Richard Hillman attempting to kill the Plats, Deidre sent to Jail.
Brookside-Sheila’s rape, Jordache murder story.

Eastenders: Who shot Phil?

-A Mystery attacker shot Phil and the audience was left guessing who shot Phil?-The storyline had such an impact on the audience that bets were being placed on actually shot Phil (At William Hill).

-Took longer than three weeks to expose who shot Phil

-Do you think that mysterious storylines such as this adds or detracts realism from the soap.

-Would you be less attracted by the soap if it took a long period of time for the truth to be exposed (taking into consideration that Brookside featured a murder story that stretched for 2 and a half years).

-Often storylines raise many unanswered storylines, which can only be answered through the audience continuing to watch the soap. In your view was this storyline popular because it kept the audience guessing?

Coronation Street: Deidre being sent to jail

-Deidre sent to prison in 1998 for fraud, a crime she didn’t commit

-She was falsely accused when her boyfriend (John Lindsay) implicated her in his numerous scams.

-Sentenced to 18months in prison

-British public started a campaign pleading Granada to ‘free the Weatherfield one’.

-Home secretary even tried to involve PM, who intervened on Deidre’s behalf with a touch of irony.

-Do you think criminal storylines in this soap, and others are represented correctly.

-Are they realistic?

-Are they accurate in their representation of criminals?

-Would you be interested in fraud stories, in a soap focusing on the financial crises?

-What in your view attracted viewers to this storyline?

Written by Aya

Character profile for handouts in meeting. aslihan

Character Profiles.

The Boss - She can be very dominant in the working environment and has tendencies to be a complete control freak. She wears a headscarf as it shows she's spiritual; we chose Islam as the religion of this character because of the current prejudices of western societies and the headscarf is a distinctive symbol of this religion. She is a representation of a strong dominant female. She also has a few sneaky cigarettes when she gets too stressed. She's money greedy and is motivated by proving everyone wrong. She has very small moments in the soap where she lets her guard down and shows her vulnerable side (this is only ever done to her PA). She is also a hypochondriac. She is intimidating towards the employees just as any other boss would be.

Boss’s PA – a ‘normal’ man who has a wife and children at home. He’s an ambiguous character who may appear shady at times but this is due to recent gay feelings which he keeps very secretive from everyone. Although at times he lets on to the Boss as they have a very complex and trustworthy relationship. He acts as an ‘agony aunt’ to the boss when she gets too stressed. He appears bossy and arrogant towards other staff lower down the hierarchy to him, he’s known as a misfit to other workers and often gets teased by other employees (he’s made solitary). He’s a very good listener, well educated and is known as a health freak as he constantly reminds the others of their unhealthy lifestyles.

New girl – She’s been given a recent work placement in the office for 3 months as she’s studying fashion/business at university. She’s young, flirtatious and attractive. She’s gay and single and gets a lot of attention from the male staff. She gets very bored and attention seeking when there’s not much going on in the offices. She appears very helpful at first to make a good impression. She mirrors the audience as she too is new to the scene.

Production manager/sexy man – Tall and handsome. He’s a regular man with an eccentric laugh. He also has a mental disorder known as ADHD/ADD which summarises a lot of his characteristics. He gets prescribed medication for this.

Caretaker – He’s a very intelligent man who is not highly rank in the organisation but is very well respected by most. He helps with the accounts as he’s a very good mathematician. He’s very humble, genuinely happy and smokes marijuana. He was previously prescribed marijuana as he suffered from anxiety issues therefore not being able to be employed by a professional organisation but as the boss as a sensitive side she was charmed by him.

Homeless man in the car park – very quiet man who spends his days outside the building as he’s very found of the workers. He recently lost everything due to the recession. He was already lower class but the council refused him a home and is bound to the streets for several months. He’s able to use the shower in the warehouse and occasionally gets jobs unloading stock. He’s very wise and keeps the smokers company either with his guitar or general wisdom.

Please edit or let me know if i can improve the summary of the characters. It has to be as simple and detailed as needed.

Group meeting.. Written by Zoe.

Agenda:

• Set new short term aims
• Reflect on what we've accomplished so far

Minutes:

Wednesday/tomorrow

• Me and Aya will meet up to organise hand outs and write an agenda for our focus group.

Thursday - Focus group.

• Whole group must meet at 13:00 to recite agenda and make our way to the location.
  

Poster Design due in Friday.

• We must all post one or more blogs on the group blog introducing a different idea.
• Can include images, font styles, slogans, colour schemes etc.
• Should be derived from research embarked upon.
  

Website Research due in Tuesday.
All members of the group should post one blog. Tasks specifies below.

Aslihan - Look at the content from a soap website of your own choice
Aya - Observe the layout of a soap website of your choice.
Serhan - Observe the layout from a professional business website of your choice (that's relevent)
Me (Zoe) - Look at the content of a business organisation and initiate ideas of how to converge this with a soap website.

If want to extend your research you can begin thinking of how we're to converge the two styles with idea's of your choice.

• Hand outs have been complete.

Agenda (serhan)

Method of learning

1-Introduction

- Introduce ourselves
- Rough outline of treatment


2-General conversation

- Talking to focus group
- Asking questions like "if they watch soap?"

3- Give out handouts

- Which includes information on soaps like Eastenders and coronation street, which also includes most popular storyline which has occurred in the soaps.

- Look through handout, to have a good understanding of the kind of event which occur in soaps.

- Look through the questions on the questionnaire and answer them one by one

4- Discuss violent story lines

- Talk abut the kind of gossip which happens in soaps and what effect does it have on our society today.

- Examples of violent storyline would be for example, Phil in Eastenders knocked out on the floor in blood.

Example of violent story lines

-Eastenders - The fact that every Christmas day someone dies on Eastenders i think really gives the soap a unrealistic view.

- For example-
1- so called "Dirty Den" comes back from the dead and returns to the soap after many years, creating a shocked appearance on the square and also on our screens.
He is later killed off the show by three women that he slept with, close to Christmas day.


-Coronation Street -Tony Gordon attempt to strangle Jed Stone with women's underwear, both of these characters were well respected before greed got in to the equation and also before the characters started arguing about money.

Debatable questions


- Why do soap use domestic violence in there shows?

- And do you think this would effect a young viewer? If yes in what way would it effect them?

Focus group preparation. Zoe.

As soon as all paper work (preparation) is complete i can then confirm a date and time as to when we'll conduct the focus group. Our primary aim is to understand their enviroment and gain an insight into their views on soaps and represenation in soaps.

• Aslihan - A bulleit point treatment will need to be complete. It should highlight that our aim is to show how a business is affected by the current climate.

• Serhan - A questionnaire needs to be complete to remind us of the points we need to cover. What soaps do you watch? Do you keep up to date with them? Favourite characters? Melodrama? Storylines? etc.

• Aya - Research must be conducted relating to infamous storylines such as dirty den (Eastenders) and finding out why they were so popular. Questioins should be drawn to have another feedback session. What do you think about Dirty Dens ressurection? Do you want to see deaths at christmas?

• Discuss representation (codes and conventions). E.g., "the square" is a communual area. Is it realistic?

• Zoe - I shall be finishing the storyboard to contribute to the handouts. I will also be dealing with all the arrangments concerning our focus group.

When designing the handouts ensure everything is clearly layed out and easily read (with NO spelling or grammer mistakes).



This is to be completed by the 10th November 2009!!

Poster draft 2. written by Zoe

The program freeFall as huge resemblance to our soap so i thought it'd be worth looking at advertisements from them. The DVD cover was the same as the poster and it shows a high powered business man (white) standing in his office gazing out at his amazing view. This holds a lot of symbolism that's easily interpreted from the viewer. The man is very high up from the ground which can be a physical representation of his class in society, his possible bank balance and his egotistic character.

When visiting our location we had various idea's of having our poster in a similar style to this. It's very ambiguous, it features who you'll presume to be the main character. The colour schemes are not particularly eye catching so this may need adjusting. Like most posters the characters centralised it gives you a clear narrative image of the environment and it features the broadcaster.

We wouldn't follow this as our targeted audience will not be based in the center of London, we still wish to relate to our suburban viewers. This is due to the success of Eastenders so we thought to follow certain conventions with this soap in particular.

This is a meeting room in our office location. It's hard to see due to the reflection from the lights but in the background you can see a large warehouse containing fashion garments and hundreds of boxes. We thought we may replicate this idea as a drafted idea for our own poster. Obviously it's less glamorous as Freefall as we thought to bring back down to Earth. It shows the real life industrial lifestyle, it also shows more dominance and gives off a mood of mischief and dodgy deeds.

If we decide as a group to go ahead and create a prototype developing this idea, i believe it will be an accurate representation of our soap.

Focus groups research questions

1. What kind of soaps do you prefer watching and why?
2- Who your favourite character? And what does he make you feel?
3-What makes a film realistic in your view?

4- What events which are occurring in real life, do you think would be good if it was turned into a tv program?

5- As we just explained in our treatment, we will be having odd characters from society, is there anyone round the business who you are suspicious of, wherever its gay behaviour or just weirdness?

6-Would you watch a soap that has a strong reality for example, real scenarios based around the recession?

7- Is there any part of reality you wouldn’t like to see in soaps?

8- The Muslim culture is often mentioned as terrorist organisation, what’s you personally opinion about this? (Because as you know one of our main characters is a boss of a major firm)


9-The recent downfall of all major firms due to recession , i.e. Woolworth , marks & Spencer and many more firms, do you think this has opened a gap in the film industry to take advantage of? Also do you think this should be taken advantage of?

10-Sexual behaviour something which is always effective, in soaps and films, a women is always used to attract the male audience, do you think using sexy guys would attract the female?

11- In your opinion which gender is soap mainly aimed out? Why?

12-Why do they have a main meeting point? (For example in Eastenders you got the pub) What does it enable the audience watching to capture?

Written by Serhan Velettin

Dirty Den Watts death (Focus group research)

More than 14 million people saw "Dirty" Den Watts killed off on Friday, marking EastEnders' 20th anniversary, according to unofficial figures.
Den's death came 16 years after he was supposedly shot in 1989. But he came back to the show in September 2003.
The audience for BBC One's one-hour special averaged 13.7 million and peaked at 14.2 million in the last 15 minutes, overnight figures showed.
Den died after being confronted by Zoe, Chrissie and Sam in the Queen Vic.

If the ratings are confirmed, the episode will have given the soap its highest audience for a year.
The overnight figures showed almost 60% of the viewing public tuned into EastEnders between 2000 and 2100 GMT, leaving ITV1 with about 13%.
"We are very pleased with the figures," a BBC spokesman said. "It shows viewers have really enjoyed the story of Den's demise."

1- So called Dirty Den Watts, was a gangster figure in the soap, doing what ever he wanted, sleeping with as many girls has he wanted, he never ever took no as a answer. Near enough to christmas day he is killed by three women, i think the soap trys to show female dominates by the gangster figure being beaten down by a women. Thanks to this storyline as you can see from the review bbc's ratings went to a record high level, Den watts coming back from the dead raised alot of eyebrows, with da soap becoming unrealistic.

Treatment: Verve House

Verve House is an office set in north London which distributes clothing to major retail firms. The business is running successfully and employees would be classed as middle class, however there is a spectrum of classes used throughout the characters because of the mixed class society London is today. The boss, Aya, is the woman in charge. She wears a headscarf as it shows she's religious, we chose Islam as the religion of this character because of the current prejudices of western societies and the headscarf is a distinctive symbol of this religion, she is a representation of a strong dominant female as well as a representation of multi cultural London. She is intimidating towards the employees just as any other boss would be.

Some characters are homosexual; some are open about it whereas some keep it secret. In today’s society it is a norm to have any preferred sexuality. However, age and status may get in the way of this norm. The youngest character, the new girl, is homosexual, she is quite open about it; whereas Peter, the PA is married and has a family and feels as though he cannot reveal this about himself. This idea reflects how norms of society have changed rapidly over time.

The new girl character has a 3 month work placement from her university and her family background is from a working. Her role to the audience is to allow them to emphasise with her because she is new and everything would be introduced to her as well as everything being introduced to the audience. Her working class background represents the changing of this class identity, and that she is able to achieve a middle class background. This character also appeals to the younger audience because students would be able to emphasise with her.

The soap also features disabilities. The ‘sexy/handsome guy’ has a mental disorder - ADHD/ADD basically meaning Attention Deficit Disorder which summarises a lot of his characteristics; he has difficulty concentrating. He gets prescribed medication for this. He is accepted and quite popular within the workplace, his disorder does not make him a bizarre character because he has medication for it. It is quite common in the real world for some people to have similar mental disorders, even schizophrenia as long as it is manageable, and in this case: it is.

The representations are well suited for a busy city like London. It is quite normal for London to be multi-cultural and with people who have different views and preferences. Middle-class and students would be the target audience of this soap. Students would be attracted to the professional looking setting, just like the new girl, they would be interested in their future career and what it would be like. Middle classed audiences would be the main target audience. Middle classes are thought to be of high culture and education; they may be interested on the different representations of contemporary UK. Or, they could just be attracted to the narratives and characters.

All the different characteristics of the characters highlights that even in a crowded place like London, anyone can easily feel lonely.



Aslihan. Group Effort.

Group meeting. minutes taken by Zoe.

We have decided the priority for this week is to focus on completing all preparations for the focus group so we can conduct the presentation next week!



I have already confirmed we can host the 'meeting' in the offices were shooting in so this is a perfect target of our audience. I (zoe) have started a draft of a storyboard and i will complete this by thursday. Photocopies of the storyboard will be featured in the handouts for easy digest.

Aslihan and Serhan have begun the first draft of the treatment and must complete this by Thursday. They must also simplify the treatment in bulliet form to featured in the hand-out.

Serhan as begun composing questions to ask for our introduction to the group.

Aya can create an agenda so we all are informed of how we're performing our ideas.

Aslihan and Serhan have also been given the task of finding popular storylines, through history, from soaps that are memorable to show as examples of how codes and conventions are used.



We have also been asked to begin looking at websites! ... Hopefully the pressures on now, but for this week lets wholly focued on this focus group so for next week we can fully prepare for our filming and get that completed by 15th Nov!!!

All progress should be posted on the group blog.