Initial Ideas

We sat down as a group yesterday and started discussing the basic ideas we had for our soap operas. This included the overall storylines for the first two episodes and planning how we wanted our trailer to look. We also had to decide what kind of soap opera we wanted to make, be it inspired by things like Eastenders, Coronation Street or Hollyoaks. We decided that, due to our geographical location, that our soap will be based on a street in Essex and we will try to make it appeal to a younger audience. Because of this, we will have to use characters that appeal to our target audience.
The main characters we are thinking of introducing in the trailer are a



newly-wed couple (Eastenders)http://blogs.guardian.co.uk/tv/east4802.jpg



A loud and likable family (Coronation street)http://img.thesun.co.uk/multimedia/archive/01015/SNF3126B-682_1015577a.jpg



A teenage mum (Hollyoaks)http://www.virginmedia.com/images/slide-12-amy-barnes.jpg


A homosexual couple (Hollyoaks)


And a "jack the lad" character.



We're doing this because these characters follow many typical conventions of soap operas and are popular types of characters, so are likely to draw in audiences. However, we will aim to ensure that our soap opera does have something different about it, so it's not just the same as every other soap opera around.

I also created a mind map to outline our early ideas, which can be found here on the group blog.