Research into Viewing Figures

I have been looking into the viewing figures of Soap Operas for the week 22nd November - 28th November and how the soaps compare to reality television shows or dramas. I focussed on BB1, ITV and Channel 5, who are the main British television channels who air soap operas.

I found that during this week, no Soap Opera was the most viewed program on any channel. On BB1 for example, Strictly Come Dancing got the top spot, which perhaps indicates that the general public is slowly moving away from soap operas. However, every Eastenders episode was ranked highly for the week, which rather dispells that idea. "Strictly Come Dancing" took the two top spots for the BBCs viewing figures with 12.43million viewers on Saturday and 11.94million on the Sunday. Eastender's highest figures for the week was 10.6million on the Monday. Eastender's ranked far higher than the television Drama's aired on the BBC such as Holby City and Casualty who gained 5.88million and 5.64million respectively.

These are the viewing figures for ITV for the week 22nd - 28th February. The top three spots are taken by reality television programs, with "The X Factor" being 1st and 2nd and "I'm a Celebrity Get Me Out of Here" in 3rd place. The highest number of viewers was 14.42million for "The X Factor" on Sunday. "Coronation Street" gained 10.14million viewers on Monday, which was its highest ratings for the week. "Eastender's" on BB1 did have more viewers but they are roughly around the same numbers. "Emmerdale" was ITVs lowest viewed soap opera of the week, with it's biggest number of viewers being 8.14million, and its lowest being 7.47million.

Channel 5 had the lowest viewer figures out of all of the television channels I researched into, with "Neighbours" only drawing in 1.73million viewers on its best day and at worst "Home and Away" with only 1.01million viewers. Soap Operas gained more viewers than the television drama's did on Channel 5.

Viewing Figures found on:

http://www.barb.co.uk/report/weeklyTopProgrammesOverview

Start of trailer Edit

Due to unforeseen weather conditions, we were unable to get into school to start the editing process for our trailer last week, and so today was the first day we got to go through the footage we had. We managed to import all of the film into iMovie and put together a basic draft trailer. We have several more hours scheduled for editing this week, which are as follows;

Tuesday 7th - 9-10am
Wednesday 8th - 9-10am
Thursday 9th 10-11am

After these sessions we will decide whether more time is needed to be allocated for editing. We still need to decide on the music we will have in the trailer, but a friend of ours is working on a piece for us at the moment. We are also looking through various royalty free websites.

Filming Day 4 - 26th November

This was our final day of filming, where we managed to get our whole cast together. We re-filmed the scene with the four boys outside the pub to ensure that we had the perfect shot, and we filmed the very last scene where the entire cast group around Helen and her children. Due to our change in casting we also had to re-film the reveal of the children and of Danielle's pregnancy. This was a very successful day because we finished all of the filming we required for our trailer, and so can now start to edit and put together our soap opera trailer.

Filming Day 3

On Monday the 22nd November we did our third day of filming in Great Leighs. For this, our whole cast came together and we managed to get quite a lot of our trailer filmed. We met up at St Anne's Castle pub, where we had already gained permission to film but we asked again once we got there, and will make sure we make reference to them in our credits. We filmed the close up of Helen's heels panning up to her body and the shot of the "jack the lad" characters outside the pub cheering at her as she walked past. We filmed this shot from three different points and cameras to ensure that we definitely had the footage we needed. The lighting and weather conditions were good and so the footage we have is of a high quality. We also filmed the shot of Helen walking up the road using shot reverse shot; we will be able to create this editing technique because we filmed it using two different cameras from two different angles. Finally, we filmed the scene with Stephanie and Richard , which was successful too because the positioning of the cameras meant that Richard and Stephanie's facial expressions were caught well.

Filming Schedule

Before we started filming, I created a filming schedule to aid us whilst filming. The reason this is useful is because it means we have a set idea of what we need to film each day and so will be able to make the most of our time and get as much done as possible. We will try to stick to this wherever possible. This can be found here on the group blog.

Filming Day 2

Today we were meant to be filming the scene with the three boys outside the pub and the reaction Helen causes. We were also going the film the parts with Helen walking down the road herself. However, due to the weather conditions being very heavy fog, we were unable to film because the conditions were too different to that of yesterday. We will now have to try and fit in these shots in our whole cast session tomorrow, or reschedule for Tuesday the 23rd of November.

Filimg Day 1

Yesterday we had our first day of filming in Great Leighs, and for this we had Tamer, Jasmine and Hannah. We were filming the reveal shots at the end of our trailer where Helen's children are seen for the first time. We also filmed the part where Deano realises Danielle is pregnant. Because of conflicts with Jenni's tiemtable, she was unable to take part in our trailer, and so we have replaced her with Jo, because it is a minor part in the trailer and so not much acting is actually required. Jo has similar looks to Jenni, who we casted originally because of the fact she looked right for the part, and so we will get the over all look we want for our trailer. We did have time contraints because of the light, and so had about 40 minutes in which to film these scenes; however, we filmed each part several times and from several different cameras and so I think that we have all the footage we need. We tried to make use of a variety of different shots, including shot reverse shot and a reveal shot, but we were also keeping in mind that in soap operas, the majority of the time they use midshots or two shots, so that characters expressions and reactions can be seen clearly.