We realized after only a lesson that we needed to be realistic about what we could film - we saw no point in trying to film something incredible if we didn't know how to. so this led us on to think about a soap opera trailer as you see at least one advert for one a day, or if not you will over hear someone talking of a soap. We then thought about the easiest approach to create the idea and narrative and it became apparent that the best thing to to would be to create a trailer for a teenage soap opera as we are teenagers and it will be more a case of applying our life to film but a bit more glamarized. So to research this and form our ideas we started looking at 'Skins'.



Skins has shown us that we want to incorporate a voiceover to the trailer as it is very effective and just makes the idea more proffesional. Also by adding in samples of character's dialogue into the trailer it shows the audience what the program will be like and what it will incorporate.

Research and Inspiration

Our group have looked at short stories so we can focus on our understanding of the three acts of any film. When coming up for the narrative for the film i'm glad that we did this research as it was made a much easier and efficient task and i anticipate this years film to be much better than last years.

First of all we looked at a short film called The Black Hole by Phil and Olly.



Here the three act structure is clear - at first the character realizes that there is a black hole in his peice of paper. The second act is him realizing that he can put his hand through the paper. In the 3rd act the character uses his paper to open doors he never could and rob what he would never be able to, at first he is sensible however equilibrium is re-established when he puts his whole body into the safe and is trapped in there showing the lesson of not to be greedy.


I really liked 'Pound' by Evan Bernard as it has such a unique narrative.



It starts with a character walking down the street when he is met by his friend where they engage in an 'impressive handshake' for nearly a minute, once this stops they exchange pleasentries and then proceed with another long handshake. Equilibrium is re-established when the initial character walks off once again.

Groups and Ideas

A lot of confusion was had over the group formings this year as our class was smaller than last year and the 4 to a group limit made selection harder. As it stands my group is Rachel Singleton and Alice Manning who was in my group for my AS Production. Rachel is in the middle of a transfer to our class so our idea brainstorming hasn't been as efficient as it could be.

Myself and Alice felt that this peice of work gave us more scope than last year with three choices but still we have struggled so far for a definitive idea however we have decided on a soap opera. We think that by basing our project on 'Skins' we can bring our own experiences in to help write the script and shoot the footage. We also like the way the 'skins' trailers are made, the makers tend to show footage of a certain character or party and add a voiceover to it to give the details of when the program is airing.

Outline of Coursework Unit A2 Media Studies

For this year's coursework unit students have a choice of 3 main tasks and have to choose 2 further ancillary tasks.

- A promotion package for the release of an album, it must include a music promotional video aswell as two of the following three ancillery tasks - A website homepage for the band.
-A cover for its release as part of a digipak(CD/DVD package).
-A magazine advertisement for the digipak(CD/DVD package).

- A promotion package for a new soap opera, including a TV trailer, together with two of the following 3 ancillery tasks - A listings magazine front cover feautring the new soap.
- Two hyperlinked webpages (with video extract) for the soap's website.
- A poster for the soap.

- A short film in its entirety lasting around five minutes, it can be live action, an animation or a combination of the two, again with the choice of two ancillery tasks. - A poster for the film.
- A radio trailer.
- A film magazine review.