Character Types

For part of our research, we had to look into set Soaps and dramas and analyse what set character types are involved. It would be pointless to try and create our own types of characters, when we can mirror currently avaliable characters. For example, the character 'Phil Mitchell' on Eastenders is the quitesentiall representation of a bully, yet still has fatherly instincts and tries to withold the sense of a nuclear family, although this is not always the actual outcome.

When looking into Character Types, we also have to look at what makes certain characters attractive to the audience, which involves the values and effectively, the morals of certain audience members. For example, it is likely that a Nuclear family would have similar values to that of a nuclear family on a Soap drama, as they can relate to the morals and values protrayed by the family. The Dingles on Emmerdale are a perfect representation of this, in the sense that their lives involve relatively typical events, common in reality; yet they still have the stereotypical functions of a nuclear family.

Of course, Soaps such as Eastenders, Coronation Street and Emmerdale each attract different audiences for different reasons. This is something we will have to further study with examples in the future, in order to learn what features are incoporated

Audience Preferences

In order for our media product to fit in with current products, we had to research what our audience have preference over in terms of the content that we will display. To do this task effectively, we sought the help of forum goers, as they will provide us with set opinions in a rapid, thorough and interpretable manner.

We chose to you generally social websites in order to return a set of varied results, including Yahoo! Answers, Digital Spy and Facebook. Considering the advances in digital technology, we assumed it would be best to exploit them to our advantage in this case.

From our research we found that (Contributors are displayed by their username):

'Dredwerkz' from Arizona liked bullies within soaps, and wanted the trailer to be focussed primarily on the more violent elements of the soap, rather than the more relaxed and civilised aspects.

'willemijn_94' from Yeovil on the other hand liked soap operas due to the warm nature that is present in most. As a result the user suggested focussing on family elements.

'Lisa D' quoted 'Very strong personalities, preferably with quirky or crazy tendencies. For example, from Days of Our Lives, my faves are Vivian Alamain (60s), Victor Kiriakis (60s), Sami Brady (mid-30s), Stefano Dimera (60s) and Brady Black (30s). This show takes place in "Salem" but I don't know which state'
'Carly' suggested including an intellectual character to reach out that aspect of society. She explained how she felt that elements of society were under-represented in soaps, and a greater audience would result in greater acclaim. 

For the latter part of our audience research we delved further into the character types that are commonly featured within Soaps. For instance, we have listed above: 'Dynamic, Flat, Round and Static' which each have their own attributes

For example:

Dynamic characters essentially are dynamic in that they change over the course of a story. Phil Mitchell can be seen as dynamic in the sense that he goes from being a petty criminal to a murderer.

Static characters however tend to stay the same throughout a story and do not let the events of the stroy effect them in any way. A good reprsentation of this is the Barmaid Betty in Coronation Street, as she typically lets the world develop around her without becoming a centralised figure.

Round characters are similar to that of dynamic in that they can change throughout stories. Round characters however tend to have a grater variation of traits than a dynamic character. For instance, an older chararcter known as Charlie in Coronation Street gave off a sense of being a nice character but went onto murder fellow characters, yet still exhibited typical social aspects such as love.

From the evidence above displayed in the chart, it is inferable that dynamic characters tend to be more popular primarily due to their ability to change throughout the course of the stories