To Use a Tripod or Not?

Possibly the most important decision of our coursework was whether or not we use a Tripod for the filming aspect of our products. Initially we thought we should take it upon ourselves to decide, yet came to a mutual decision that we should base it upon audience wishes. We did ultimately collect data as you can see on the left hand side which gave us a clear idea of what to do in regards to the Tripod. However, we were unable to change a large amount of codes and conventions within the Soap content itself and therefore we decided to bend codes and conventions to an extent, in regards to the whether or not to use handheld camera. Some may say we wrongly made the decision of using hand held camera as it meant that we were going to potentially bend codes and conventions too far a stretch, and ruin the product.

What are the Most Important Factors of a Soap?

Part of our research involved us looking into what people simply liked to view in regards to a Soap, and what they felt the most integral part of a Soap was, or what made it. Arguably, all three of our options listed are integral to a Soap and must be included for it too look legitimate. However, our question was what would they rather see going on, and the camera focussed upon. As you can see from the graph on the left, characters appear to be the most essential part of a Soap, defining it. Meanwhile, Location in fact did the worst, which we were very surprised about. Deeper analysis however shows good reason behind this thought. Location is simply a place, and is something that the audience can deal with and simply get on with. But because people, are people, the audience as a whole feels a need to get along with them so that they can continue to watch the soap, or in the trailer's case, watch it for the first time. As such, our media filming will take place primarily centred around characters, with locations being a secondary, and perhaps even tertiary aspect of our trailer, if these results are anything to go by.

Research: Favourite Character Types

From the graph above it is apparent that the favourite type of characters seem to be 'solo' types.We imagine that this is due primarily because they have the ability to lead much more interesting lives, as they are not bound by normal conventions of life. For instance, they may well be single, or a traveller etc, and be out of regular norms of society.
This is something that we take into consideration during the making of our trailer as this is clearly what the audience is a fan of seeing, or at least the audience we questioned.

Characters from the results of another research aspect, appear to be the fundamental part of any soap. As such, it is imperative that we take these results into consideration, so that we get it spot on in terms of the character usage. The only slight issue we may have however, is that based on these we may 'air' a character type too much and leave the others in the dark.