Conventions of Soap Opera & Trailers

British soap operas normally follow these conventions and feature in the soap opera

• Normally, the soap opera will be serialised, which means it will runs a few days a week, weekly, throughout the whole year.
• Narratives or storylines are usually deal with domestic themes and personal or family relationships within the community are shown.
• The soap opera always has a recgonisable theme tune at the beginning of the programme, and sometimes changes abit after a few years.
• The storylines can be more detailed and invloved with the characters because the cast is able to be bigger, it allows the soap to focus on smaller numbers of characters, allowing more time to spent on each.
• Issues such as break up of a relationship normally run parallel of eachother, for example if two of the characters are dealing with the same issues, we would follow these storylines together.
• Soap operas are normally set around a smaller set, a small community. For example the set of Eastenders is set around a central area, which is the square, or the cul-de-sac in Brookside.
• Soaps tend to relfect real life events which are going on in the real world, for example events such as christmas and newyears. For events they will be a special episode, were the characters will be featured in a much bigger and dramatic storyline than usual. To entertain audiences during christmas ect. Such episodes are often referred to as 'soap bubbles' as they are often self-contained and have little impact on the on-going stories of the regular show.
• British soaps characters are usually working class characters, which are common and much more ordinary. American soaps however tend to have characters which are richer and are fantasy-inspired characters, relating to its audience.
• A rule of soap opera is to aim for realistic stroylines, and create realism through them.
• Three, four or even five storylines will be in progress during any one episode, with the action switching between them. As one narrative is resolved, another completely different one with different characters will already be underway. The characters go from quiet, harmonic (but uninteresting) periods to chaotic, confusing (but interesting) dilemmas. The action simply concentrates solely on the latter.
• Soaps oftern being with a 'hook' and end with a 'cliff hanger' which is tense and suspensful, so that the audiences will tune in to watch what happens in the next episode.

Conventions of Trailers

These codes and conventions of trailers have been drawn from trailers in general rather than specifically focusing on genre.

• Fades and cross dissolves are frequently used in transitions.
• Close ups and mid shots - establish connection between characters and recognition for audience, also doesn't reveal too much of the event on screen.
• Title of the film is always last.- A short shot at the end of the trailer after the titles, (Most common in the Fantasy and Thriller genre).
• Patterned editing - Slow - quick - slow. This keeps the audience interested as they follow the trailer. (The majority of media products are created in established and repeated ways.
• Non diegetic music sets the tone of the film.
• Voice over - breif outline of the plot.
• Key lines from the film. Such as in Harry Potter he says 'I want to fight' this is reinforced with the fighting in the on screen action therefore suggests war in the plot.