Soap Opera Conventions

Prior to pre production it was necessary for us to understand what the soap opera conventions were, thus making our advanced production seem as real as possible.

Soap Operas are a serialised drama that runs every week all year round. They feature continuous storylines (or ‘narratives’) dealing with domestic issues, personal/family relationships. Soaps typically have an established theme and title sequence which change very little over the duration of the production. The casts for soaps are often significantly larger than those for a drama series as there is no limit to the number of character within a Soap Opera. This enables the soap to focus on certain characters in order to help the audience become familiar with them thus making storylines much more detailed. The plots are often open ended and narratives are featured and interlinked in an episode, typically following similar issues such as teenage pregnancy. The narratives run concurrently, otherwise known as parallel storylines thus having multiple narratives within one particular episode. Soaps are often set within a small community in fictional locations such as ‘Albert Square’ in Eastenders. Soaps have special episode events which coincide with the real world such as Christmas episodes. Some special episodes focus on long-departed characters, or current characters who travel to a location outside of their usual surroundings (such as Brookside's 'South', which saw Tracy Corkhill and her boyfriend run away to London). 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. UK soaps typically feature traditional working class characters and settings such as terraced housing, in contrast to US soaps which are primarily middle class thus featuring more affluent characters. British soaps attempts to be as realistic as possible without becoming stale as they are often very dramatic in order to entice the viewer. Soaps conventionally begin with a ‘hook’ where storylines from the prior episode are continued and often end in cliff hanger which is an unconcluded piece of dialogue or action.

From this research i have developed an understanding for the soap opera genre thus becoming familiar with the conventions. This is necessary as I must implement these conventions within our own production in order to categorize it in the soap opera genre. Therefore in the trailer we must definitely include certain conventions such as: multiple narratives which give the soap opera a sense of community, a cliff hanger at the end of the trailer in order to create anticipation and also ensure the narratives cover domestic themes and personal or family relationships as they relate to the target audience.