Soap Opera Genre –

Ancillary Product Analysis

Name: Zakary WinsallCandidate Number: 2144Center Name: St. Andrew’s Catholic SchoolCenter Number: 64135

OCR Media Studies – A2 Level

Unit G324: Advanced Portfolio

Tagline – The verbal code of the tagline “There’s a killer amongst them” illustrates to the audience that out of all the character in EastEnders, someone there is responsible for the murder of someone. It entices the audience to watch the coming episodes to find out who it is. This specific tagline does not illustrate that there is a multi-stranded narrative.

Image – No specific manipulation has been applied to the image. However the shot is a high angle shot. The crowd is looking up towards something, which may illustrate that there is something more important than them above them.The characters present in the image are look up, possibly looking for something to help because ‘there’s a killer amongst them’ and they want help to be safe from the killer.

Synergy with Social Media – In this particular poster for EastEnders there is no synergy with social media.

However, this would be to promote the soap and get more people interested in it. This could be done through Facebook or

Twitter, using hashtags.

Institution Logo – With this poster, there is no institution ident

present. However it would be beneficial to include to promote which TV channel

will be presenting the soap.

Brand Identity – The brand identity in this poster is the words “EastEnders”. This is to clearly illustrate to the audience that this poster is for that show.

Image – A lot of manipulation has been applied to the image on this poster. The people present are all seen to be in flames. This could illustrate to the audience that there may be a fiery argument between certain characters or take the manipulation of this image literally and say that there could actually be a fire. The connotations of fire is usually bad, could possibly involve death.

Institution Logo – The institution ident present on this poster is the number

4. This is because the channel that is showing

this soap is Channel 4. They want to build as much hype as they can for this channel to

get people interested in this particular soaps and other soaps on this channel.

Tagline – The tagline for this poster illustrates that something will happen in the episode. The word ‘change’ suggests that everything changes in Hollyoaks. The word ‘forever’ also suggests that these changes are permanent and cannot be reversed. This also supports the connotations of the fire.

Point of Call – The date is clearly displayed on this poster. By doing this it makes it clear to the audience when the episode is due to be aired so they will not miss it. The connotations of the word ‘starts’ illustrates that it is the beginning of a big change that will not go back to how it was previously.

Student Exemplar Work – Textual Analysis

Synergy with Social Media – Clearly present at the bottom of the poster is various different links to social media pages. By adding this the audience is able to stay completely updated with the soap and they can follow everything that happens.

Image – Fairly little manipulation has been applied to this image. The background image has had the contrast lowered in order to make the image appear darker. By doing this is gives an eerie feeling which works well with the tagline.

Institution Logo – In this case the institution logo is BBC Three. It is placed

on the poster to promote the channel. Even though it is on

the poster, I do not feel that it is big enough. It

should be slightly bigger it order to make it clear to the audience

that it is on this channel.

Tagline – The tagline could have various different connotations because it is so vague. The most obvious connotation could be that someone is clearly looking for revenge, however the silence does not mean they’re not looking for revenge, it could just mean they are planning someone to begin their revenge.

Soap Name – The soap name is clearly displayed at the top of the poster. This makes it clear to the audience what soap this poster is intended to advertise.

There are a variety of features present on all three of these posters that have great features that I would like to ‘repeat’ (Steve Neale - 1980). The manipulation on the image in the Hollyoaks poster connotes a very intense feeling for the audience who view this poster. It has the various different connotations of fierce activity between characters or a form of fiery rage.

However, in the student exemplar work, I also like the manipulation of the background image. I like this because that even though it is so simple, yet it implies an eerie feeling on the audience which may then draw them in to watch the new soap.

Other minor features that I would repeat is the synergy with social media. On my poster I will be sure to add various different social media links as this would help to build awareness of the brand new soap.

Finally, the institution logo is important to be present on the poster as you are clearly advertising which channel the soap will be aired on, along with the date and the time.

Conclusion (Reflection)