soap operas

Soap operas

Soap operas are on our televisions everyday of the week and are quite simply made in terms of media aspects due to the cheap budgets the shows are made on and stuff used within it. A lot of soap operas are all based on working class people but placed all over different parts of England with the exception or neighbours and home and away which are filmed in Australia but are still of the working class variety.

For soap operas not a lot of acting is needed it is all really poor acting just people reading from a script. With most of the camera shots all being mid shots or long shots with the occasional close ups on the faces and maybe an establishing shot at the start and end. In these establishing shots there are always iconic land marks such as the queen Vic or the square in Eastenders or the bar or house in home and away or the street in hollyoaks.

The clothes are always very stereotypical in these TV soap operas like in Eastenders the clothes are always very working class and no real rich clothes just like leather jackets and jeans and t-shirts for men and skirts or trousers for woman and a blouse all of which are very plain and budgeted outfits in the show to show they are all working class and do not wear any fancy clothes. The only time a suit or fancy clothes are worn is when the character is going for an interview outside of the set, which stereotypes working class people as people who have nice clothes for important occasions. Another thing that is used in these soaps are accents and staging of the soaps all the characters never work out of the set because then it would be boring if they disappeared and a lot of the time they are not working anyway and all of the characters have accents to distinguish where they are from and everybody in Eastenders has a cockney accent stereotyping again that everyone in the east end is cockney.

The main thing that these soap operas try to get are viewing figures and they always save their budget by using minimal amounts for the year then using all of their budgets on the Christmas special  to increase the viewing figures rapidly but the channels such as BBC 2, ITV and channel 4 lost views from 2009 and to 2010 with only the soaps on BBC 1 which did not fall and they are losing out to people with digital boxes so the reason they save their budgets for Christmas is to increase the viewers to gain more money and make the viewers interested once more.

The story lines in soap operas are a big thing that addresses many different aspects of life which come under fire in everyday life. They do this to raise awareness and help confine in the people that live in shame/fear/disapproval of others. They help people come out with their problems. They help tackle many difficult issues such as homosexuality, affairs, rape, child abuse and domestic abuse. These were all things that wouldn’t normally addresses and kept secret but because of things such as soap operas people relate to story lines and come out to admit to it happening it’s like a way of therapy, because so much people watch soap operas it helps them if they are ever in this situation. Some story lines are so realistic some people complain because they feel it is inappropriate to be on television because they feel so strongly about it. It questions many things such as morals ethics and religion which also disturbs a lot people because they believe that it’s real or feel offended by these story lines on the shows.

A lot of characters in the shows are stereotypical like in Hollyoaks all the characters/actors are quite young and good looking with certain features which make them fit the role of university students there is also a lot older people who all have jobs that are like every day jobs with very little ambition and realism of becoming something big and successful which can offend certain viewers of the programs.

During the shows on channel 4 and ITV there are breaks where they channel chooses adverts to fit between the breaks to appeal to the types of people (the target audience) who will be watching the program this is also how the channel earns a lot of money. For example between x factor you would find a lot of women’s adverts such as clothing adverts and perfume adverts also a lot of adverts with men’s bodies in it to keep them watching and changing the channel. It’s all about appealing to the target audience of the program. Soap operas appeal to target audiences like magazines do and the attract more younger viewers in their teens they might add more teenage related story lines to get teenagers to watch the program more and gain more viewers depending on who they are aiming at.