Primary research about key things for our soap opera trailer.

1. Soap Opera Primary
Research
Candidate Name: Jack J Connell
Candidate Number: 1103
Centre Number: 64135
Centre Name: St. Andrews Catholic School

2. For Question 1, I thought it
would be useful to know what
kind of setting people would
like to see a soap opera take
place in. By quite a long way
over 60% of people wanted an
urban/street setting to be the
setting for a soap opera.
The next most popular answer
was rural and other which had
some suggestions that were
similar to urban environments
like high streets. Lastly, 10% of
people would like suburbs to be
the setting for a soap opera.

3. The responses for question 2
were quite evenly answered
without one particular theme
being chosen over the
others. This question gives
me a good idea of what kind
of content people would
want to watch in a soap
opera so I can now gear my
trailer more towards what
my audience want. The two
highest chosen answers were
violence and relationships
and the least chosen answer
was insecurity.

4. I wanted to know typically what
gender would most likely be
watching my soap opera.
Stereotypically females are most
likely to watch soap operas and
this was proven again with over
80% of people choosing the
female gender option for this
question. Because of this I will
need to make my soap opera
appeal to the female gender,
however I would like to try and
target the male gender as well as
this would give my soap a good
chance of being popular. I could
do this by including things in my
trailer that men would
stereotypically find appealing to
watch such as violence.

5. This question helped me to
think about the kinds of
characters that will be in the
trailer for my upcoming soap
opera. Many people put that
they don’t connect with
characters so this may result
in there being some ‘what
you see is what you get’
characters. It is also evident
that many people do like to
try and connect with
characters so I will try to
make some of the characters
quite interesting and give
them emotion without
revealing too much.

6. Many characters in soap
operas conform to
stereotypes to make the
shows seem more realistic as
well as for entertainment
values. Question 5 addresses
the representation of
stereotypes and the majority
of people put ‘yes’ for the
representation being positive
which means that it would
be appropriate to include
some ‘stereotypical’
characters in my soap opera.
Some people put ‘no’ so I
could make some characters
not conform to stereotypes.

7. This question was a way of
establishing the ratio of
males and females that
would be in my soap opera.
Generally people like to see a
fairly even split or aren’t
bothered either way. I found
this interesting as
stereotypically soap opera
audiences are mostly made
up of women and yet the
distribution of males and
females in soaps is fairly
even. I will try to make it
fairly even in my soap opera
trailer.

8. Question 7 had the majority of
people (47.62%) put 8:00pm as
their ideal time to watch a soap
opera. After this the next most
popular answer was 7:30pm
which suggests that people
would rather watch soaps
earlier in the evening rather
than later. 20% of people put
8:30pm which shows that there
are people willing to watch
soaps later on in the evening. I
will need to take into
consideration what content will
be in my trailer as it could end
up needing to be after the
watershed.

9. This question reveals that the
majority of people want to
see brand new things in a
soap opera that completely
differs to what happens in
soaps now. I would have
though that people may
want to see similarities with
other soaps that they enjoy
as many soaps are already
quite similar. This connotes
that I need to plan what
content will be shown in my
trailer that will make my soap
opera stand out from the
other ones.

10. This question could have
quite a large impact on what
events are depicted in my
soap opera trailer as many
people like to watch the
representation of real life.
This means that the content
can’t be too far fetched as
people won’t be able to
connect with it as easily.
Some people voted no which
means that some select
scenes could push the
boundaries in terms of real
life situations without
making the soap seem
unrealistic.

11. The final question looks at
what classes soap operas
would stereotypically be
aimed at. This could
influence what ‘real life’
events will be depicted in my
soap opera trailer. The most
favoured answers were
middle and working class
which means that the
majority of characters and
situations should involve
people of these classes as
the audience would be able
to connect with the show
more.

12. After conducting primary research into what people would expect from a soap opera, it
has given me more of an idea of how I should begin to think about tailoring my soap
opera trailer so that it meets peoples expectations when we come to produce it. It is
important to take my findings into account so that my soap opera can be a success. With
the information I have gained I hope to produce a trailer that is relevant to my target
audience. A lot of the results that I obtained did not surprise me but I felt it was
necessary to solidify my knowledge of peoples views on certain aspects of soap operas.
One set of results was surprising however, question 8 saw people saying that they wanted
something completely different from a soap trailer. The reason I found this surprising was
because I would have assumed that people would know what they like from other soap
operas and may want to see a different take on it as people who watch soaps tend to like
a sense of familiarity and routine. This goes to show that this research was worth while.
Conclusion