EastEnders
This is an exterior location of a home in the square, a key location in EastEnders for bringing together the character's relationships, occupations and story lines. At this moment in the episode, the characters are looking over the square, commenting on a story line affecting other characters in the soap opera. In our own soap opera trailer, it could be effective to use one central location in which we could show each character's narrative crossing, in order to create a forking paths - a common trait of soap opera trailers.
These locations are the interiors of homes of some of the characters, specifically the kitchen and living room. As these are family rooms generally used socially in ordinary homes, they repeat throughout the episode in order to create verisimilitude for the audience and a familiar setting when events occur. They could also possibly play a bit part in our trailer, since they appear frequently throughout normal episodes.
This cafe, like the living and dining rooms of ordary homes, is a location easily recognisable by those in demographic groups B to E, and can be associated with gossip and socialising. Like the exterior shot of the homes or 'the square', a cafe could be used in our trailer to signify the crossing of narratives, or forking paths.
The shop, also like the cafe, could be seen as a location for socialising and bringing the various characters' stories together, again like a forking paths narrative.
To compare the episode with the trailer, I have used this table from my previous research.
The similarities between the locations include the interior locations of a home, but not a pub which wasn't featured in the episode at all. However, since these the episodes are from different times, the story lines will have differed, changing the locations they were set. Though it's apparent interior of homes repeat in both trailers and episodes of soap operas, I also know from previous knowledge that it is common to see locations of pubs and cafes. Depending on the story lines we decide, we will choose our locations accordingly, including signifying and conventional ones, so that it's easily recognisable as a soap opera trailer.
Coronation Street
As seen with EastEnders, there were several interior locations of homes in the Coronation Street episode, mainly using the kitchen and dining room. These family rooms also create verisimilitude for the audience and allow them to identify more with the characters, via the Uses and Gratifications Theory.
These exterior locations of homes on Coronation Street also create verisimilitude and allow the characters who wouldn't normally meet to cross paths and create new story lines. It also acts as a tool in denoting the forking paths narrative in the episode.
To compare the Coronation Street episode with the trailer, I have used this table from my previous research.
Interestingly, both EastEnders and Coronation Street include interior locations of homes, such as the living room, dining room and kitchen, in the trailer and episode. This would indicate that they are conventional locations for soap operas in general, not just soap opera trailers. The trailers also use exterior shots of the homes and a cafe in the episodes to create a forking paths narrative and link the various characters together suggesting that when we create our own trailer, we should try to incorporate them as much as we can. Things that appear differently in the episodes and trailers include a pub in the episode of EastEnders and a restaurant in the Coronation Street trailer. This was due to the varying story lines being broadcasted at the time and I know from previous research that pubs and cafes in particular are conventional locations for soap operas. When we create our own soap opera trailer, I now have a better understanding of the iconic settings that soaps are set in and what we should try to include in our soap opera trailer so that the audience can decipher our message the way we intend (the reception theory and enigma code).
