WEEK 5 OF RESEARCH AND PLANNING:

The past 3 weeks weve been researching inspirations and we added all things that we believed will inspire us as to making our soap trailer. We looked at different types of urban music with meaningful lyrics that reflected on our main charcters persona along with different images and artist styles that we may use when designing our final poster and magazine cover. We analysed different charcaters from different urban films and soaps that have  personalities  which link or reflect with charcter's personalities from our soap.

Props used in our Soap

Hats are used to represent a person, Different cultural backgrounds wear hats to represent themselves, some people may wear a hat to show something others may wear a hat to hide something, some people wear hats to hide their insecurities and to feel superior. This is the case with Kareem who believes that wearing the religious hat makes him feel strong and close to god. However the wooly hat is worn to shield his innocent side which he tries to conceal from his peers. The Islamic hat on the right portrays Kareem's religious side. The colour of the hat is white which symbolises new life, innocence and purity. The change that Kareem makes after praying is he puts on a black hat after taking off the white one, this juxtaposes the innocent atmosphere that was previously presented. The connotations of the black hat are evil, mischeve and death.

Inspiration for Kareem - Shifty

 

Shifty also known as Shofiq in the film "Shifty" is a mislead character and also is a Muslim engaged in this life of being a drug dealer, he was our inspiration for the character"Kareem". They both come from muslim backgrounds and urban societies"Shifty" is similar to our character "Kareem" as he is  has no motive to be a bad person, however bad influences take over and do not let them take the right path. The name of the film also inspired us to name our soap after our main character which we felt will have an effect.

By U3.TV

Ying & Yang

Ying & Yang is used to describe the contrast between forces in the natural world we live, for example: high and low, cold and hot, dark and light, female and male, we used the concept of Ying & Yang for our character "Kareem" as he can't control his good side and bad side, however he tries to balance them out but the darker side always oversomes his lighter side, in our trailer we see various powerful scenes of him doing good, struggling to do bad, and casually doing bad, he's sinful, he knows it. On one hand he tries to have a religious bond with "Allah" as he is of a muslim background, but as soon as he steps out of his house, the bad begins. Anti social mates he affiliates with control him to do bad and influence him to a point where he doesn't know what to do but to reach out to the comfort from "Allah". In "Kareem" we see him battling with himself as if he is in war with himself.

By U3.TV

Inspiration for Ameera - Lexi

Lexi is an emotionally distressed character who lives in a council flat in an urban area, she is troubled with drug addiction and fails to find a partner because of her bad reputation she created in the past. The day Sam leaves prison she is the only person who is willing to speak to him, she doesn’t even know him very well yet she takes him to her home. Ameera has been dating Kareem for a while and has been very happy as he treats her better than everyone she has ever dated. But she has become very concerned after his behaviour has changed drastically, she feels as though he is in trouble as he stops answering her calls, she starts to follow him everywhere to get his attention and check if he is alright. She becomes very upset when he starts neglecting her just as Lexi gets extremely upset when Sam starts neglecting her and not answering his phone after having sexual contact in her house. However both characters are not aware of the reasons behind Kareem and Sam's strange behaviour. Ameera and Lexi both come from urban societies yet Ameera and Kareem have a very understanding relationship as they have the same religion, whereas Lexi and Sam come from different racial backgrounds. Ameera dresses in a modest, fairly religious way and Lexi dresses in more revealing clothing. They both use colloquial language in their speech and both have London accents. 

                   

Rough cut of trailer

This is the rough cut version of our trailer we have just about got everything into the order we wanted from the actual script. This is not edited tightly so do not expect it to be perfect in terms of sound. From this we will get feedback and then this will allow us to ensure that finished product will meet the needs of the audience.

Teacher feedback that we had received is that this 'trailer needs to be a bit more specific in showing the two sides of Kareem', the rough cut scenes do not really show the difference between the two lives that he is living. 'Kareem will need to be shown more doing the bad things than the good'. The trailer will need to be more clear in terms of portraying the characters shown in the trailer so that it leaves an impact and interests the audience.
 We have managed to gain video feedback from some of the our target audience and they have suggested some ideas which we can take on board for the final tightened editing of our trailer.

Dr Jekyll & Mr Hyde - Inspiration/Comparison

We thought this popular, famous english story could be very similar to what we were looking to do, The story of Dr Jekyll & Mr Hyde has a precise similarity compared to our story as in the book you visualize a man have a duality and having two different personas both bad and good, giving that contrast between the character, In our trailer "Kareem" we see Kareem being two different people at the same time again giving that contrast in our trailer, this creates an impact on the audience seeing the same guy having two different personalities, there is a conflict within the person, like Dr Jekyll And Mr Hyde being the same person, Dr Jekyll being the good person and Mr Hyde being his inner evil, Kareem our character in our soap trailer is in war with himself similar to Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde struggling to control himself and his uncountable temptations. Dr jekyll is a man that's concealing his secrets as Kareem is trying to do the same, trying to close his negativity but because he is in "too deep". In both Dr Jekyll/Mr Hyde and "Kareem" we see a character in battle and war with himself.

By U3.TV