Project Proposal-Final Project
For my final project, I thought it would be fun and interesting to make a college soap opera. My first thought about it was that it would seem very out of place, since most of the soap operas I have seen feature exaggerated drama queens, and I thought that would play to the subtle humor behind the project. Plus the college setting works to my advantage since I live in the dorms.
The soap opera format would also lead to an experience of really focusing on camera angles and the relationship between the shooting of the film and the look of the edited product. I want to use more than one camera for the shooting so I can get the same footage from multiple angles and have smoother transitions. However, that also might be difficult getting the cameras to match in the look of their video, but that is something I can negotiate when I get to that point. By having multiple angles, I could simply extract the audio from one of the clips and then smoothly cut back and forth between people in conversation. That will also allow for the often-used effect of switching between speakers while one of them is still talking to create a more believable and smoother conversation. I also hope to make use of another technique in soap opera television, which is zooming in on an object to dissolve into another scene. With techniques like this and other soap opera format commonplaces (dramatic title music, low lighting, previous episode recaps, overuse of makeup on actors and actresses, etc.) I hope to capture the essence of the genre, while adding to the playful camp.
The story of the soap opera I wanted to be partly told in pre-show recaps, since I don’t have enough time, naturally, to create an hour long episode. The story, as of this proposal, will look something like this: The community advisor of the fifth floor dorm is investigating the brutal vandalism of the Global Studies poster board, and will stop at nothing, even threatening to write up everyone in the Global Studies House, to find the culprit. Meanwhile, the other inhabitants of the hall will be fighting viciously over typical dorm room arguments (cell phone usage, roommate issues, relationship problems, etc.), all in a time frame of five to seven minutes. I can perhaps consult the Doctor Date section of the Minnesota Daily to get a juicy relationship conflict. Either way, the ending will, keeping with the soap opera way, be another dramatic cliffhanger, a buildup with no real closure. After all, how else would those shows still be running after decades on television?