We decided to ask our class to come together and create a focus group so that we could get a really personal opinion on what they would like to see in a brand new soap. We could therefore pitch a few basic ideas and gage their response to our thoughts so that we can make the most appealing and effective soap.
First of all we asked who actually watched soaps so that we could see the range of answers we would get from our questions. We had people that watched Hollyoaks , Neighbours and Eastenders and one person that didn’t watch soaps at all so we had a variety of people to ask. I then asked if people had time to watch a new soap because we had found from earlier research that a lot of people either didn’t have the time to watch a soap or felt that it was a waste of their time. Our group replied that it would have to depend on when the soap was on which lead nicely into our next question of whether they would watch a soap later on in the evening like the Hollyoaks spin off Hollyoaks Later which is broadcast at 10. We then asked if people would enjoy more adult storylines if the soap was on at a later time and we got some positive feedback from this however we got a more positive response to our next question about a soap set in a University/School setting so we think that we shall go for the younger approach in our soap. We then went on to ask if people would prefer a more light hearted soap for example like a soap opera version of Scrubs which some people agreed they would enjoy however when we asked about what type of characters people would like to see one member mentioned a funny goofy character so I think we will make one character the funny element of our soap for example instead of the whole thing. We also asked about making the soap and ‘internet soap’ however we got a negative response to this however we decided we would put episodes on the website so that people could catch up on any they’ve missed.
