Analysis of Home And Away Opening Title Sequence & How it has helped us progress..

Analysing Opening Title Sequences - What? Why?

As a group we have decided to analyse opening title sequences from a few popular soaps, both UK and abroad. We feel this will benefit us when deciding on our own opening sequence. We hope to take ideas both positive and negative and apply them to ours to make it the best it can be. Things like music type, colours, pictures and even the length of it.

• Orange/red bright colours- based around the sun, sand and sea.
  
• Pictures kept basic, trees, sea, boats, pier, houses could represent in some ways relaxing and easy going.


• However, the pictures are puzzled, cut out in seperate squares moving around, this could show how the perfect images and scenery, are not soperfect in reality.


• They are also fast moving, could show how long the timeline of the show is, or how fast time flies.
• Trails to the right, its asif we are driving through their lives up to the end where it all breaks apart and zooms in.


• In one of the seperated boxes there was a close up of a net, this could represent the feeling of being trapped.


• There was also an image of a tree, which then was cut up and seperated into seperateboxes, this could show family breakdown and losses.


• The last image, is a picteresque, empty beach at sundown, could howloneliness, empty feeling etc.


• It then all breaks apart and zooms in, shows we are moving into these charaters lives.
• Boat sailing away, could be communicating trying to escape, break free?

Music

• Lyrics are catchy, contain soap title, theres a regular beat- both a man and a womans voice- complications? love? relationships?

Colours

• Red-deep, love, blood
• Orange-sun, happiness bright
• yellow-summer,peaceful innocence

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I also found the opening sequence from 1991 and 1995, i decided to compare them to the new opening because i feel this will help see how technology has developed overtime, and how some aspects have remained intact i.e. the theme song.

1991 Opening sequence:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LJOJekRZ_-c&NR=1

1995 Opening sequence:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RN8M0rjrNu4&feature=related

In Both Sequences

• The soaps theme tune has stayed the same throughout all the new openings.
• They both portray clippets of a happy lifestyle.
• laughing, smiling, playing around
• friends and families all getting on together
• sun, sea and sand
• Doesnt show any problems

In the 1991 Sequence

• has a black washout around all the clips-could represent dark backround/secrets
• It looks asif a black screen has been rubbed away to reveal pictures of the characters lives.
• The characters stage names are written with the characters real names.
• All happy pictures
• Theres are sterotypes of women relaxing by the beach, kids playing beach games and the men on boats.
• No images of sadness and i couldnt pick up much that could portray any kind of sadness
• at the end the black around the screen zooms out to show the 'n'- all the black borders could have been a close up of the letters of "Home and Away".

In the 1995 Sequence

• There is a sun and a sea image at the bottom of the screen throughout, giving off the idea of it being based somewhere hot and at the sea.
• Again happy images
• family and friends happily together
• As the song plays along, the picture of the sun and sea at the bottom of the screen becomes a bigger wave, could represent difficulties and drama.
• At the end someone dives in the bigger image of the sun in the sea, then "home and away" zooms out.
• Theres is the same sterotype of women relaxing by the beach, kids playing beach games and the men on boats.

Evaluation
Majority of the soaps we have analysed, have shown me a similarity commonly used, they tend to base there opening sequences on the setting of their soap, or like Hollyoaks include all the characters.

Taking both the old sequences and new sequences into account i will definitly refer back to these to see what influence and ideas i can retract from them.

How analysing Opening Title Sequences has helped us progress...

I feel that it has definitly benefited us, we have looked at how the music differs between soaps, with 'Hollyoaks' using an upbeat tune, aiming it more at a teenage audience, and something like 'Coronation Street' keeping it very original and basic, aiming more for a mature audience but at the same time leaving it broad. We also saw how as technology has progressed through the years like in 'Home and Away' i found that they had a new opening sequence every few years, and each time it getting better and more advanced.
We can see that it is important to find a very catchy tune, something people will want to here and automatically recognise it as our soap. We need to make sure it appeals to our target audience as well as opening doors for different audiences aswell.
Written by Elena Christodoulou