An example of this is in the following episode of Brookside showed Jimmy after he had broken up in a relationship with his ex-girlfriend his behaviour seemed very depressed and emotional, which is what someone would usually do after coming of a relationship.
Another example of this is from the following episode of home and away where Dani felts jealous that Will and Gypsy (who is pregnant) getting back together but the surreal thing about this all is how Dani never (within the past 3 weeks) mentioned anything to Will on how she felt about him. The problem I find with Australia soaps is they intend to always bring up old issues but with the British soap they like dragging the story lines to a final point in which everything is dealt with.
When discussing character behaviour Brookside usually has the odd two or three characters that change through out series for example if we look months back at Jimmy he had completely lost him mind and wouldn’t leave his bedroom but he soon managed to bounce back. With Home and Away everyone always seems to either stay good or bad. Usually in British soaps if a character was bad and turns good he either gets axed or has a very long holiday (like the previous character tom in Eastenders).
In the episode Brookside everything is revealed in 3 different households with a mix of characters whom are all trying to deal with personal issues/problems that had occurred. Within this in this episode of Home and Away everything is fixed on mostly young characters who are on set this is because there are a lot of controversial issue going on. Both soaps don’t have a lot of mixed character because Brookside focuses more on the older gender and Home and Away focuses more on the younger generation.
Media Assignment
With this episode of Brookside we only see one major family so we can’t really say how family treatment towards each other in general is. The family we do see in this episode are the Murray’s and the biological mother of the children who has come back to see her children after abandoning them when they were small. The children don’t want to know so we could say that this is one treatment that the children are giving their real mother.
In the episode of Home and Away we see more treatment of family relationship then Brookside but not as much as would see in other soaps like Eastenders.
One of the examples in Home and Away is the tension between Vinnie and Leah’s mother about why Leah’s mother has to be there when she goes in to labour.
In this episode of Brookside you have a lot of controversial issues for example with the
Murray family you see through out the whole episode they are all arguing about the return of their biological mother and weather they should let her explain her self.
Then in the house with Jimmy you can tell there is tension between Nikki and Jahrome.
Towards the end of Brookside we see a huge dramatic scene with the thugs breaking into all three houses.
With the episode of ‘Home and Away’ there is not much controversial issue going on but that’s not to say there isn’t any issues going on. An example of this is with the high tension between Brodye and Alex because the death of Brodyes boyfriend.
In this episode of Brookside the dialogue looks/seems so real but when watching Home and Away everything’s seems phoney i.e. in the opening scene of ‘Home and Away’ we see that Brodye is very upset about the lost of her boyfriend. Then a new face walks into the carven park and cracks an innocent joke about Brodye boyfriend then suddenly the camera zooms into Brodyes face and she just standing there smiling like she has forgotten about everything.
When the characters are speaking in Brookside the dialogue look very serious but unfortunately with Home and Away the dialogue looks unconvincing.
One problem in Home and Away is the pace of each scene and it moves to quick.
We can tell this by when something serious or dramatic is happening the scene only last up to a minute then it moves on to the next scene in a different location.
Home and Away scenes moves to quickly and some viewers don’t really like this because they want to see more on what happen in a particular scene instead of switching to a different scene. Unlike Home and Away with Brookside intends to drag out there scene for much longer and also with English soaps in general they all ways get scenes drag out very long i.e. In Eastenders when Sharon and Phil spent the whole episode in pub.
With Home and Away the lighting is very colour and makes you feel like you wish you were there but with Brookside it has a Mat finished lighting, which make it look movie.
The good thing about Home and Away is colourful lighting everything look so nice and sunny but the downside to it is it all look like fantasyland. As with Brookside everything seems so real but dull.
The camera angles in this episode of Home and Away is very basic because you only every see the characters from a front end view and most of houses are filmed from the in side and always focuses mostly on the kitchen and in the living room. Brookside’s camera angle gives us viewers a feel of around the area for example in this episode the police are chasing the thugs and camera angle goes birds eye view which give us a idea of what exactly is happening.
In this episode and in general Home and Away has a low budget because we never see any explosion or any other drastic scene. In the episode of Brookside we know they have high budget because we see cars getting smash and also the following episode after that the thugs shoot down a police helicopter, which explodes down in a petrol station.
Media Assignment
Home and Away has probably has one of the most attractive setting in today’s modern soaps and the reason being is its sunny hot beach backdrop. The beach in Home and Away is where every one seems to make after they had an argument and most of the competition in
Home and Away are always held like swimming and surfing. The rest of the setting is in the character house or at the surf club. With Brookside all of the setting is set within the houses and around house and they don’t usually move location.
An important point to take is how Brookside last scene is a catastrophe scene but where as with Home and Away
In conclusion both soaps have its ups and downs and when I personally watched both episodes of both soaps I didn’t really favour any of them because Home and Away is too dreamy and Brookside is just to boring (apart from the last dramatic scene), so I the best put together soap in my judgment is Eastenders (the king of soaps).
