Evaluation- Progression From My Preliminary Task To My Final Radio Extract

I felt I have come a long way from my preliminiry task, to now when creating/editing my final extract. My technical skills have improved significantly and have a better understanding in to how radio shows work, more so developing skills regarding technology and what can be achieved through sound effects and music.

The preliminary task was just an exercise to get me use to how to use the technology of making an extract through adobe audition, I didn't plan my preliminary task well, nor did I even think of choosing the right characters for any parts, whoever was available at the time I just asked them to act for me, which resulted that my preliminary task wasn't very good and wanted to make a much better extract than that. So after this whole process I familiarised myself with the software and realised I could create something much better through the use of technology. So when creating my final extract, I took under a lot of research and planning into different radio stations, how they attract themselves to their audience with the adverts they use, outside broadcast etc, all of which helped me to become more creative which I used to reflect my genre and audience for my radio station as well as planning and thinking thoroughly of the actors who performed in my extract so it will represent it to my audience the most effective way possible.

My preliminary task was basic and it had a very few conventions of what a real radio extract is meant to have, you can hear clearly that i done no planning at all for it, so it helped me in a way for my main extract what I needed to do to make it sound authentic and containing the right representations that I wanted. as you can see in the links below the difference in the scripts.

Final Extract Script

Preliminary Task Script

For my preliminary task I only used one jongle throughout the whole extract but for my real radio show I wanted to add a couple more for my station and news jingle,

When creating my soundbite for my radio extract, it gave me ideas on how to be creative with bits of my full task like creating outside broadcast and making it sound realistic.

One of the biggest developments from my preliminary task is representation, previously I didn't take much notice on the people who were acting for my preliminary task, but after I done some research on it, I realised the importance of it and I incorporated it when creating my main radio extract.

Representation

Evaluation- Use Of Technology- Production

The most important piece of software I used to create my Goal FM station was Adobe Audition 1.5 which helped me edit and add effects to recorded voices, as well as layering sounds through the multitrack view which meant I could mix sound effects, music and dialogue into one separate clip. 

When recording my actors I used the Shure SM58 with a pop guard to help minimise the plosive sound that is picked up during recording, so after each actor who recorded for me I saved them on seperate clips and labelled each clip by the actor and the part of the script they were recording for me so when it came to the editing I had all the files in one place which was a lot easier to access.

During each of the recordings the actors inevitably made mistakes whilst reading the script or taking breathes in between, but adobe audition enable me to cut out the pauses and to silence when they had a breather which made the show run much smoother.

For my Bet24/7 advert I placed the sound effects that I wanted which was taken from the BBC sound effects library as well as when choosing a track for the advert I used one of the cd's from college and put them on the software on multitrack and placed it where I wanted it to be.

And again in the B&S advert I used a clanging sound effect in the beginning of the clip.

As well as making the radio station to sound more authentic, during my research and planning stage on news bulletins/correspondents etc, I found out that they use mono microphones, so that every sound effect is added to the background of recorded voices (and any reverb effects used on recorded voices) were recorded into mono, then the sound was equalised to remove low bass and high treble to add realism.

I also took out the pauses or gaps when my actors were reading the script.

For one part of my script I needed to make it sound like that my actor was on the phone, so after I recorded him, I equalised his voice, took the bass and treble sound out and kept the middle frequencies so it sounded like that he was on the phone.

After I finished recording I had to make all the sounds on the same level so none of the sounds will be louder than each other, so even making  the quiet sounds louder without distorting it by compressing it.

 

Evaluation- Use Of Technology- Research And Planning

During my research and planning I used different types of software/technology to help me present you my findings, it helped me to be creative throughout the whole of my AS coursework. The first bit of tech that I used was blogger which helped me bring my research to life with the inclusion and uploading of audio files, video clips, and images as well as linking posts to other websites that I used in the process.

Each element of my research and planning were put into separate post so helped give me a structure and is easy to access any post so therefore making the whole process a lot smoother.

To put all of my audio files onto my blog, I used soundcloud to upload the clip on there and embed the the clips I wanted and put them on my blog.

One of the most essential pieces of software I used was the Tunein Radio, which I downloaded the app on my phone, it helped me through my listening tasks when I had to listen to three different radio station at the same time  and same day to compare news bulletins, it had the listen again option so was very helpful during this stage of my work.

So with the listening tasks I was able to record each of the times that I needed and listened to it multiple times to get the 5'W's and the news values for my task.

Evaluation- Audience For My Radio Station And Attracting Them

After researching on tasks that are related to audience, I did so through a number of ways such as distributing a questionnaire, and looking at official websites that are similar to Goal FM  and realised that the age of my audience is 16-50 and the stations like Talk Sport and BBC Radio 5 Live are targeting a male audience.

My Questionnaire

Secondary Research On Audience

Websites Similar To GoalFM

Introduction To Websites

During my listening tasks I had to listen to a variety of different station to see how they individually target their audience by using adverts, so on talkSPORT for example the adverts were basically targeted for men whereas listening to Heart the adverts were targeted for women. So when it came to choosing/creating my adverts I made sure sure that they were aimed at my audience.

For the first advert I decided to do B&S, which is a building and supply place, which is a type of thing that targets male audience.

 

For my second advert, I decided to do a Bet24/7, which is an online betting sports company, which is very popular amongst sports station/ fans, so therefore I put one in my radio show to target my predominantly male audience.

Since my station is a sports station, I had to make news that is related to sports in detail since that is my target audience.

Evaluation- Representation

As part of my research I had to think carefully about my representation for my radio show. I listened to various types of radio station and listened carefully on how they represent to the audience, the tone of voice they use, young or old, the language they used and as well as the representation of voices for the news, adverts and show presenters etc

Representation

I had to choose my characters very carefully and gave it a lot of thought to make sure they represented the way I wanted them to. I some cases I had to coach some of them to and telling them what tone I wanted them to use for a particular part, in some cases I used the same actor twice but made them change their tone of their voice to make them sound different in the other part I gave them

For my newsreader I picked Jade to play that part who is the English teacher at my college. I wanted to find someone who had a friendly, calm and good tone of voice, so I thought Jade was the best for this as she had these specialties for this



For my station jingle I wanted someone with a powerful and deep voice, something unique that would gain the audience interest so after going through a list of potential people for this part I decided to use my media teacher Alex for this as he can do the tone and voice I wanted the best


Later on the show I used Alex again but for a completely different part of the show. This time I used him for my B&S advert as playing the builder , however I needed to train him in for this part so that he would change his voice from being powerful to a more friendly tone, as you can hear below on the advert the difference in the tone of voice.

 

Again for my Bet24/7 advert I wanted a powerful voice for this one as well, researchinf sport stations a lot of them had a betting advert in it, so I needed a specific deep powerful voice so can attract my audience into it. So I picked my mate Sam for this and again I had to show him and tutor him for the voice/tone he should use for this part.

Evaluation- Institution

My Goal Fm show is a local radio station targeting the audience from London. I used elements to portray that it is from here such as the news stories I used are situated here in London, the adverts are local stores from the area, as well as the sports stories I used are all london based and makes references to it additionally the traffic and travel as well as the weather also bring the updates from here.



Goal Fm radio is quite similar to the other big sport stations such as Talk Sport and BBC Radio 5 live before the break it talks about a sport related topic then it goes straight to the news, the audience is very similar as well it is predominantly for males additionally the age is quite similar which is a ages from 16-50

Talk Sport is owned by Wireless Group which is a broadcasting and new media company based in Belfast and is a constituent of the FTSE SmallCap Index. It's national sisters partner stations is Talk Sport 2, talkRADIO and Virgin Radio UK as well as its local sisters radio stations is Wish FM, Peak FM, Pulse 1&2. It's available on DAB, Sky, Virgin Media, Freeview on mobile and online as well as these stations are broadcasted worldwide. So a station like my Goal Fm is likely to appear and owned by the Wireless Group

As from above you can hear that all my news stories, sport, weather, traffic and travel and adverts are all London based and below is the complete news bulletin after it's been incorporated together.

Evaluation- Using Conventions Of Real Media Products- Adverts

 As part of my radio radio I did some research on adverts and went on a number of sites to to understand how adverts works. One of the websites i looked at was Radioville which contains a number of different types of adverts, some with a narrative, some without others with a conversation happening with two people and at the end a voiceover about the product so I put all these conventions together to try make my adverts sound like it is if it's on a real radio show.

The first advert which is an advert for B&S, a building and supply place which again is predominantly aimed for my target audience, that is male. For this advert I decide to make a conversation between a individual and a builder talking about the problems of his house as well as the price and at the end there's a voice over advertising the product, below is the finished advert for B&S.

Intro To Adverts
Potential Products To Advertise


 

The second advert I done was a betting advert which is predominantly aimed at a male audience which again is my target audience. For this advert I decided to use a narrative throughout the whole thing, wanted to get someone with a deep voice and using a serious tone so when playing on the radio it would hep catch the audience attention, below if the finished radio advert for Bet24/7