Our project brief is to create a 60 minute factual radio program for the school which will not just be aimed at students and teacher but also parents, the factual radio program has to be related to school and the interest of our target audience, it will be split up in 8 sections with each one of us being responsible of our own section which should last 6 minutes and 30 seconds.
Ed Stagg
My personal experience with Ed is interesting because i expected a boring, dull person who talks a bit too much, but it turned out the totally opposite he taught us a lot about the whole radio industry as well as tips for our project brief for example;
- silence is very important when doing a show, because it draws the attention of the audience so for example when they her nothing it makes them come closer to the radio with them thinking whats going on? etc.
- 'The gear change' technique is also a handy tip to draw the audience attention closer , this consists of different voice levels for example you are talking at a normal level than you suddenly increase the level of your voice rejuvenates the audience attention
Strengths and weaknesses
Before this project i felt that my weaknesses would by far overhaul my strengths in this specific project as i have minimum amount of experience in radio, my biggest weakness was how to actually convey a section of the program myself for it to appeal to the audience, i felt that my strength in radio was the way to speak to the audience as a presenter as i thought i was very good at tweaking my voice to suit topics etc.
'Blue Spoke'
'Blue Spoke'
'Blue spoke' is the name of our radio station, we came up with this name with the usage of the word 'blue' because its related to 'bluecoat' people will know that its related to blue coat with the usage of 'blue' and the usage of the word 'spoke' gives the impression that its for the audience to voice there opinions, debates etc.
Mission Statement
'our aim is to make a professional up-to-date and exciting program that appeals to students, teachers and parents. It will be informative and interesting incorporating our tastes as well as the views and opinions of others.'
We came up with this statement because it is what we want to strive for at the end of the project by trying to make it 'professional up-to-date and exciting' as well as 'informative, and interesting incorporating our tastes...'
Initial thoughts
initial thoughts on my section of the radio program is that i can see it fit in with ease into the whole program as there's a guaranteed a lot of interest in my specific topic which is mainly 'sports in bluecoat'
13/03/2013
Today we created our questionnaire as a group so we could find out what the interests of our target audience are so we included questions based around;
our next task was to prepare a pich for ed stagg related to our brief, detailing our proposal and my treatment of the 7.5 minutes of the 60 minutes magazine programme. From this we discussed my idea of my section which was 'sports within bluecoat' and how we could put it across to our target audience whilst attaining the same level of interest from the audience from the beginning to the end. i got positive feedback from ed as he was pleased with my idea but my problem was the conveying of my ideas, he told me to think of possible questions to ask in the interviews etc.
14/03/2013
Today in Mr. Collins lesson we were told to start putting our ideas togeather on a word document, i created a grid which had 7 sections each lasting a minute, 'detail' section which had what would be included in each sections, my introduction started off with the questionning of the audienc with a rhetorical question, thats the part i got up to the 'introduction' because i was stuck on what to add to it.
15/03/2013
Today we continued with the work from the yesterday but today we had the addition of the preparation for the interviews with the conveying of questions we were told to think about the ' 5 w's' who, what where and when and why' these questions will be asked to teachers and students.
18/03/2013
Today we carried on with the detailed planning of our script for our whole section, today we were meant to start the recording of the interviews but because ed stagg is giving us a 'workshop' on 'interviews' this has to be arranged after the workshop as it would make sense to have more knowledge when interviewing a person in getting the results you want.
19/03/2013
Today we had our 'interview workshop' with Ed Stagg this was very beneficial as it helps us to be more effective in our interview, he taught us many things such as thorough planning of the interview by doing a brain storm of words which you can expand on, on the spot off the top of your head which in the end you can see how they link with each other as well as trying to get something extra out of them so for example a personal experience the person may have that they have to overcome to become where they are at the moment. The 'style' of the interview is very important as it helps to make the interview more unique compared to others for example interviewing a footballer whilst there is a training session going on in the background this gives the feel to the viewer that the i took the person out of his/her own training session to do the interview this gives it a sporty style to it.
20/03/2013
Today we started with our production of our radio podcast, we planned our production schedule to support us to be organised in our production of our radio podcast, the biggest problem i had was getting in contact with the people i wanted to interview, i had a meeting with Mr cook regarding the gifted and talented students within Bluecoat Academy he sent me a list of names who do different sport at professional level this gave me a clearer idea on the type of questions i will ask, i got in contact with the students by creating a letter and making sure that it was sent to there lesson as well as sending them an e-mail.
21/03/2013
Today i carried on with the interviews of students and teachers, i asked them all the same questions because i wanted to see what response i would get back, i could see it come along as a 'poll' in the radio podcast which can be converted into a debate, i had a reply from a student named; maya bell who was willing to do the interview so i replied to her e-mail and informed her on where and when.
22/03/2013
Today i had my first interview of a gifted and talented students, it was planned to do the interview during her form time i agreed but her form tutor didnt allow me to interview her as she had 'act of worship' so we reorganised to have it done at break time and i asked a teacher if we was allowed to use this room for 5 minutes and they agreed, my personal opinion is that the interview was very beneficial as i got the information i needed from the following interview.
25/03/2013
i got two more gifted and talented students interviewed, one was 'offrande' the second was 'malika' it was a very informal interview as they were telling me how they got to the stage they were and how they got to that stage etc. My next stage is to put the recordings together as well as the input of my part of the radio, get that recorded which is scheduled for tomorrow morning.
26/03/2013
Today we continued with our recording, i continued to record my part of the radio i also edited my script to fit my audience as it didn't seem to suit in he beginning. I carried on with the recording of my 'debate' by going out during lesson time looking for students to answer a specific question whether they are for or against as well as giving an explanation to support the answer.
27/03/2013
Today was the deadline of the production for our radio, i did my last set of recording today in the 1st period and 3rd period as i had a 'free study period' which was beneficial for me as i used it productively for my task. I also had my meeting with ed stagg to give me my feedback on the recordings i did and overall it was positive he gave me advice on certain things to pick up on which would help me to make it more creative by doing specific different methods one of them was just to split up the interviews and take out the specific parts which would help to make the radio more 'colourful'.
-adobe dont support specific files which audacity does.
28/03/2013
Yesterday i had my 'meeting' with ed stagg to review my recordings, the strengths of my recordings was by far the interview with one of the gifted and talented students because i got that 'extra' content from it and there was quite a lot of material which i can edit which would help to increase the interactivity between the audience and presenter.
The weakness of my recordings was probably the creative side as i struggled to get a creative side to my recordings but never the less this could be changed with the editing software.
My action plan will be to mainly try and editing the materials i have conveyed to put a creative edge to the material for example stopping the interview at a certain point which will want the audience to pay attention more and wait for the rest of the interview whilst we move on to a different section.
15/04/2013-26/04/2013
Today was the start of the 'editing' process of our radio production, i started off by looking back at the feedback i received from ed stagg when we had a meeting to reflect the footage i captured, i started by uploading all the relevant footage on the timeline in the correct order.
The following day i carried on with the uploading of the recordings but with the addition of recording extra footage which i was advised to do as i needed to do split up my interviews aswell as news bulletin and cut it down a lot as the footage i have is too long which means i will need to trim large amounts of my footage.
I got feedback from both Mrs. Merrick and ed stagg on the current stage of my radio production as well as explaining my plan for the rest of the radio production, my main feedback was to start off with the best interview which was with 'offrande zanzala' who plays football for derby county because of the length of it take the best answeres from the questions asked and start off at the begining of the radio production with a answered question than to move to a different part of the radio podcast.
The main problem i came across whilst i was putting my radio podcast together was the different levels of voice as i either recorded in different places or the recording device i used wasn't close enough to the person etc. Lucky enough the software we are using helps this specific problem by changing volume levels so its at the correct level.
I continued with the radio production, i came to a new problem which was the length of my radio podcast, it was too long at the time until the end of the day when i trimmed it down to the more important parts within the radio but it was still over the seven minutes thirty seconds limit to overcome this problem i trimmed the interview with offrande zanzala right down to the important bits which helped me in the end to meet the target limit of length.
The last day i inserted my jingles and stingers, i inserted both jingles stingers which are related to sports i got the background instrumental of the England anthem which i feel it fits perfect as its a sporty theme. i also added a clip of a crowd cheering which thanks the students who took part in the interviews.
Mission Statement
'our aim is to make a professional up-to-date and exciting program that appeals to students, teachers and parents. It will be informative and interesting incorporating our tastes as well as the views and opinions of others.'
We came up with this statement because it is what we want to strive for at the end of the project by trying to make it 'professional up-to-date and exciting' as well as 'informative, and interesting incorporating our tastes...'
Initial thoughts
initial thoughts on my section of the radio program is that i can see it fit in with ease into the whole program as there's a guaranteed a lot of interest in my specific topic which is mainly 'sports in bluecoat'
13/03/2013
Today we created our questionnaire as a group so we could find out what the interests of our target audience are so we included questions based around;
After we did tid this we handed the questionnaires out we did as much as we could and varied it from different ages, genders etc. we also took a few home to give to our parents.
- Age-range
- Types of radio stations they listen to
- The timings at which they listen
- What they do whilst listening
- Types of news they'll like to hear
our next task was to prepare a pich for ed stagg related to our brief, detailing our proposal and my treatment of the 7.5 minutes of the 60 minutes magazine programme. From this we discussed my idea of my section which was 'sports within bluecoat' and how we could put it across to our target audience whilst attaining the same level of interest from the audience from the beginning to the end. i got positive feedback from ed as he was pleased with my idea but my problem was the conveying of my ideas, he told me to think of possible questions to ask in the interviews etc.
14/03/2013
Today in Mr. Collins lesson we were told to start putting our ideas togeather on a word document, i created a grid which had 7 sections each lasting a minute, 'detail' section which had what would be included in each sections, my introduction started off with the questionning of the audienc with a rhetorical question, thats the part i got up to the 'introduction' because i was stuck on what to add to it.
15/03/2013
Today we continued with the work from the yesterday but today we had the addition of the preparation for the interviews with the conveying of questions we were told to think about the ' 5 w's' who, what where and when and why' these questions will be asked to teachers and students.
18/03/2013
Today we carried on with the detailed planning of our script for our whole section, today we were meant to start the recording of the interviews but because ed stagg is giving us a 'workshop' on 'interviews' this has to be arranged after the workshop as it would make sense to have more knowledge when interviewing a person in getting the results you want.
19/03/2013
20/03/2013
Today we started with our production of our radio podcast, we planned our production schedule to support us to be organised in our production of our radio podcast, the biggest problem i had was getting in contact with the people i wanted to interview, i had a meeting with Mr cook regarding the gifted and talented students within Bluecoat Academy he sent me a list of names who do different sport at professional level this gave me a clearer idea on the type of questions i will ask, i got in contact with the students by creating a letter and making sure that it was sent to there lesson as well as sending them an e-mail.
21/03/2013
Today i carried on with the interviews of students and teachers, i asked them all the same questions because i wanted to see what response i would get back, i could see it come along as a 'poll' in the radio podcast which can be converted into a debate, i had a reply from a student named; maya bell who was willing to do the interview so i replied to her e-mail and informed her on where and when.
22/03/2013
Today i had my first interview of a gifted and talented students, it was planned to do the interview during her form time i agreed but her form tutor didnt allow me to interview her as she had 'act of worship' so we reorganised to have it done at break time and i asked a teacher if we was allowed to use this room for 5 minutes and they agreed, my personal opinion is that the interview was very beneficial as i got the information i needed from the following interview.
25/03/2013
i got two more gifted and talented students interviewed, one was 'offrande' the second was 'malika' it was a very informal interview as they were telling me how they got to the stage they were and how they got to that stage etc. My next stage is to put the recordings together as well as the input of my part of the radio, get that recorded which is scheduled for tomorrow morning.
26/03/2013
Today we continued with our recording, i continued to record my part of the radio i also edited my script to fit my audience as it didn't seem to suit in he beginning. I carried on with the recording of my 'debate' by going out during lesson time looking for students to answer a specific question whether they are for or against as well as giving an explanation to support the answer.
27/03/2013
Today was the deadline of the production for our radio, i did my last set of recording today in the 1st period and 3rd period as i had a 'free study period' which was beneficial for me as i used it productively for my task. I also had my meeting with ed stagg to give me my feedback on the recordings i did and overall it was positive he gave me advice on certain things to pick up on which would help me to make it more creative by doing specific different methods one of them was just to split up the interviews and take out the specific parts which would help to make the radio more 'colourful'.
-adobe dont support specific files which audacity does.
28/03/2013
Yesterday i had my 'meeting' with ed stagg to review my recordings, the strengths of my recordings was by far the interview with one of the gifted and talented students because i got that 'extra' content from it and there was quite a lot of material which i can edit which would help to increase the interactivity between the audience and presenter.
The weakness of my recordings was probably the creative side as i struggled to get a creative side to my recordings but never the less this could be changed with the editing software.
My action plan will be to mainly try and editing the materials i have conveyed to put a creative edge to the material for example stopping the interview at a certain point which will want the audience to pay attention more and wait for the rest of the interview whilst we move on to a different section.
15/04/2013-26/04/2013
Today was the start of the 'editing' process of our radio production, i started off by looking back at the feedback i received from ed stagg when we had a meeting to reflect the footage i captured, i started by uploading all the relevant footage on the timeline in the correct order.
The following day i carried on with the uploading of the recordings but with the addition of recording extra footage which i was advised to do as i needed to do split up my interviews aswell as news bulletin and cut it down a lot as the footage i have is too long which means i will need to trim large amounts of my footage.
I got feedback from both Mrs. Merrick and ed stagg on the current stage of my radio production as well as explaining my plan for the rest of the radio production, my main feedback was to start off with the best interview which was with 'offrande zanzala' who plays football for derby county because of the length of it take the best answeres from the questions asked and start off at the begining of the radio production with a answered question than to move to a different part of the radio podcast.
The main problem i came across whilst i was putting my radio podcast together was the different levels of voice as i either recorded in different places or the recording device i used wasn't close enough to the person etc. Lucky enough the software we are using helps this specific problem by changing volume levels so its at the correct level.
I continued with the radio production, i came to a new problem which was the length of my radio podcast, it was too long at the time until the end of the day when i trimmed it down to the more important parts within the radio but it was still over the seven minutes thirty seconds limit to overcome this problem i trimmed the interview with offrande zanzala right down to the important bits which helped me in the end to meet the target limit of length.
The last day i inserted my jingles and stingers, i inserted both jingles stingers which are related to sports i got the background instrumental of the England anthem which i feel it fits perfect as its a sporty theme. i also added a clip of a crowd cheering which thanks the students who took part in the interviews.
