Evaluation - Progression from the Preliminary Task

My technical skills, and my understanding of the conventions of radio shows, have developed significantly since I completed my preliminary task (a very short radio extract that contained a jingle, a presenter introducing a guest and an archive clip of a scene from a horror film that the guest was promoting).



The preliminary task was an invaluable exercise in helping me to learn how to use Adobe Audition to record and edit and the techniques I became familiar with helped me enormously when it came to scripting my full task for Big Smoke FM, and allowed me to be much more creative with elements like outside broadcasts and specialist reports and the adverts that I used to reflect genre and target audience in my main task.



My preliminary task script was quite basic, only containing a few of the conventions of existing radio and I had to flesh out the script for my main task to make sure that it reflected the listening research I had done, and that it contained the right representations that I had noticed, and wanted.

Script - Preliminary Task

Script - Final Task - Big Smoke FM

A major development from my preliminary task revolved around my script. In my preliminary task I only had one jingle, but in my main task I wanted to include a range of jingles to reflect the research I had done (which indicated that there were show, station and news jingles and even weather, competition and traffic jingles).











After I completed my preliminary task I did a thorough evaluation into the way that the software had helped me create the effects for my jingle and the archive clip. I also made notes about what I had learned and how I could use this before I scripted, recorded and edited my full show, Big Smoke FM.

Evaluation of Preliminary Task

Creating the archive clip, in particular, gave me some good ideas about how I could be really creative with bits of my full task - like creating outside broadcasts that would sound realistic. I decided to include as many of these elements in my script now that I knew how to create authentic sounding outside locations.







The final major development from my preliminary task was the thought I put into representations for my full radio extract. During my listening I paid attention to the different voices I heard and carefully planned exactly who the voices on my show would be, so that the representations would seem authentic to my audience. I played the major role in my preliminary task but wasn't convinced that I really sounded like an authentic actress, and I didn't want to make the same mistake again. Below is an example of some of the research I did into representation as a result of not being happy with some of the representations in my preliminary task.

Research into Representation 

Evaluation - Technology 2 - Production

The most important piece of software when it came to recording and editing my extract from the BigSmoke FM Breakfast Show was Adobe Audition 1.5 - audio editing and mixing software that enables the user to add effects to recorded voices and manipulate and edit music files and sound effects - layering sounds through the mutlitrack view (which meant that I could mix sound effects, music and dialogue into one separate clip).

Once I had recorded each one of my actors using a Shure SM58 microphone (with a pop-guard to help minimise the plosive popping sound picked up during recording), I saved each separate clip in folders for each of the different sections of my show (such as news, jingles, adverts). I labelled each clip with the name of both the actor and the character they were playing from my script so that I could easily find each file when I was editing and mixing down each section.

Once everything was recorded I worked on each separate section individually, mixing one complete element, before moving onto another. I didn't work through my script chronologically but instead started with the mixing of my adverts as I knew that they would be the most complicated because of the amount of separate audio files that each contained.

For my holiday advert, for example, I placed the sound effects that I wanted (taken from the BBC Sound Effects Library) and the music track I had chosen (from the College CD Library) and placed them on the mutlitrack view roughly at the point I wanted them to appear.





I then took the unedited single voices of my female characters and the voiceover and edited out any gaps and pauses and the mistakes that had been made during recording.













Once I had removed any unwanted gaps and mistakes I re-saved each file (labelling it so that I knew that it was the edited version) before mixing the two female characters together so it appeared as if they were having a conversation (when I had actually recorded then separately, on completely different days).



I layered each of the sound clips onto the multitrack view before adjusting the volume of each separate section so that there was consistency in terms of volume across the whole advert. I then re-saved the whole advert placing it in the adverts folder so that I could place it on another multirack view when I was mixing my final show (once I had completed all the other sections).



I followed this principle with each separate section of my show, such as the intro, outro, news headlines, separate news stories, my complete news bulletin and each of my adverts and jingles. Once I had all of my separate sections mixed I placed them all in order on the multitrack view and adjusted any volume levels, before adding compression to equalise the volume across the whole show.





At points during editing I wanted to add very specific effects to some of the dialogue I recorded, such as making it seem as if a character was on the phone or that a press conference was taking place in a large echoey room. The software had certain presets so that I could add these to the clips to create the effects I wanted - as in the soundbite for the asthma story and the press conference featuring the disgraced actress.









One of the biggest challenges, apart from the adverts, was my station jingle, where I used a number of the above effects (layering lots of different audio clips onto the multitrack view and adding a phone effect to one of the voices and echo to the other). I also had to cut and loop the piece of music that I wanted to run across the jingle.

Evaluation - Technology 1 - Research & Planning and Evaluation

I was able to use different types of software in my research and planning and my evaluation to help me successfully present my findings. When I started I was unfamiliar with blogging, but once I had set up my Blogger account I realised that I could bring my research to life with the inclusion of video clips, audio clips and images, as well as adding links to posts I had completed and links to other websites that I had used during my research.

Often I wanted to edit some of the images that I used on my blog and for this I used Adobe Photoshop Elements - which allowed me to crop certain photos and turn PSD files into jpegs so that I could upload them successfully onto my blog.

Probably the most useful piece of software for my research and planning was Tunein Radio, which I downloaded as an app on my phone. This meant that I was able to record live radio which made the listening tasks easier to achieve, particularly as I needed to make notes on representations, conventions and jingles and I needed to be able to rewind the shows that I was listening to.

Finally, I was able to make my blog much more interesting and immersive through the use of SoundCloud, which meant I could upload all of my sound files and embed them onto my blog. This has helped massively in my evaluation, allowing me to give examples when discussing representations, technology and audience.

Evaluation - Attracting my Audience

During the scripting, recording and editing of my show I was constantly thinking about the conventions of existing radio that I was going to use, but at all times I had my target audience in mind, shaping the adverts, news stories and jingles so that they would appeal to them and attract them to my show on BigSmoke FM.

I had decided that my station should appeal to a 15-45, multi-gendered demographic, though my particular show may have more appeal to women than men. As I re-worked my script, adding news stories and developing adverts, I thought about how they would appeal to my audience in terms of gender and age, but also how I could make each element appeal to a London audience (as my show was from a local radio station targeting that area of the country).

The first thing that I feel really targets my local London audience is the name I have given to my station - BigSmoke FM. I came up with lots of potential names, all of which made explicit reference to the Capital City, testing each one with a focus group before choosing BigSmoke FM (a nickname for London which is often referred to as "the Big Smoke").

Choosing My Station Name - Audience

I referenced the name of my station in all of the jingles that I used on my show in an attempt to create a brand awareness for my station, and to repeatedly reinforce that my station was aimed at listeners that live in London. Below is an audio clip of my finished station jingle that alongside making reference to London features two voices - one female and one male - of people who are both young and slightly older. I used these two voices in my jingle to signal to the audience that my station is aimed at both men and women, and will appeal to both younger and older listeners (15-45).

During the listening tasks that I did I heard many adverts on the shows that I listened to and I felt that they gave a really clear indication of the target audience of the station or show. On talkSPORT, for example, I heard many adverts that seemed more appropriate for the station's predominantly male audience, while on Heart the adverts seemed to target women. I knew that including adverts would be a good way to make it clear exactly who my audience was in terms of gender, age and region, so I carefully scripted adverts that I thought would appeal to my audience.

The first advert is for an imaginary Greatest Hits Album for contemporary pop star Avicii. I felt that this would be appropriate as it reflects the genre of music that would be played on my station and is the type of music that would appeal to both genders and the age range I had chosen.



The second advert is for a holiday company and features two women from the South-East of England. This advert would target the female listeners who would be listening to my show and is appropriate for the age of my target audience - ranging from teenagers to mothers with young families, who may be planning a holiday (the sound effects in the background implies that the women are picking their children up from school). I also made sure that the advert specifically targeted my local London audience, calling the travel company Capital City Holidays.



I thought that the Nakd Breakfast Bar advert would target my audience in a number of ways. Firstly, it is primarily aimed at the female audience that I felt would tune in to this specific show. Secondly, as my show is the Breakfast Show I felt that this type of product would appeal to an audience listening at that specific time of day.



Another way that I targeted my audience is through the choice of music I used in the intro and outro. In my Ofcom character of service sheet I established that my station played contemporary chart music, and I created a potential playlist of songs that would appeal to the audience and reflect the genre of my station/show.

My Ofcom Character of Service Sheet

Playlist - Music for my Audience

The tracks that begin and end my show are 'We Are Never Getting Back Together' by Taylor Swift and 'Fancy' by Iggy Azalea. Both are modern pop songs, typical of the type of music that my genre of station would play and exactly the type of music that my audience would expect to hear.

In the intro and outro you can hear that I have two show presenters, again one male and one female. This was a conscious decision to once more appeal to my multi-gendered audience and, with this show, the younger part of my chosen demographic.

The traffic bulletin appeals directly to my local audience, but the most obvious way that I tried to attract listeners in the London area was through the choice of stories that appeared in my news bulletin.

The first story is about scientists making a breakthrough in finding a cure for asthma. This is obviously a story with national, and even international, significance but to appeal to my regional audience I mentioned that the research had taken place in London.

The third story features a scandal involving a famous UK actress and while the story takes place in New York (where she was filming hr latest movie) I made it clear that she hails from London.

My final story is about the opening of an American-style mall in Knightsbridge, London - a story that will appeal to my audience in terms of gender and age, but also in terms of region.

Evaluation - Audience for My Radio Station

The target audience for my radio station is ages 15-45. When doing research for target audience, I looked at Capital FM, who have a very similar aged audience to BigSmoke FM. Like Capital, my station is aimed at both genders, but perhaps leans slightly more to women.

So much of my research and planning was into getting the right audience. I created a questionnaire to find out about my potential audience's listening habits and preferences, and I looked at both Rajar and Ofcom to get an understanding of the target audience of existing radio stations that I felt were similar to mine. I even looked at existing radio websites, to see what they might indicate about audience.

Primary Research 

Questionnaire 

Secondary Research 

OFCOM 

My Audience 

Audience and Radio Websites 

In the next post I will discuss the decisions I made during scripting and recording that directly targeted my chosen audience.