Reflection

Here I will reflect on my personal learning objectives in the project and if I achieved them or if I didn’t manage to.

My first learning objective was to improve my project management skills. I believe that I did this within this project as I effectively oversaw the project from start to finish and ultimately produced a good programme and this wouldn’t have happened if I had engaged the skills that oversee project management such as my organisational skills. I was particularly impressed with how my teamwork skills developed in this project, as at the start of the project I was probably to regimental in how I wanted to do things i.e group meetings and strict deadlines and we did implement this through compromise, however, Jame’s  workflow differed to mine as he prefered to do things casually and at the start of the project I didn’t like this. However, towards the end, I would say that I’m much easier to work with as I would now consult with everyone and talk things through before setting out to try and get something done and make sure that everyone would be able to do achieve a target.

I was also happy that I developed my leadership skills at the same time, because I was the producer I was the one who was expected to make key decisions on things and this was definitely applied when we recording when I made the decision to abandon trying to make the drama studio work and move to multitrack studio. I also demonstrated this when I made some editorial decisions where I thought we were doing slander, or defaming someone. I do however think there is an improvement that could be made in regards to my organisational skills as we left it way too late in trying to find people to contribute and as a result only got three-panel members when we wanted four and they weren’t the best that was out there. This ultimately means that if I was to do the project again I would start trying to find people as soon as possible to avoid this happening and get the best people possible.

 

My second learning objective was to gain confidence in approaching people for projects, I would say that I didn’t achieve this to the highest possible standards as we didn’t get the four-person panel that we had wanted at the start of the project. Ultimately I need to lose the stigma of emailing or ringing people and asking them if they would be involved in the project and again this is crucial to the work I want to pursue, as radio as a medium relies on contributors to its programmes rather than just a presenter.

I also acknowledge the fact that we did not go an actively ask people first hand as we did not go to any stand-up events in Lincoln and we should have done as we could have got better contributors than the ones we did and have managed to achieve our project objective of getting a four-person panel from doing this rather than relying with online casting websites which did not get relevant or suitable applicants bar two people.  I do however feel that I did progress in this at the same time as I was the one who booked Alex the BBC journalist. If we had not managed to get him then the project would have sounded significantly different as we would not have had someone who was confident in talking. It was also important as one of our objectives was to get a journalist as a panel member due to them normally being less biased and knowing the facts around a topic.

The third learning objective I had was to learn more about pitching to BBC Networks and the complexity that it involves. I would say that I fully achieved this one as I did a lot of research around the BBC commissioning guidelines as a whole and found out the process from start to finish such as the difficulty it is in becoming a registered supplier for the BBC before you can even submit a 250 word pitch or synopsis for the bid the programme you would like to produce.  This learning objective also benefitted from us changing our idea, as this meant that I was able to look into the differences between Radio 4 and Radio 1 alongside how pitching for an ad hoc commission differs from pitching to a brief where what a network expects is strictly outlined, such as the duration and the type of content that is expected from you.

My fourth learning outcome was to be more experimental in how the final piece sounded I would say that this was achieved but could have definitely gone further in what we did. In terms of what I was happy with, I would say that the idea of doing a podcast it itself is still relatively new especially doing it for a network radio station rather than doing it as a programme and then taking the best bits out of this and then using this to build a podcast.  I would also say that the clips approach we used was different as the only other podcast that uses them is one produced by Spotify and no comedy output by the BBC uses this approach with things such as Fighting Talk and the New’s Quiz being text-based i.e A newspaper heading. I feel the clip idea method worked but that it also failed, as certain clips didn’t gauge the reaction we had wanted to try and get and as a result it probably wouldn’t be funny for the majority of people who listened to it. This is the beauty of text-based discussion as it means that those who are discussing the clip have to engage with it and there is less need to contextualise things meaning that instead, you get funnier chat which I feel that we are missing to the vast majority, however, this was not helped by our contributors.

My fifth objective was to develop my social media skills. I would say that I did this to some degree, however, I could have put in more effort into to this as it was neglected for the primary concern which was the audio and as a result suffered.  I did develop my understanding of social media as I still produced the audio content that was put on Facebook, but if we had have been more organised we would have considered using a 360-degree camera in the studio or at the very least rigged a go pro to a wall to try and get some sort of video content outputted and as a result gain more listeners. I did though gain an understanding of how the social media channels differ and how to approach them in terms of the audience, as Radio 1 uses Twitter and Facebook very differently with there being a lot more video content placed on  Facebook and Twitter is better at engaging with listeners individually.

The sixth objective I had was to create a strong portfolio piece, I would say that this would be a strong piece however in hindsight putting comedy into a demo is exceptionally risky as the person listening may not find it funny and as a result, you instantly polarise the person who could potentially offer you a job. However bar this I do think the piece is strong, there are some technical issues that we could have avoided such as the amount of popping from the microphones and the levels do need to go up. Apart from this, I would definitely say that we succeeded as it wouldn’t be out of place on Radio 1 and if we were to compare it with some of Radio 1’s current podcast output it is similar, with the use of music beds and jingles.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Social Media

To achieve my personal development point on social media alongside James we decided to create an example Facebook page to demonstrate how we would produce content for it and the style of content that we would produce for it. It also allowed me to experiment with creating a short-form video.

https://www.facebook.com/HYHTNTYIR/

In terms of the content that we put on the page, it was relatively straightforward and wasn’t overly complex to me making two short-form clips from parts of the podcast to try and get people to listen to the podcast in full, however we did not want to publish the podcast to the world so didn’t include a link, this page is purely to serve as a demonstration.

It did allow me to social media skill as I have published on social media before, but not video content and it allowed me to experiment, it also allowed me to see that if I want to be able to make it in radio this an area I would need to work on as my captions are not overly good and I don’t really know what language I should be using to target Radio 1’s audience.

In the future, I would also film the podcast and release the best bits in terms of video as video instantly does better. To do this in future we would utilise a 360-degree camera in the middle of the room recording everything meaning that we could make the content more interactive and as a result get more listeners. I also was really struggling to find the content from the podcast to put up as I was worried that we could have copyright issues due to us not owning the right to the clips.However, the process did do what it was supposed to do as it allowed me to develop my understanding of social media and improve my skills on premiere pro even if they were basic videos that only had an image and audio embedded within it.

Editing/Mixing

Editing the podcast was probably the most difficult part of producing8 Have You Heard the News- The Year In Review, this was mostly due to the sheer volume of audio that we had recorded and cut around two hours of audio down into 30 minutes was challenging. Our first method was to remove the parts that we didn’t want to include such as the blunders, irrelevant conversation or parts that we deemed to be slander or defamatory towards people.

Once we had done this we still had roughly 45 minutes of audio and at this point, we had to be much more aggressive in cutting the audio down to the 35 minutes we have got to now. This meant that we cut bits that we described as the worst of the best bits meaning that we were able to cut roughly 10 minutes with a discussion about Donald Trump is one of the causes. Once we had finally got down to 35 minutes we didn’t want to cut anymore audio due to us believing that if we had of done the programme would have lost the best bits, in hindsight we probably should have tried to get it down, but most podcasts don’t have an exact time period they should run to. This was also the time where we decided which parts of music we would use and we decided upon top 40 music that had a karaoke version to go to under the conversation and make the podcast feel like it was snappier and more in the radio 1 style.

The editing stage also included the mixing of the podcast which we effectively split in two to make it even, with me taking the first 17 minutes and James taking the last 17 minutes. This meant that there were minor differences in style and sound when we came to the end and mixed it together to make it concise there were some minor stylistic problems, but we did work through them and ultimately produced the piece.

Last Lecture- The World of Freelancing

This weeks lecture was given by Hellen McCarron and Claire Butler from the University of Lincolns Career service. This lecture set out the world of freelancing and how to be successful as a freelance and how to freelance correctly so that you are paying the right amount of tax, national insurance etc. Being that i already freelance I understood most of the lecture, however, there were parts that I didn’t know such as the benefits that can come from hiring an accountant and the rates of tax that you need to pay for the amount of income that you receive.

Ultimately I found the lecture useful however I did understand most of the lecture and agree with them saying that freelancing is a viable way of entering the industry, i just personally believe that for me a full or part-time contract would be ideal and this is what i am aiming towards.

Paperwork

Paperwork is a necessary part of radio production so that everyone can abide by the rules and not as result not cause any legal disputes such as putting the piece on air. It is also vital, as it makes sure that we do not get into issues about the music we play as otherwise rights may not be paid causing issues.

Personal release form

This form is necessary so that the participant understands that we are going to most likely edit their voice and that it will be broadcast onto the radio meaning that anyone can listen. This form acts as our protection if someone was to say that we broadcasted their voice illegally and as a result, we can protect ourselves from legal issues.

PLEASE FIND ON BLACKBOARD

Music reporting form  Music reporting

This form is needed to again protect ourselves from legal disputes, as the whole point of this form is for us to say what music we played and who it was by, even if we only played 10 seconds of it within a package. It protects us as it ensures that the people that made the music receive payment through licenses such as performing rights etc.

Compliance Form Compliance

This form is again for legal protection but is mostly for internal usage. It acts as a checklist to make sure that the programme is not too extreme to be broadcast and to see if there are any issues with the content of the programme, it can also lead to the commissioning of a balancing programme if this was needed. Ultimately it makes sure that no rules are being broken by the programme.

 

Script SCRIPT

Our Script changed significantly from what is attached on here, as when we were recording the podcast we followed the script apart from the odd area where it would not have been natural to follow the script such as if Donald Trump was mentioned in the conversation and happened to feature in that month we moved the script around on the fly.  However, in editing, there were times when we cut things out of the podcast so that we could hit the allocated amount of time that we wanted to and as result, we had to re-order the script and the programme, except the key part which was maintaining a month by a month approach.