After our initial recording sessions we continued to record on a regular basis, this took several sessions to do a good job, but we found the time useful and rewarding. In our group we all picked certain jobs for recording, me and Liam became main News Readers while Ruhul took charge of vox-pops and editing. As well as this I took a key interest in the recording as I wanted to learn the new skill and be as involved in the final piece as I possibly could. The Editing system on Audacity was simple yet effective and involved cutting and moving sound-bites as we worked to make the piece flow as well as possible.
As a key news reader I felt I needed to take inspiration from professional news readers in the same way we initially took inspiration from professional radio shows. The most experienced and well practised one I could think of was Sir Trevor McDonald, so I researched him:
‘He was promoted in 1992 as the sole presenter of News at Ten, where he became one of the best known faces on British television screens. A year later in 1993, he was awarded an OBE in the Queen's honours list. McDonald stayed with ITN when News at Ten was axed in 1999, moving to present the new ITV Evening News. News at Ten was briefly re-launched in 2001, to which McDonald returned to presenting. He presented the ITV News at 10.30 following News at Ten's second axing. Since 1999, he has also hosted ITV's flagship current affairs program ‘Tonight with Trevor McDonald.’
I noticed he always sat up straight when delivering the news and spoke slowly and clearly. These are techniques that inspired me during my recording; I spoke softly yet clearly into the microphone to get the best possible sound and made sure there was no 'dead-air' time.
We overcame illness and time-table problems to meet up regularly to record our show and practised a lot in our own free time. Once we were perfectly happy we were practised enough and ready to perform we recorded a section. Many of the sections were recorded more than once and drastically changed to get the best results in the end.
Editing consisted of cutting and moving sound bites on Audacity to make our radio piece flow and improve the listening experience. This was relatively easy on Audacity as it is a basic program, but this also made it hard to do more complex editing- such as creating our disjointed effect for the Haiti story. During the editing process we had to import in our jingle and backing music, and create variations in volume- for example- making it slightly louder between headlines to indicate the next one was coming up.
I enjoyed editing as I got to be part of making what we’d recorded a final radio segment. It was extremely interesting to learn how it all fit together and created a piece of work I’m very proud of.
Saturday, 20 February 2010
Research and Planning
Due to lots of research and planning being put onto my blog during the working process, I have decided to have a final review of it all to tidy it up:
As a group our task was to produce a short News piece for the radio, we had previously used the radio equipment during our preliminary task and so were used to the equipment such as the mike and knew the computer program: Audacity.
For our initial research we listened too and analysed some established radio stations se we could see how they performed. I wanted diversity in the stations I listened too so that I could get ideas from all areas of radio, because of this I looked at two national stations: Heart and BBC Radio 1, and a local station: 96.5 Bolton FM. Another good thing about this was that one was from the opposite end of the UK and I could see if different regions performed differently.
I already have sections on both these stations on my blog, so rather than repeating all that I shall give a quick overview:
Heart is the local station for London but also goes national; this made it very interesting to research. It played popular music and has a memorable jingle ‘This is Heart’ which I recognised even though I hadn’t really tuned in beforehand; this argues that the 2-Step Flow theory is effective as I must have heard it from others and once tuning into Heart, made my own decision. The news segment was sharp and included all the top headlines, but also featured a section of local news to the capital. As a listener I enjoyed Heart and found it easy to listen too although locally I thought it could have been more in-depth.
BBC Radio 1 is a national station and one I had listened too before. They play chart music and have celebrity presenters such as Chris Moyles, Veron Kay and Fearne Cotton. Although many of the presenters on Radio 1 are very good it became apparent that being a television celebrity does not make you a natural at radio, and many would trail off with uninteresting tales of their own lives. The news section covered the main stories but the shows were generally centred on music and light hearted ‘banter’.
96.5 Bolton FM is the local station for Bolton in Lancashire. The initial sound-bite sounded less professional then the previous two shows but understandably they’d have a cheaper recording system. This station was very local and the news consisted of information about the local market and what the people of Bolton were up too. We needed to learn from this for when we presented our local news section.
For a more in depth look please look at my earlier blog posts.
From this point on me and the group had a brain storm about our radio news segment. We targeted it to be around 4 – 6 minutes long and include both local and nation stories, also including weather and sports, possibly ending with a light hearted story. In our preliminary piece we had branded ourselves as a light hearted team; this was backed up by our name ‘The Coconut Lounge’, and through our presenting we joked around and gave each other silly nicknames. All though there was nothing wrong with this in the right context, we felt as news presenters our final piece needed to be more serious and constructive to meet the mise en scene of the news. We ditched the nicknames and decided upon our first basic timeline which was as followed:
Jingle -30 seconds
Headlines – 1 minute
Main Story – 2 minutes
Vox-Pop (weather) – 30 seconds
Sports – 1 minute
Light Story to end on (interview) – 1 minute
This basic plan gave us bones to work on so that we could build our piece. The idea behind this was that we wanted to include as much as possible such as vox-pops and a jingle without overdoing it and rushing the reports. We were definitely in the planning stage of our final piece.
We began to choose the news stories we wished to present, we chose the stories to represent our mise en scene of a serious news show but with the light-hearted stories common to national news shows such as 'The News at Ten'. I have an earlier more in depth section about this already on my blog, so again a quick over view:
Headlines were to be up to date and researched on the day as we didn’t need to practise talking about them, this was also to be true of weather, we would report on how it was at the time of recording to keep our show relevant and interesting.
Our Main Story was to be the earthquake in Haiti and the aftermath of that.
Sports would include the John Terry affair and up to date football scores.
The light hearted story would be a man with a large crocodile collection in the local area.
We chose real life stories because we wanted to relate to our audience and allow them to feel emotion for the news. We also chose the stories we did because they interested us and so any excitement or sorrow in our voices would be real and therefore a better performance. We began to script sections:
Alex: A massive 7.0-magnitude earthquake has struck the Caribbean nation of Haiti.
The extent of the devastation is still unclear but there are fears thousands of people may have died.
Haiti's worst quake in two centuries hit south of the capital Port-au-Prince on Tuesday, wrecking the presidential palace, UN HQ and other buildings.
Liam: A "large number" of UN personnel were reported missing by the organisation. Many people have spent the night outside amid fears of more aftershocks
Please see an earlier post for full script.
Once we had planned and scripted it all our Time Line changed and looked more like this:
Jingle 20-30 seconds
News headlines 20-30 seconds
Main story in depth 1 minute
Vox pop 30 seconds to be carried out on location
Funny news stories 20-30 seconds
Football news 20-30 seconds
Weather 20-30 seconds
Local weather
Vox pop 30 seconds on location
Jingle 20-30 seconds
This change showed our piece was progressing all the time and we knew we were moving forwards.
To improve this script-work we used brain-storms to decide exactly what we wanted to present and how. Using the influence we had gained from our researched radio stations we decided to present a vast mix of both light-hearted and serious news stories that can juxtapose and give something to everyone, improving our fan-base.
From here we began recording...
As a group our task was to produce a short News piece for the radio, we had previously used the radio equipment during our preliminary task and so were used to the equipment such as the mike and knew the computer program: Audacity.
For our initial research we listened too and analysed some established radio stations se we could see how they performed. I wanted diversity in the stations I listened too so that I could get ideas from all areas of radio, because of this I looked at two national stations: Heart and BBC Radio 1, and a local station: 96.5 Bolton FM. Another good thing about this was that one was from the opposite end of the UK and I could see if different regions performed differently.
I already have sections on both these stations on my blog, so rather than repeating all that I shall give a quick overview:
Heart is the local station for London but also goes national; this made it very interesting to research. It played popular music and has a memorable jingle ‘This is Heart’ which I recognised even though I hadn’t really tuned in beforehand; this argues that the 2-Step Flow theory is effective as I must have heard it from others and once tuning into Heart, made my own decision. The news segment was sharp and included all the top headlines, but also featured a section of local news to the capital. As a listener I enjoyed Heart and found it easy to listen too although locally I thought it could have been more in-depth.
BBC Radio 1 is a national station and one I had listened too before. They play chart music and have celebrity presenters such as Chris Moyles, Veron Kay and Fearne Cotton. Although many of the presenters on Radio 1 are very good it became apparent that being a television celebrity does not make you a natural at radio, and many would trail off with uninteresting tales of their own lives. The news section covered the main stories but the shows were generally centred on music and light hearted ‘banter’.
96.5 Bolton FM is the local station for Bolton in Lancashire. The initial sound-bite sounded less professional then the previous two shows but understandably they’d have a cheaper recording system. This station was very local and the news consisted of information about the local market and what the people of Bolton were up too. We needed to learn from this for when we presented our local news section.
For a more in depth look please look at my earlier blog posts.
From this point on me and the group had a brain storm about our radio news segment. We targeted it to be around 4 – 6 minutes long and include both local and nation stories, also including weather and sports, possibly ending with a light hearted story. In our preliminary piece we had branded ourselves as a light hearted team; this was backed up by our name ‘The Coconut Lounge’, and through our presenting we joked around and gave each other silly nicknames. All though there was nothing wrong with this in the right context, we felt as news presenters our final piece needed to be more serious and constructive to meet the mise en scene of the news. We ditched the nicknames and decided upon our first basic timeline which was as followed:
Jingle -30 seconds
Headlines – 1 minute
Main Story – 2 minutes
Vox-Pop (weather) – 30 seconds
Sports – 1 minute
Light Story to end on (interview) – 1 minute
This basic plan gave us bones to work on so that we could build our piece. The idea behind this was that we wanted to include as much as possible such as vox-pops and a jingle without overdoing it and rushing the reports. We were definitely in the planning stage of our final piece.
We began to choose the news stories we wished to present, we chose the stories to represent our mise en scene of a serious news show but with the light-hearted stories common to national news shows such as 'The News at Ten'. I have an earlier more in depth section about this already on my blog, so again a quick over view:
Headlines were to be up to date and researched on the day as we didn’t need to practise talking about them, this was also to be true of weather, we would report on how it was at the time of recording to keep our show relevant and interesting.
Our Main Story was to be the earthquake in Haiti and the aftermath of that.
Sports would include the John Terry affair and up to date football scores.
The light hearted story would be a man with a large crocodile collection in the local area.
We chose real life stories because we wanted to relate to our audience and allow them to feel emotion for the news. We also chose the stories we did because they interested us and so any excitement or sorrow in our voices would be real and therefore a better performance. We began to script sections:
Alex: A massive 7.0-magnitude earthquake has struck the Caribbean nation of Haiti.
The extent of the devastation is still unclear but there are fears thousands of people may have died.
Haiti's worst quake in two centuries hit south of the capital Port-au-Prince on Tuesday, wrecking the presidential palace, UN HQ and other buildings.
Liam: A "large number" of UN personnel were reported missing by the organisation. Many people have spent the night outside amid fears of more aftershocks
Please see an earlier post for full script.
Once we had planned and scripted it all our Time Line changed and looked more like this:
Jingle 20-30 seconds
News headlines 20-30 seconds
Main story in depth 1 minute
Vox pop 30 seconds to be carried out on location
Funny news stories 20-30 seconds
Football news 20-30 seconds
Weather 20-30 seconds
Local weather
Vox pop 30 seconds on location
Jingle 20-30 seconds
This change showed our piece was progressing all the time and we knew we were moving forwards.
To improve this script-work we used brain-storms to decide exactly what we wanted to present and how. Using the influence we had gained from our researched radio stations we decided to present a vast mix of both light-hearted and serious news stories that can juxtapose and give something to everyone, improving our fan-base.
From here we began recording...
Friday, 19 February 2010
News Stories
For our show we wanted on main news story to be our focal point that we could discuss in detail and include a Vox Pop in, other news headlines, a sports story and a lighter story. It was important to our mise en scene to include this wide variety of news as we catered to our target audience of 15-24 year olds who will have a variety of interest.
We chose the Haiti earthquake as our main story as it was recent and topical at the time of recording and something that meant a lot to us as a team. It had caused so much destruction to an LEDC (less economically developed country) and we wanted to pay our respects by doing an accurate report on it.
‘A massive 7.0-magnitude earthquake has struck the Caribbean nation of Haiti. The extent of the devastation is still unclear but there are fears thousands of people may have died. Haiti's worst quake in two centuries hit south of the capital Port-au-Prince on Tuesday, wrecking the presidential palace, UN HQ and other buildings.’
http://www.bbc.co.uk/worldservice/news/2010/01/100113_haiti_quake.shtml
For our sports story we decided to report on the John Terry affair as it was topical to the world of sport; his England captaincy was under threat. We also intended to announce up to date football scores.
'England boss Fabio Capello will name defenders Wayne Bridge and John Terry in the squad for the friendly against Egypt on 3 March. Terry is alleged to have had an affair with Bridge's former partner but Capello has warned both defenders not to bring any personal tensions with them.'
We then decided to do a weather report that would again be up to date and relevant, making our news bulletin realistic and relatable.
Our light hearted story was to be a local report of a man with a large crocodile farm. We thought this would be interesting and fun, while giving us the chance to do an interview- this could be another Vox Pop, a pre-recorded interview or a live phone in.
We chose the Haiti earthquake as our main story as it was recent and topical at the time of recording and something that meant a lot to us as a team. It had caused so much destruction to an LEDC (less economically developed country) and we wanted to pay our respects by doing an accurate report on it.
‘A massive 7.0-magnitude earthquake has struck the Caribbean nation of Haiti. The extent of the devastation is still unclear but there are fears thousands of people may have died. Haiti's worst quake in two centuries hit south of the capital Port-au-Prince on Tuesday, wrecking the presidential palace, UN HQ and other buildings.’
http://www.bbc.co.uk/worldservice/news/2010/01/100113_haiti_quake.shtml
For our sports story we decided to report on the John Terry affair as it was topical to the world of sport; his England captaincy was under threat. We also intended to announce up to date football scores.
'England boss Fabio Capello will name defenders Wayne Bridge and John Terry in the squad for the friendly against Egypt on 3 March. Terry is alleged to have had an affair with Bridge's former partner but Capello has warned both defenders not to bring any personal tensions with them.'
We then decided to do a weather report that would again be up to date and relevant, making our news bulletin realistic and relatable.
Our light hearted story was to be a local report of a man with a large crocodile farm. We thought this would be interesting and fun, while giving us the chance to do an interview- this could be another Vox Pop, a pre-recorded interview or a live phone in.
Recording
We began recording this week in our Recording Room using Audacity. Due to the practise we’d had from our preliminary we knew to speak softly into the microphones while sitting straight and were prepared with a script we had wrote. During our research phase we listened to both national and local radio for inspiration- surprisingly, a lot of the smaller local stations were of a better presenting standard as they connected better with their audiences and had relatable dialects. A lot of national stations used television celebrities to present their shows but it became apparent that being a talented television presenter does not necessarily make you a good radio presenter. Often these celebrities such as Veron Kay and Fearne Cotton would trail off and speak about their own lives rather than the topic in hand.
We listened to a large variety of radio because we wanted our own work to be of a high standard. We made this basic plan to follow which we then wrote our script around:
Jingle -30 seconds
Headlines – 1 minute
Main Story – 2 minutes
Vox-Pot (weather) – 30 seconds
Sports – 1 minute
Light Story to end on (interview) – 1 minute
We found numerous problems during the recording process such as conflicting time tables so it was harder for the whole group to meet, illness such as Ruhul losing his voice and lack of time in the recording room due to having to share it with two other groups. Despite these setbacks, we overcame them to meet up for work effectively.
Our first few lessons were spent script writing and searching for news stories we could report on, these included:
A main headline
Other headlines
Sports
Weather
Light hearted story.
To do this we looked online at reliable sites such as the BBC.
Before recording, we read our scripts aloud to practise and sometimes had to record a story three or four times to get it right. This was worth it though, as we wanted the best results.
We listened to a large variety of radio because we wanted our own work to be of a high standard. We made this basic plan to follow which we then wrote our script around:
Jingle -30 seconds
Headlines – 1 minute
Main Story – 2 minutes
Vox-Pot (weather) – 30 seconds
Sports – 1 minute
Light Story to end on (interview) – 1 minute
We found numerous problems during the recording process such as conflicting time tables so it was harder for the whole group to meet, illness such as Ruhul losing his voice and lack of time in the recording room due to having to share it with two other groups. Despite these setbacks, we overcame them to meet up for work effectively.
Our first few lessons were spent script writing and searching for news stories we could report on, these included:
A main headline
Other headlines
Sports
Weather
Light hearted story.
To do this we looked online at reliable sites such as the BBC.
Before recording, we read our scripts aloud to practise and sometimes had to record a story three or four times to get it right. This was worth it though, as we wanted the best results.
Representations + The Glasgow Media Group + Plan so Far
Being impartial and ‘fair’ while presenting the news is a very important value for me. I think to be bias in anyway would offend our target audience of young-people who want fair and legit news and by doing so would contradict the Mise en Scene we are trying to create.
While studying the Ideology Theory I came across the ‘Glasgow Media Group’ who are a group of media theorists linked with Glasgow University. While analysing the Ideology Theory they undertook a series of tests they called ‘The Ideology of Truth and Neutrality’. These tests were put in place to see how ‘truth’ was represented in the media- something that will greatly affect my news segment.
While researching BBC News they concluded that during reports of trade union strikes, the BBC tended to represent bosses as rational and civilized individuals, who they often invited into the studio to listen to their side- while they represented the work force to be a ‘mob’ of an emotive crowd.
In the worst cases this misrepresentation can lead to bias opinions and misconduct. In the case of the BBC reports there may have been harm meant, but it was apparent that the workers did not have their views as widely distributed as the bosses’ views.
For my coursework I want my news stories to be as impartial as possible as I try and give my media consumers the truths and facts of a situation. I think it is right to give an audience what they’d expect from a media text, and will try and deliver these values.
With these values in mind I have constructed a short plan of our radio show so far, in which all the stories recorded are impartial yet interesting:
Jingle 20-30 seconds RECORDED
News Headlines 20-30 RECORDED seconds to be read by Liam and me
Main Story in depth RECORDED 1 minute to be read by me
Vox Pop 30 seconds to be carried out on location by Ruhul
Funny News Stories 20-30 seconds to be read by Liam and me
Football News RECORDED 20-30 seconds to be read by Liam and me
Weather 20-30 RECORDED read by me
Local Weather read by Ruhul
Vox Pop 30 seconds RECORDED on location read by Ruhul
Jingle 20-30 seconds RECORDED
Some of the recorded material was still liable to be changed and improved.
While studying the Ideology Theory I came across the ‘Glasgow Media Group’ who are a group of media theorists linked with Glasgow University. While analysing the Ideology Theory they undertook a series of tests they called ‘The Ideology of Truth and Neutrality’. These tests were put in place to see how ‘truth’ was represented in the media- something that will greatly affect my news segment.
While researching BBC News they concluded that during reports of trade union strikes, the BBC tended to represent bosses as rational and civilized individuals, who they often invited into the studio to listen to their side- while they represented the work force to be a ‘mob’ of an emotive crowd.
In the worst cases this misrepresentation can lead to bias opinions and misconduct. In the case of the BBC reports there may have been harm meant, but it was apparent that the workers did not have their views as widely distributed as the bosses’ views.
For my coursework I want my news stories to be as impartial as possible as I try and give my media consumers the truths and facts of a situation. I think it is right to give an audience what they’d expect from a media text, and will try and deliver these values.
With these values in mind I have constructed a short plan of our radio show so far, in which all the stories recorded are impartial yet interesting:
Jingle 20-30 seconds RECORDED
News Headlines 20-30 RECORDED seconds to be read by Liam and me
Main Story in depth RECORDED 1 minute to be read by me
Vox Pop 30 seconds to be carried out on location by Ruhul
Funny News Stories 20-30 seconds to be read by Liam and me
Football News RECORDED 20-30 seconds to be read by Liam and me
Weather 20-30 RECORDED read by me
Local Weather read by Ruhul
Vox Pop 30 seconds RECORDED on location read by Ruhul
Jingle 20-30 seconds RECORDED
Some of the recorded material was still liable to be changed and improved.
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