Lmye Individual Blog

With regards to my first live show there were a lot of issues which is why I have decided to talk about this show in depth and what improvements could have been made in order to help with my experience with Lend me your ears. The first major problem we had with the show was the audio, nearly all of the audio could not be broadcast due to it being poorly edited, I did some of the editing and for me one of the reasons why it was poorly edited was because of perhaps a slight bit of inexperience as I was unaware how to structure it as well as not knowing whether to keep questions in. This was easily overcome  and I quickly learnt how to edit audio properly ready for the next shows I do.

Another major problem we had was that the script was simply not good enough and did not flow well for a live show, myself and Dan wrote the script as the presenters for the show, and I felt that we were inexperienced with how to write a script for a live show as we had never really done it before which is why perhaps it was poorly written, although with a lot of help from tutors Zara and Dylan this was solved and the script flowed well between the two presenters myself and Dan. I thought that the interviews themselves went very well and some interesting discussions were brought up. As an group overall I think we all did very well taking into consideration it was our first live show an we were all partially inexperienced, we managed to provide an interesting and thought provoking show.

From presenting the live show I learnt a lot not just from carrying out the role of presenter but also aspects of the producer as well as the BA and how to briefly operate the desk as well as providing content to create a good show.  In terms of the groups dynamic I felt that we were all determined to produce a great show and this did not cause any problems with ideas and motivation. If I had to do the show differently I would make sure that as a presenter I read through the script thoroughly and learn the questions for the interviews in order to create a discussion as well as being more confident when presenting. As a group I think we need to distribute work evenly between us all and also to check everything that has been edited making sure that it can be broadcast on Siren. I think there were a lot of weaknesses to the show in comparison to strengths which is why I decided to write about this particular show, one of the main strengths was that the show overall went very well and the producer and BA made sure that mistakes were not made, as well as giving tips and advice to the presenters on how to keep the listeners interested with the show.

These last few weeks have been very busy and stressful but we have finally finished our Radio Documentary, I shall write about the whole process of this on this post as I know there haven’t been any recent updates on my blog. This production has been particularly hard I have found because we had a lot of issues which really used up our time to edit and record. I took the role of producer for this production, Nathan took the role of Director and Ben the role of BA. The process of the radio doc was slow at first, we struggled to think of ideas and also to base these ideas in a ten minute piece, after a couple of group meetings we decided that it would be a good idea to target the SirenFm audience as we thought that these were a young and wide audience that would be able to interact and relate to what our doc is about which we decided was going to be about social media effects in businesses and how its effected individuals careers as well more specifically looking into websites such as Youtube, Facebook and Soundcloud.

We now had to think about who we were going to interview for the piece and this was the challenging part because we had a lot of problems,  after some research we got hold of interviews with an expert on social media Karen Locking based in Scunthorpe , and other figures that had started their own businesses with the help of social networking sites. All of the interviews were conducted through Skype or on the Zoom H4N, these interviews were conducted very formally which was good. Here is a little about the interviewees:

Karen Locking is a social media expert based in Scunthorpe that also has her own business which is called Evolve Business Developments. Karen loves to use her knowledge, experience and passion for all things strategy, Social Media, training and development and is thoroughly enjoying her self employed journey with the business Evolve Business Developments.

Lewis Canner is a singer/songwriter from Doncaster. Having decided to try to further his career through the use of social media, Lewis joined SoundCloud to get his music heard.

Daniel Munns is a post graduate from the University of Lincoln, having graduated last year after studying Media Production, he decided to start up his own independent production company named ‘Shot Sighted Productions’. The business is currently going from strength to strength and they have already secured important clients.

Dean Dobbs is a University of Lincoln student who is currently in his third and final year, studying ‘Film and Tv’. Dean began his Youtube career many years ago, when he teamed up with a friend to create their own YouTube channel ‘OMFGItsJackandDean’ which now has over 300,000 subscribers.

So that was a little about each person we interviewed and overall I was very happy on the interviews we managed to get and felt there was a good range of social media aspects, I was particularly happy to have a social media expert in the piece although I think the doc could have done with another expert in order to make it more interesting. The problems we faced when trying to book interviews was time, we had one interviewee that kept cancelling on interview sessions booked and we therefore had to keep changing the time and date until it was near the very end of our deadline. This also happened with another interview and because of this we did not have any audio to show for the work in progress presentations, I also thought that perhaps the questions asked could have perhaps been more thought out instead of being a bit vague and at times complex, leaving confusion for interviewee’s. The Karen Locking interview should have been recorded in the studio rather than through Skype as the audio is poor as some of the other interviews as well in order to make the piece captivating and not put listeners off the poor audio.

With regards to the editing process, this went very well and Ben our BA did a very good job, we talked about having a futuristic and modern feel to the piece so we therefore implemented music which would suit this.  We wanted the music there to separate each interview allowing listeners to focus on each one which I feel worked well to some extent. I think our Director Nathan did well on directing Ben with the edit as Nathan had a clear idea of where the piece is going to go and how it will sound.

The main problem I feel with the whole radio documentary is that it is perhaps too simple in terms of narrative and structure, I think it does well in informing audiences but we could have gone for something more unconventional and changed how each interview links with a narrative. Overall I think that the team worked well and communicated well and worked in a professional manner, although there are some improvements that could have been made the piece still turned out professional and intriguing.

Here is the final Radio Documentary to listen too.

Well that’s it, all done in terms with the Lend me yours weekly shows and my last show went great. Lauren unfortunately was ill so I therefore had to takeover with presenting so in the end I did not do the role of BA, It was also a possibility I was to present on my own at one point which for me was fairly daunting but on the day Dan one of the group members said he would happily present with me.

I think overall the show went well there were a few problems however with the desk and playing out audio and therefore we had to deal with this as presenters and try to let the show still flow without this causing to much as well as making sure the listeners did not pick up on it. We also had some problems with the talk back and at times could not here the producer and BA which caused us  to not know what was happening at one point, for example the mics were not faded down towards the end and at one or two points during the show no one spoke due to problems hearing the producer. Although there were a few issues they did not cause too many problems and they were easily fixed thanks to a great team around the desk.

There were a few improvements that could have been made for example I felt as it was last minute with the role being changed and myself taking the role of presenter I thought I could have had more time rehearsing and reading through interview questions etc. The interviews went very well and like always time flew by and had to end it promptly with Dylan as it was near the end of the show, the other interviews on the other hand went great and I learnt a lot from them all with regards to tips and tricks on how to make a good radio documentary.

So the time has come for my final show which for this week it is about Lincoln’s best documentaries, at first we found this a particularly hard topic to base a show around as we were unaware of many radio documentaries in Lincoln as well as the whole group having not listened to that many documentaries which was one problem we faced when starting to construct a show.

For this show I have the role of BA, Broadcast assistant which involves editing audio ready to be played out on air as well as operating the desk, fading mics playing music and making sure that there are no mistakes with playing out on the show. At first the role of BA seemed daunting as I did not have that much experience with the desk, but I felt that I was quick with learning how to operate the desk.

After a couple of meetings I felt confident with how the show would turn out, for the show we decided on including a representative from Linkage which links in to our current project radio documentaries as some people decided to do about Linkage, there were also some third year students at the University of Lincoln, Hannah Harvey and Emily Phebee doing a Radio documentary on Tourettes syndrome which was graded a first and gained interest from a winner of Big Brother and Dylan Roys to talk about what he looks for in a good radio documentary.

A few days before the show Brittany and Lucy recorded two interviews for our show. They also edited the script adding in the content for the show along with the queues for pre- recorded interviews. It was a fairly busy day and we got a lot done.

Both interviews went well, they gave some good opinions on the discussion of the Future of Radio Drama, however they were very long so Lauren had to cut them down, overall it was a busy day and a lot had got done for the show.

Here is the script for the show.

LYME DOC SCRIPT

So we have finally finished the radio drama ‘Love Game’ and it has been a very chaotic few weeks and have definitely been kept busy with tweaking the final touches of the production.

During this production I took the role of director which consisted of gathering actors, which was one of the hardest aspects of the production due to finding the right voice for the right character as well as allowing time for the actors etc, we found this especially challenging as every actor we found was busy. We advertised our radio drama through Facebook groups such as the Drama society and as well as others like the Lincoln school of media page. After searching for about a week Ben our BA managed to find some people he knew that were happy to act in the piece, after rehearsals with these people we thought that they suited the characters and recording could finally get started!

I learnt a lot from making this radio drama, as a director and as a team as well, I have learnt how to manage and direct actors professionally as well as give tips and ideas on how to read specific dialogue in order to portray it differently. I have also learnt how to use various microphones and how to set these up in order to record the best audio possibly. In terms of editing I thought the entire process went quite well, the sounds that were acquired were fairly basic like the shutting of a door, the knocking of a door, keys unlocking etc. The main criticism I have of the edit is the lack of creativity with the wild tracks that were used for the majority of the scenes. I think what could have been improved was the interrogation scene, we could have been more creative and added more sounds in order to give it depth and seem more realistic and not in a recording studio.

Overall I felt that the production went very well although a few problems these were easily overcome, the drama sounded clear and professional, the actors could have been better but that is something I know I will need to look for earlier if I were to do this again, as well as adding more wild tracks to make the piece stand out.

Here is the final radio drama.