2. Research and Planning
• I approached research and planning with all of the information that I was given in class as
well as additional research and organising processes outside of class.
• To gain knowledge in the production of radio, I needed to research into different kinds of
stations by listening to their bulletins and noting down key themes that ran through them. I
listened to Oldham Community Radio, as this was the station that I was briefed to create a
bulletin for, and I also listened to the national station, BBC Radio 1. I noted the comparisons
of a community radio compared to a well known national station and made comparisons of
the construction of news of which I had previously learnt about in class (hard news, soft news
and vox pops). Listening again, I made note of rules and techniques that occurred and how
they linked to the news construction (the 5ws, inverted triangle, 3Cs and 3 words per
second). To further my knowledge, I researched Galtung and Ruge and their theory of news
values. This helped me consider what stories would be best to use in the context of our
audience. This construction along with the rules and techniques helped me come up with
creative ideas which I narrowed down into a script that sounded professional and flowed
well.
• It was also important for us to plan our time carefully once we had enough research to create
our radio bulletin. I thought that a recording schedule should be created as then we knew
when everyone was free and had targets that we could work towards every time we were
recording. This also gave us opportunity to schedule in appointments with interviewees and
meant that all of our content was well organised. Having appropriate choices for our
interviews and then getting permission to interview them meant that we had to plan how we
wanted our interviews to sound and also if the person would allow us to interview them.
Considering this we made a range of choices and in turn got the interviews that we had
hoped for.
3. Conventions
• I approached my text by researching in to the conventions of the genre that I intended to
meet. I began by listening to radio interviews and news broadcasts – something that I didn’t
already do regularly.
• To gain knowledge in the conventions of radio, I needed to research into different kinds of
stations by listening to their bulletins and noting down key structures and the mode of
address that ran through them. I listened to Oldham Community Radio, as this was the
station that I was briefed to create a bulletin for, and I also listened to the national station,
BBC Radio 1. My thinking behind doing this was to notice the conventions that are used on
the mass scale. I made note of conventional elements that I had already been taught about in
class by looking at the order in which they occurred. I looked out for the use of hard news,
soft news and off the wall stories. I noticed that both stations, although very different, used
longer a “question and answer” mode for the hard and soft news and more often used vox
pops for the off the wall stories. These were all supported in both clips with a station ident
and a sound check. This research helped me in the creation of my script as I had an idea of
how long it should be and the construction that it should have.
• To further my knowledge, I researched in the mode of address for my specific audience. I
used the Radio 1 bulletin as this was more student friendly than the Oldham Community
Radio bulletin. This helped me consider how each presenter should speak and contributed to
the drafting of our script. Looking back, I realised that I could have thought about using
different people other than ourselves to act as presenters as they may have sounded more
professional.
4. Post Production
• The post production process was important in making our radio bulletin flow together as one
piece. It was important that we met our time scales and that all sounds were linked together
properly. Using Adobe Audition meant that we could edit all of our sounds in one programme
to ensure that what we were creating sounded professional.
• I used Adobe Audition in the post-production process of my news bulletin when editing the
piece. Once we had recorded our content in the production process, we had to choose the
pieces which we thought would work best. We had to upload all of our content and choose
which ones sounded the best. Using the cursor arrow, we then used the “cut” tool and the
“copy” and “paste” tools allowed us to re-arranged the order of our content. Doing this
meant that our pieces didn’t sound boring and stuck to the conventions that we had already
researched.
• The cursor arrow also allowed us to edit the levels of our content. Because we were not
recording straight on to the programme, some sound levels were quite messy and so we used
the cursor arrow to select these specific parts. Zooming in to the sound levels helped us to
identify the tiny sound levels that we couldn’t see before. When doing this we could select
the level and use the “amplify” tool or “normalize” tool to make it sound just like the other
levels.
• AKG headphones and speakers were also pieces of technology that helped us in the post-
production process. They were important in hearing the bulletin in two different formats. The
AKG headphones helped us pick up on bad sound levels and the speakers helped us judge the
volume.
• I feel that overall the post production that we undertook helped make our bulletin sound
professional. However, I do feel that if we had taken more time in the production, then we
would have not have struggled as much in the post-production process.
5. Digital Technology
• I used digital technology throughout the whole process. To gain knowledge about my
intended audience, I needed to do some primary audience research. I decided to use Flip
Cams and Dictaphones to reference the opinions of people that fall in the category of my
audience. This helped me to reference the feedback that I got when blogging my research on
Weebly.
• I used digital technology in the production process of my news bulletin when interviewing
people and when recording the presenter parts from the script. As a group, we used
microphones which were plugged into Dictaphones with headphones plugged in to them
whilst recording the input we received from our interviewees. This meant that we could
measure how loud the sound was and whether it was recording properly. We also made sure
that we were in a quiet environment so that we didn’t pick up any outside sound, as we knew
how delicate the microphones were. My thinking behind using this equipment was to create
professional sounding interviews that we could easily edit when we returned to college.
• At college, we used Adobe Audition to put in all of our sounds and edit them. We also used
the microphones to record presenter parts which would help the bulletin flow. Cutting,
copying and pasting allowed our bulletin to sound consistent. The music and sound bridges
that we used were all copyright free sources from Aviary and helped the bulletin to sound
conventional.
• I feel that we successful used digital technology to record our interviews and record the
presenter parts. However, the editing of our pieces wasn’t consistent. The levels were quite
confusing and this was also feedback that we received from both our primary audience, “the
volume changes a bit” and our teacher “Levels and popping P’s”.
6. Creativity
• I approached my text by researching in to other texts in the radio genre that would act as an
inspiration to the piece that I was going to create. I began by listening to radio interviews and
news broadcasts.
• To gain make my radio bulletin original, I needed to confide to conventions of the radio genre
whilst making it different so that it caught the attention of my intended audience. I listened
to Oldham Community Radio, as this was the station that I was briefed to create a bulletin
for, and I also listened to the national station, BBC Radio 1. My thinking behind doing this was
to compare how original a community station may be in comparison to a national station.
Once I had listened to the Radio 1 bulletin, I decided that I liked the style and so downloaded
a script that I thought could act as inspiration for my script writing. I downloaded a short
interview between Fearne Cotton and Leona Lewis for my preliminary work and listened to
the Chris Moyles breakfast show for my main task. Although I found both of these very
entertaining and original, I knew that I should consider the resourcefulness and the fact that I
may not be able to afford famous guests or speak to very important people. Because of this, I
decided to use a similar style while thinking about who I was addressing. This research
helped me in the creation of my scripts as I had an idea of how I should address my
interviewees in order for my bulletin to still be engaging.
• We also had to consider the sound effects and sound bridges that we wanted to use in order
for our bulletin to sound professional. We decided that for our main task news bulletin,
formal and conventional music could be played as we read out headlines. Although this is not
very original, it would allow our bulletin to sound professional and made is more interesting.
7. Overall Development
• I didn’t have the knowledge or power to use certain
techniques or technology to make my preliminary task
sound professional. Also, it was only 30 seconds long and so
it was hard to use professional content.
• For my main task I ensured that I used a variety of stories so
that my bulletin stayed interesting. I made sure that I
contained a variety of music and sound effects so that it
stayed entertaining.
• To improve my main task and make it much more
developed from my ancillary, I changed the main presenter
of the piece and used my teacher. This ensured the piece
sounded professional sophisticated.
