Initial Thoughts, Targets and Technology Troubles...

Creating a radio broadcast whilst my computer barely lets me log in may be considered naive by many, however, regardless of all the possibilities for failure and error within this initial piece of coursework, I am somehow...optimistic!

The brief sounded engaging, as I've always enjoyed and been fascinated by the production of radio. I remember long car journeys as a child spent listening to Heart or Magic FM as the trees kept on rolling past. Being introduced to so many different styles of music and watching the stations we’d pick up change as we drove further and further, waiting for a song I’d recognise so I could persuade my parents to keep a certain station on for longer. Regardless of having these comforting memories,

I feel initially nervous towards this first piece of coursework I aim to produce. This is the first time I will attempt creating a piece of media for an educational purpose. Although I have experience in media, I have never studied or developed a project in this depth before. However, I am incredibly excited and intrigued to learn and progress all the new skills required in this quality of radio production, such as sound editing and writing appropriate radio content, as my skills and comfort zone is primarily in video production.

Fortunately, I have produced small radio excerpts in the past few years that give me excitement of what to expect and also a few basic tips and things to avoid. Note: Never bring a battery powered Dictaphone to the middle of a festival site, miles away from shops, or batteries for that matter...
Over the past two years, I was fortunate enough to work for my previous school's radio station, ‘Buzzing Radio’, an online radio station ran by students of the school that submitted regular weekly podcasts to the site. The main experience I have in radio production comes from here. In 2013 and 2014 I was tasked to produce small excerpts of audio and news for the radio, from the Isle of Wight Festival in both years.

Across these two festival events, I learnt vital radio production skills such as audio recording, as I recorded live music performances from some of the performers there to ensure smaller aspects of the event were covered.
Also, I learned the important skill of researching and preparing appropriate material for the radio show as I was tasked to record interviews with featured acts at the festival in the schools recording studio. I had to research the acts,

their backgrounds, musical influences, achievements etc in order to produce engaging questions so that the acts produced entertaining and interesting responses to ensure the radio content would entertain and interest those listening but also seem professional too.
These two tasks taught me the difficulty of recording in a live environment and how to avoid background noise invading the main content of the recording, vital skills I think I will use in this project, particularly if I decide to use ‘live interviews’ within the news broadcast. Additionally it made me aware the importance of preparation of recording equipment, such as its positioning in relation to performer etc, which I feel will be beneficial to ensuring this projects audio quality is at the height it should be. Later on in the project, I learned basic audio editing skills from editing the excerpts together, formulating a podcast for the radio station, based upon the festival itself, to be put upon the school website. I used simple techniques such as clipping audio on a basic preloaded programme on the computer, therefore I can’t wait to improve my knowledge and technique on more advanced audio editing software with this project.

I love listening to the radio and am intrigued towards the production of it upon a much larger and heightened professional scale, such as with this piece of coursework. I hope this project will make me realise the importance of understanding the audience to which you aim your media prior to recording and how it will influence the content I will produce. Furthermore I hope to further my confidence in producing radio content, particularly in editing as I wish to develop my media skills set much further with this project.

I’ll aim to present my views and findings more innovatively, as next week I will post a graphic depicting the history of radio in the UK, hopefully that will make for far more interesting reading, thanks and until next time,

Livvy