End of 1st Semester Evaluation

Hello Everyone!

This is my last blog entry. Hooray!

Today I am doing an evaluation on my performance on this 1st semester. The areas that I will be evaluating on would be Group Work, Technical Skills and my aims for the next semester.

Group Work

As there is only three of us on the course now I am happy with the people that I have worked with on the group project and future projects yet to come.

We each seem to get on really well together and are not afraid to share any creative ideas with each other along with accepting constructive criticism.

Technical Skills

I am very pleased with the skills that I have learnt as I have never focussed on sound properly before.

I feel confident in operating ProTools along with identifying the two different types of microphones that there are along with having the basic knowledge in how they work.

I would like to have proper experience with using the different microphones in order to understand the different microphone placements that there are along with improving my confidence of working with them.

I would like to learn the about the build in effects that ProTools has and to understand how to use compression along with properly mixing down a session to a near professional standard.

My Future Aims

I am looking forward to the next semester as it will be focusing in on film and camera work which is the area that I am mainly interested in.

I am feeling quite excited about making my own individual film as it is something that I enjoy doing.

My main aim this semester would be to understand the craft of script writing and develop my own ideas and use them towards my individual film.

Media Regulators

Hello!

Today I was researching on the broadcasting regulations within the media industry. The main media regulator that we looked at were Ofcom and ASA. During my research I looked into an organisation called PACT.



Media regulators are there to help protect consumers from harmful or offensive material and that programs are running in compliant with the broadcasting codes and regulations. 

Ofcom



Ofcom (The Office of Communications) is an independent regulator which monitors five different regulatory bodies:

• The Broadcasting Standards Commission
• The Independent Television Commission
• The Office of Telecommunications (Oftel)
• The Radio Authority
• The Radio Communications Agency

Ofcom deals with any specific complaints made by viewers and listeners if any offense is taken during a program.

The process that Ofcom goes through when received a complaint is that it asks the broadcaster for a copy of the program. The broadcast regulators then examine the material to see whether it is in breach of the broadcasting code.

ASA

The ASA (Advertising Standards Authority) is an independent self-regulatory organisation that regulates the advertising industry within the United Kingdom. 

Their main priority regulate the contents of the advertisements by monitoring the adverts for any offensive or harmful material. They make sure that the adverts are not misleading to the public and that the advertisement are compliant with the advertising codes.

When complaints arise from members of the public the ASA deals with them by making a full investigation by viewing the material to see whether there are any rules broken. 

PACT

PACT (The Producers Alliance for Cinema and Television) is the UK trading association that focuses on representing and promoting independent features including television, feature film, animation and media production companies. 

The organisation has a council whom are elected by members of PACT to ensure that the peoples interests are being  met by the organisation. 

Radio Evaluation

Hello Everyone!

This is a evaluation of our radio project which is now thankfully completed.

The areas that I will evaluate would be the group effort, time management, financial costs, and the finished project.

Group Effort

As a group we worked very well together because we each contributed our own efforts which made the work load easier and it helped us reach our deadline.

There was very good communication within the group as we sent each other regular emails to keep us all up dated of where each of us are of our tasks. We also held group meetings so that we can see where the project is at and also to set each of us new tasks to contribute to the project.

During these meetings we had each expressed creative opinions towards the project and received some positive reactions. We also each took on some on board constructive criticism and helped each other into developing our ideas and skills.

The only main constraint we had was that a certain individual member of the group didn't contribute their own efforts enough. We tried to overcome this by having a meeting with him to discuss the current situation and left it to his own responsibility.

The only main problem that we had as a group was that there was a slight confusion amongst ourselves about the idea of our radio programme and that it took us a while to finally decide on what we were going to do. This confusion was caused by the lack of general knowledge towards the subject that was easily overcome by looking into available resources of research that provided us with information towards the topic of our show. By doing this research it helped us to see more clearly of how to structure and present our show along with finally settling on our decision.

Time Management

I had found that we had a short amount of time in creating the show. As a group we had created a production schedule displaying the amount of production time that we had. Using this schedule we managed to set ourselves individual targets between certain dates in order to meet the projects deadline.

Financial Costs

Luckily there were no financial costs towards the production besides the cost of fuel for transporting ourselves to recording locations.

Another financial matter that we came across were that we could've almost paid royalty fees to music publishers as we were at the time were hoping to use christmas songs for the radio show.

As we had learnt during class lessons there is a website called MCPS-PRS where you contact music publishers to legally use their music with getting into any legal trouble.

The Finished Project

I found the finished project to be very satisfying as it turned out exactly as we had planned during pre-production.

The area that I had found disappointing is that due to royalty matters we were unable to use any Christmas pop songs due to legal issues of copyright. We had overcame this by using some copyright free music that we found on the Internet.

I was happy with the quality of sound but there were a few errors of unwanted background noise. This can be mainly heard during the interviews and vox pops as they're mainly recorded on outdoor location and not in a properly sound proofed recording studio. For future projects when recording on outdoor location we need to listen very carefully to any interferences that might ruin the recording.

Radio Edit

Hello!

Today we are all finally editing our final mix of our radio project. The role I played today was Editor.

The responsibilities that I had in this role was to edit the interviews that I had conducted with the Greek Restaurant and the Parish by trimming down the tracks and correcting any audio clicks that occur when listening.

I had corrected these audio clicks by zooming in closely on to the sound wave where the error occurred. Once I found the error I then corrected it by extending the track by a fraction of a second to where the sound wave reaches zero db. This is known as a zero crossing point.

After correcting these errors I then arranged the tracks into a sequence structured by the rest of the group.

During this edit session we each took it in turns as role of editor so that would help give each of us a chance to use ProTools and build up our skills in handling the software.

My Role as Editor

As my role as editor I felt very confident in handling ProTools due to past experiences of editing past projects. I knew how to operate ProTools to an acceptable standard, which didn't lead me into getting into any technical difficulties.

The area I would like to improve on is to expand my knowledge of ProTools by learning how to use and understand the different effects like compression, delay, flange and d-verb.

I can achieve this by having one to one tuition with a tutor and practice by doing set exercises by editing other projects using these built in effects.

My Interview with the Parish

Hello Again!

Today I am going to conduct another interview for our radio proggramme. I am going to have the interview with the head of the local Ecumenical Parish of Worle Revd Paul Larcombe. The interview is going to be held at St Martins Church in Worle at 11:00am.




The purpose for this interview is to get religous opinions of how commercial Christmas has become and would the recession help bring back the traditional family values this year?


The questions that I am going to ask are:

1. Has Christmas become more commercial in recent years and if so is it necessarily a bad thing?

2. Will the recession help bring back traditional family this Christmas?

Again I will be taking on the two same roles which I took on last time which are Interviewer and Production Sound Mixer.

I am sure that there is going to be a slight improvement into my interviewing and sound recording skills that I had learnt from my previous interview at the Greek Restauraunt.

I managed to book the equipment out a week in advance so that it would be ready for me to collect and to test to make sure that there isn't any technical diffuculties.

The equipment that I am going to use is the Fostex FR-2LE becuase I have had enough experience with using it before and I would know how to manually correct it if I got into any technical diffiulties.

I am confident with the questions that I am going to use as I had prepared them a week early and had run through with them with a member of the group in which they were satisfied with.

At 10:30 am I headed over to St Martins Church. As I know where the is place is I managed to arrive there 10 minutes early which was excellent as it had gave enough time to properly introduce myself to the Reverend.

After I had introduced my self to the Reverend I began to set up the equipment as he was making himself comfortable and looking through the questions beforehand.

Fortunately he has had experiences with interviews as he somtimes takes part in debates on religous radio stations. This made me feel relaxed as I knew that he wasn't going to be micrphone shy and that the interview recording is going to be at a good standard.

Before we began the interview we did a sound check the levels on his voice and at 11:00 we started the interview.


During the interview I had noticed that there was an improvement as my role as interviewer as I had seemed alot more confident in the direction the interview was going and I wasn't afraid or shy to ask any extra questions.

I also had noticed that there was an improvment as my role as Production Sound Mixer as I was comfortable in the enviroment that I was recording in and I was listening out to any unwanted sounds that might ruin the recording.

The interview had ended at 11:30am.

I was very satisfied with the interview as my Reverend had gave me some good interesting answers that would be very useful for our radio programme. He also had a very good voice for radio aswell!