Project

Unit Brief

We, as a group, had to produce a trailer for a radio programme or radio station and the radio station could be real or fake.  The piece had to be 1 minute long exactly and the piece has to show an understanding of making and editing audio.
The piece must be scripted, include original music, have sound effects and voice-overs. We can create music; fx, stings, foley etc. and I can use any appropriate software or hardware available to you. The piece will employ a range of appropriate audio recording, editing and processing techniques and then mixed to produce a stereo master.


Original Brief

 

Proposal

In this task, we were assigned to groups to work. My group consisted of Claire Anthony, Liam Smith and myself. In the first session together, we collectively decided on the idea of a comedy radio station. The only real name put forward for the station was Spam FM, the idea came from my previous year’s study where one of the student nights out was called SPAM night (Students Party At Morels bar). From the initial idea, we kept working on the content, trying to keep the humorous element throughout.
We decided to go forward with the idea because our collective minds were drawn to the idea of the station. As time moved on, we decided that this kind of radio station would be best.
How you will tackle the brief.
We would work of the overall production as a group, bringing together our collective efforts for specific tasks e.g. Script Writing, Voice recording, etc. and for other tasks, we would work on individually, assigning each person to a specific task, making the bed, Producing the Station ID and adding effects are a few examples.

Research
Most of the research I did for the project was from real radio stations. To start with, I got a general idea of radio advertisements from local radio stations, which I then went onto more specific radio stations. BBC Radio 4 and BBC Radio 7 I used as guides.

Planning

as stated in the original brief, the sound will be presented on CD, Handed in as a collective group. After, agreeing on a Script and a time of meeting, we would record the voice over work at another time. After that, splitting into individuals for the final production and editing of the advert. We decided that Liam would work on the majority of the editing, working with the bed and timings of the main piece, I would work on the Station ID, adding in special effects and voice over’s where appropriate. Claire would work on Voice over Optimisation, Liam and I would use the basic versions of the sounds while Claire would give us the optimised versions when they were all ready.

Final piece
Here is out Final Piece

Review

In hindsight, the project could have gone a lot better than it did. I think one of the main reasons was group management, nobody took charge of the group and so most of the sessions we had together were not as productive as we hoped. The overall sound file itself I was relatively pleased with, but you could tell the different styles of sound file in the transition between the Station ID and the main content, in my personal opinion. This could have gone smoother.

I think the overall project, given more time and hindsight experience, could be improved a lot more. Possibly coming up with a few more Imaginative ideas at the start or working together as a group would probably have helped us as a collective group. I also think more recordings could have been done, giving us more options with the audio files we could have used.

The overall general idea is good, but maybe some different content could be involved or a single person could be involved to bring the whole avert together and letting the advert run smoother than it does right now. Some more ideas for a new Station ID could be put forward also.
Overall, I’m generally pleased with the piece that we have produced, but some major improvements could be made until I was happy with the final result


Mikew052000@googlemail.com