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Script
The Brief
As a group you must produce a radio trailer for a radio programme (imaginary or real) of your choice. The piece must be exactly 1 minute long demonstrating an understanding of audio production.
Statement of Intent
Our group consists of myself, Samantha Balyen, Phil Shakesby and Sarah Imeson. As this was a group exercise we all put in ideas to what kind of radio trailor we wanted to make. After listening to some spooky sounds on garageband on the apple mac we decided to advertise a halloween concert for a radio station.
The needs of the intended programme
- To advertise a halloween concert in conjunction with the radio station
- To give the listener information on the venue and performances
- To advertise were the listener can go to buy tickets
Intended Audience
- Young listeners 18-27 years old
- Male and female
- Listeners who like rock/indie
- Fans of the performers
- Interested in guitars, rock/indie music, drinking and socialising
The style of the piece
- Halloween themed sounds
- Young and up-beat
- Fast cut up dialogue and snippets of performers
Research
In our first lesson our class got the chance to listen to popular radio station adverts such as radio ones big weekend trailer and sound effects from the Adam and Joe show. We then went away individually and sourced out radio adverts via the Internet through podcasts and downloaded WAV files to get ideas on how we could deliver our radio advert and different styles we could use. I used www.youtube.com to source out radio adverts and downloaded Radio 1 and Radio 2 podcasts.
We practiced using different types of programs such as Garageband on the Mac and Adobe Audition CS3 on the pc. We made a few sound clips in Adobe Audition and tested out different effects such as echo and using volume controls to lower or higher the volume on individual samples.
In another lesson we hired out handheld recording equipment to record our voices. Our group split into two groups and we tested out the effect of recording indoors and outdoors and practising with the volume.
View our script here.
Once we had decided what radio advert we were going to produce we went away individually and started brainstorming. Phil Shakesby wrote a brief script of how the radio trailer would be structured.
Myself and Sam did some brainstorming on the name of the Radio Station. The name of the radio station had to be quite prominent within the advert so it would communicate to the listener that this was a concert in conjunction with the station (similar to radio ones big weekend) and to brand the station properly.
As a group we all looked at the script and decided on things to add/change and agree on. Everyone gave their feedback on the radio station names we had come up with and we eventually decided on RADIO DASH.
Once our script was complete, we all hired voice recorders and went away individually to start to record parts of the script. We tried out different ways of saying the script; we all exchanged sound files and commented on each other’s attempts of the script.
As Phil is a DJ and has more experience in using sound mixing programs he took charge in putting together the first sample. We all got a copy of this sample and worked out different parts of the advert.
I personally worked on the radio station jingle. After studying other radio adverts I had noticed a conventional style with vocals. Often a mans voice is followed by and echo of a woman’s voice, I attempted to create this with our radio station jingle “Radio dash – music for your ears” As phils voice had been chosen to say Radio Dash I used a clip of my voice to follow. I opened it up in audition, listened to the audio and highlighted which part I wanted to use. Using the right click option I chose to trim the selection. I made sure before trimming that their was no pop or clicks before or after which interfered with the audio. I used the echo FX in the multitrack view and because the audio was quite quiet I increased the volume by highlighting the audio and using the volume toggle. I was very pleased with the result.
We came up with a few problems along the way when producing our audio. In the final week before the hand-in date unfortunately Phil’s laptop broke and we lost the final copy of the audio. We learnt by this as the only copy was kept on Phil’s USB and myself, Sam or Sarah did not have a back-up copy. In future we will ensure we have more than one copy.
Because of this we had to begin the audio again, fortunately we all had copies of different clips used within the audio so we all took it in turns to complete the audio at home to its full final piece. We also added in a few other effects our teacher Jay Moy had suggested. One of these was adding panning to my audio clip of the band performance list and a small reverb. I first cut down my clip so there wasn’t any unnecessary silence either end of the clip and using the panning tool in multitrack view I adjusted it so that one band went to the left ear and the other to the right, in a sequence. I added a small reverb using the FX tools in multitrack view.
Did our project work out as planned?
Yes, I am very pleased on how the final advert sounds. I think we found it hard to work as a group assignment as we all had very different ways in which we imagined the radio advert to sound like. After Phil made his first sample, although we loved it myself and the rest of the group realised how differently we had imagined it to sound in our heads when we had first brainstormed the idea. Once we realised this we decided it was for the best that one person had taken charge of the audio as if we had each done different sections it wouldn’t have mixed together very well.
Could it be improved?
In the future if we ever do a group assignment again with audio it might be a good idea, when brainstorming ideas to also talk about how we imagine the audio to sound. If we had all come up with separate scripts and then chose the one we liked the most we perhaps could have all worked on different parts of the audio. For example, the beginning, middle and end.
I also felt that some people in the group did more work than the others which was quite unfair and in the future the workload needs to be shared out more evenly
Sarah Aylward | Copyright ©