My tasks in the audio group project

For our audio group project we were asked to produce a short radio programme. We had to brainstorm ideas for the show, decide on an idea, research some content then pitch the idea to a panel. If the panel gave us the thumbs up we would then make the programme.

I was put into a group with Aleicia, Sam and Adam. We shortlisted our ideas:

1. A lighthearted programme on bus travel. Funny stories and passenger accounts of bus journeys. Interviews with bus drivers and facts and figures on public transport.
2. A programme interviewing elderly people in the pub. The idea behind this was to try and get older peoples views on today's culture and also to give them a voice in today's ever youthful media.

We finally chose the bus travel programme for our project. Although personally I preferred the elderly people's interviews, we felt that the bus travel idea would be less of a burden on the timescale on which we had to produce the programme. Additionally the content would be easier to find and produce. The elderly people's interviews is a project I will seriously consider producing independently when I have finished university.

Our roles in the production:

Me - Head of research. Audio editor. Presenter.

Sam - Producer. Script writer. Presenter.

Adam - Producer. Presenter.

Aleicia - Research. Script writer. Presenter.

Our first task was to research the programme. As I was given the 'Head of research' role I set out and found some interesting websites with people's accounts of their bus journeys and some news articles on strange/funny bus related stories. I looked into music we could use in the show and obtained copies of the music we would use. Some of the tracks I chose were:

• Magic Bus - The Who
• Summer Holiday - Cliff Richard
• Theme to the 'On the buses' TV show
• Bus stop - The Hollies
• Mark on the bus - The Beastie Boys
• The National Express - The Divine Comedy

I also found some bus sound effects we could use if we needed them in the production. I did this by searching various sound effect websites and also by taking a bus journey myself and recording the sounds I came across on a mini disk recorder.

We then presented our pitch to try and sell our show to a panel of broadcasters.  I talked about some of the research I had done and of the stories and features I wanted to put in the programme.  After a long nervous wait we had found out we had succeeded in selling our idea and were given the go ahead to start producing the show.  

We have now started to produce the main content for the show. Adam interviewed his father who was a bus driver and got some good stories. Aleicia and Sam recorded a Bus passenger Vox-pop at Bristol bus station. And today we all got involved in recording some stories I had found on the Internet.

Now we will have to piece together all our content, add sound effects and music, record more stories and record the presenters parts. Watch this space for the final edit!