Personal Project - ukbands - Project plan Proposal, Demographics and Competitors.

1.1 - Proposal

I will set up a website for unsigned bands and musicians in the South West. Artists will be able to upload their demo MP3s and set up a profile page where visitors can download or stream music and view information such as gig dates and biographies. In addition to the band pages the website will host a message board which will act as the hub of a new local band community. The service will be free to the artist.

To add incentive for new artists to join and upload their music I will create a media partnership between UKbands and Phonic FM, a community radio station in Exeter. The most popular songs each month will be given airplay on a monthly radio show, which I will produce. The show will also include interviews and features on some of the artists. As the website will represent the whole of the South West I will search for other radio stations in the area to host the show.

I am aiming for a December alpha launch, a February 2010 beta site launch followed by a marketing campaign on local radio and local press to coincide with the main launch in March 2010.

1.2 - Demographics

The website and radio show will be aimed at people between the ages of 14-30 whom listen to Southwest based bands or are involved or interested in the local music scene. The site will lean towards the alternative and indie music scene but will not discourage bands of other genres to sign up.

1.3 – Competitors

http://www.myspace.com

MySpace is the world’s leading website for unsigned band promotion. Although a useful resource, the simple fact that MySpace is a worldwide site with 100 Million users and 8 Million bands on its books doesn’t give much hope for new artists craving exposure. To offer a much smaller locally based site will allow artists to upload music with some hope of being featured on the front page of the site and of radio airplay.

http://www.southwestunderground.net

Southwest Underground is an established Exeter based electronic music site. It has an active forum and an Internet radio station that features some of the region’s top DJs. However they do not offer MP3 hosting nor do they seem interested in bands, as they prefer to focus on DJs and producers.

http://www.lemonrock.com

Lemonrock boasts a large gig listing that expands the entire country. The bands that have signed up to list their events are mainly covers and tribute acts and are charged an annual fee to list gigs. The site does have an MP3 section but the choice and layout of this page is limited and not easy to navigate. Unlike

http://www.soundcloud.com

Soundcloud is a new site aimed at producers and DJ’s. This site will be similar to mine in that artists are allowed to upload and distribute their work. The website is aesthetically pleasing. A particular feature I like is that the uploaded music is shown on the website as a waveform and users can skip parts of the track by clicking on the image along with leaving comments and notes:

Bath Abbey Project update

Myself and Rob visited Bath Abbey to investigate the screens they had and to see if my idea of creating an 'Interactive choir experience' was possible.  The idea was to film the Bass, Tenors, Altos and Sopranos of the Bath Abbey choir singing seperately and play back each part in synch on a different screen in the Abbey. 

Here are some of the photos we took on our recce:

Ukbands project schedule

Rough Timetable for Ukbands project

Approximate dates
December 7th 2009 Start final design - ongoing
December 18th 2009 Confirm project name.
December 19th 2009 Buy domain
January 1st 2010 Alpha site launch
January 28th 2010 Beta site launch - Finalise designs for advertising campaign - Start viral campaign
February 2010 - Week 2 - Finalise site designs.
February 2010 - Week 3 - Final site tests.
February 2010 Advertising Campaign in local press
March 14th 2010 Full site launch
March 31st 2010 Publish first top ten chart
April 2010 - Produce and broadcast first radio show

Sound for Keely

Today I helped Keely out with her personal project as location sound man. Keely is investigating ghost stories from around the region to feature in a documentary.

We visited the Yeovil train station buffet and Keely got the owner of the Cafe to tell the story of "Molly the tea lady", a ghost who lives in the premises moving kitchen utensils and generally causing a bit of mischief!

Read a bit more about Molly here:

http://www.ghosts.org.uk/ghost/2919/haunted/railway-station/yeovil-railway-station-buffet/west-country.html

http://beehive.thisisbristol.com/default.asp?WCI=SiteHome&ID=7542&PageID=40464

Before we arrived I had planned what was needed for sound. I was going to attach the clip microphone to the owner to capture a nice clean, crisp sound of her voice as she told her stories and I would also use the boom mic to record the ambiance of the cafe and also to act as a backup in case of emergencies later in the sound edit!

As soon as we arrived I made sure all the battery's for the sound equipment were replaced and set up the mixer. (Sound Devices 302) This was the first time I had used this mixer for location sound so I asked Rob, my colleague from Arts Work Media, to show me the important aspects of it and that gave me confidence in the equipment before having to use it.



As the owner spoke before our first shot, I adjusted the clip mic levels until I was satisfied with the levels. I set up the boom mic and did the same. The cafe was rather noisy with fans, fridges and all the trains outside and although these sounds are the sounds a boom opp would traditionally try to avoid recording, I felt capturing these sounds would be important in creating a realistic ambiance for the site so I didn't worry too much when a fan would start to whirr or a customer would slam the door.

As we started to film the lady telling the stories I noticed lots of occasions where she might get a bit excited and her voice would get louder, I kept an eye on the meters on the camera and mixer but I don't think the sound peaked above 0dB.

After the main interview we set about filming the cut away shots Keely needed for the edit, I particularly enjoyed recording some of the sounds to accompany these shots such as the sizzling bacon and the tea being poured into a cup. Obviously if these don't come out as well as I would have liked we could always record these later in the post sound mix.

The filming and sound capture went well, nothing seemed to go wrong, everything worked and we got through the shot list rather quickly. Thanks to Keely for asking me to do the sound and I look forward to working on other projects as location sound man.

Personal Project - Main Idea

I have filtered down my ideas to the one I think I'm going to concentrate on.  I did like the documentary idea, I was going to film a short piece trying to investigate the impact, if any, of local community radio on local commercial radio.  I discussed this idea with Nick but he didn't seem to keen on it.  I realised that although the subject matter is something that I personally would be interested in, the film probably wouldn't be that interesting for anyone else - there is no hook or any reason for anyone else to watch it.  Plus I run the risk of doing months of research and filming interviews with community radio people and professionals in the commercial radio sector, get them altogether only to discover there is absolutely no impact of community radio on commercial radio and that would just be dull, even for me.

The other smaller idea I had was to create and maintain a website for community radio stations.  Broadcasting tips, funding contacts, technical ideas and discussion forums.  The website could be a resource for community stations around the country.  I did about three seconds of research and found this website:- http://www.communityradiotoolkit.net/

which does exactly what I was going to do!  I don't think it's worth wasting any more time thinking about that idea.

Which brings me to my final idea I posted in the previous entry to this blog.  To create a local music website.  Let bands from around the Southwest upload their demo mp3s and create an artist profile.  Set up a gig listings page, charts, local music news page, forums and blogs.  This may not sound any different to just another Myspace site, but if I were to create a link with my local community radio station to give the artists with the most downloads each month some airtime, I think I can offer something a little different than your usual 'mp3 hosting service'. 

Personal Project - initial ideas.

Idea 1

To film a short documentary investigating the impact (if any) of community radio on local commercial radio.

Idea 2

To create a 'toolbox' type website for start up community radio stations.  

Idea 3 

To create a local music website, a resource for local bands and musicians.  Type of things the site would have would be free mp3 hosting, charts, gig listings, band profiles.

research for group projects - ideas and notes

Bath Abbey project idea

http://www.bathabbey.org/music.htm

Idea 1 - First page I clicked on the Bath Abbey website was the music page.  

"Bath Abbey has a long tradition of high quality music. The Abbey Choir plays an important role in the Abbey's ministry"  

Idea is to split a choir into four sections (Bass, tenor, alto, soprano) and film them singing their parts to a piece of music individually with the idea of playing their parts in a room together.

Our Event gets a review

Our recent event, Your Media Your Future, was featured on the Weston college website. Click here to read the review.

Cormac MacMahon

Here is a video I created of Cormac MacMahon, News editor at Heart Bristol, where I did some of my Work Experience talking about how he got into the media industry.

Media Event Blog 6 - Evaluation

The day had arrived! I turned up at Weston College at 8.30am to set up the cameras I was going to use to film the event. The first problem happened almost straight away as my spare battery was flat, despite it being recently charged! I convinced the tech support to let me borrow the battery charger and the problem was solved!

I helped Kim set up the banners in the performance space and in the gallery then I started filming the preparation and build up to the event. I thought the banners were perhaps a little small but I thought they served their purpose well. Actually, in hindsight, it was quite an achievement to get these banners on time as we had only ordered them from the printers at the latter part of the week before and had to get them sent by courier to get them to us on time!

I wanted to get as many shots of the students as possible at all stages of the event - From signing in, looking at the posters and videos on display and making their way into the performance space for the main event. I also got shots of the team signing in our 'clients' and welcoming the guest speakers.

Below is a short sequence of events at the beginning of the day:

I felt a great sense of achievement as I watched the students watching the films and taking notes reading the posters, they were getting something from this event and we felt our event was doing it's job, inspiring people to think seriously about an education and career in the broadcast media. They had a great incentive to learn as much as possible with the questionnaire and prize money, but I think they genuinely wanted to learn and I felt we had succeeded in our aims.

I thought the whole event went extremely smoothly, we did have a couple of problems with the videos on show in the reception as the video files wouldn't play for some reason on one of the computers. But this was only a minor hiccup and we managed to get to the bottom of it pretty quickly. I'm glad to say that this slight problem was one of only a few and we didn't really experience many more.

As the main event started it became pretty obvious we had overlooked something important pretty quickly, the lighting. I felt that if we had used the blinds at the back of the hall, instead of putting the projector screen in front of a big window and set up a few lights, it would have looked a lot more professional. I'm not sure displaying anything on the projector like the website as the speakers were talking was a good idea either, all you could see were pictures and text on their faces!

My favorite speaker of the event was Cormac MacMahon the News editor at Heart FM in Bristol. It was great to see speakers like Valerie Burke, who worked on Challenge Anneka, Jason Holmes the genius behind Extreme Fishing with Robson Green and Laura Abrahams who has worked on Big Brother and I’m a Celebrity, get me out of here amongst others, but Radio is my passion and was really interested in what Cormac had to say about his career route and his day to day duties in radio journalism.

All in all it was a great event, and I really did learn a lot about event organisation. From the red tape hell and countless emails just so we could switch on a TV in reception to being successful in applying for funding I found the work really challenging and interesting. Our team was good too, we have all worked together now on many different projects over the past 2 years and I felt this events success was down to knowing each others strengths, our ideas and creativity and working really well together.

Media Event - Blog 5 - Budgeting.

So the event was nearing, so much to do and so little time! We had at last agreed on the budget and had sent our funding applications to Weston College and the North Somerset council. Here is a picture of the budget we had planned on the board and some of my comments on the budget:

We had received quotes from some local printers for the fliers and posters but we found out near deadline day that the college would only deal with a printing firm in the North! Sam excelled in contacting them and arranging at short notice the deal for the banners and we were delighted to hear they could get them to us in time. We could also get the posters that were kindly designed for us by the graphic design students printed at the college so our printing budget was slashed. It was also really good to be able offer the graphic students £100 for their work.


Westons Generic designs had to be applied to our promotional literature:


Our Job role posters, designed by the graphic design department at the college:



We were also pleased to hear that our prizes, WHsmiths vouchers, that we going to be given away at the event for the quizinaries, were donated to us by Sadie Skelling from Student Services at Weston College. Another thing we could cut from the budget!

I had negotiated a deal that was agreed by the whole group to put together the website for £100. I feel that this price is very competitive, a website for an event like this would cost in the region of £400 for design, hosting, and domain name purchase by any other company. Unfortunately, this is not a service that will be cut from the budget. ;o)

We had agreed that, for the refreshments provided at the event, we should get a quote from the Weston College's 'Loxtons' canteen. They were able to arrange a selection of snacks, hot drinks and a meal for the event organisers and contributors for approximately £40. We agreed on this quote and Loxtons was booked.

The actors, all drama students at Weston College that Adam had lined up to perform job scenario sketches inbetween our guest speakers had to pull out at the last minute due to their tutor refusing to release them from a class. This was a big disappointment, not only for us, but surely for the actors that they were being denied their first professional/paid work. I find it a bit strange that a drama tutor would deny his students an opportunity to add their first job to their CV.

And of course, the most important thing - The speakers. We had 3 independant TV Directors and one radio journalist confirmed for the day!

Laura Abrahams - Big Brother/I'm a Celebrity

Cormac MacMahon - Heart Bristol

Jason Holmes - Extreme Fishing

Valerie Burke-Ward - Challenge Anneka

Designing Website for the media event - Media Event Blog 4

I volunteered to design and upload the official website for our event 'Your Media, Your Future'. I have had a history of web design and website maintenance so I was keen to do this for the group.
Websites I have created before are the now defunct alternativedevon.co.uk, a local music site where bands could upload their demo mp3s to us and http://www.themightybook.co.uk/ a site for the book review radio show I produce.

I wanted to make the site very basic and wanted just to give visitors an idea of what would happen and what to expect, a map telling them how to get to the college and a small amount of information on the guest speakers. I felt that the layout and look of the site had to be basic but had to be attractive as well.


I chose a website blogging tool called 'Wordpress' to design the site. I also have previously used this to set up the Mightybook site before. I uploaded wordpress to my own webspace and started inputting all the details on the event. I received all the speakers comments they had sent us, sourced photographs of them and uploaded all that information to their individual pages.

I downloaded of an image of a map pointing out where the college was and got the address information from the Weston college website and presented it on the main page.

Once all the information had been inputted I found a wordpress theme I liked and installed that. The wordpress themes are the layout of the website and thousands of themes are available for free on the Internet.

I had uploaded the site to my webspace (http://www.ukbands.co.uk/media/) I decided to buy a domain name for the site to make the address more memorable. The domain I bought was http://www.yourmediayourfuture.co.uk/ this cost just under £11 from http://www.easily.co.uk/.

I did come across one problem with the website however, on some Apple Macs, on clicking some of the links on the website would cause a virus/spyware error! I checked the site, did a virus check and made sure the site hadn't been hacked and all results came back clean! Stupid Macs!

Here are some screenshots of the site, but you can still visit the site and see it for yourself at http://www.yourmediayourfuture.co.uk/

Main Page:

Cormacs Page:

Work Experience Day 7 - Heart Bristol + Evaluation

Date of Work Experience - 1/4/09

Today was my last day of my experience at Heart. Ben was mainly writing scripts for promotions the radio station was running. This was another duty of a station producer that isn't always associated with the job. He was sent a brief with all the information that had to be included in the promos and had to write a script for them.

One was an Easter Egg hunt the station was involved in at a new shopping centre, the idea of the event was to hide Easter Eggs around the centre with pictures of Heart Presenters, if you found an egg you could win a mug! Ben came up with the idea that a Heart Presenter would be complaining about this on the promo and make it sound like he as going to go around and take all the eggs before anyone could see his photo!

The other promo he was putting together was one advertising the Bristol sun walk which was being held in July. The sun walk is an annual sponsored walk that is held in various cities across the UK to raise awareness and funds for Breast Cancer. I guess Heart have associated themselves with this event to show they are at one with the community.

All in all the work experience was a really good eye opener for me, I chose to stick with radio placements as I would like to find a career in radio some day.

At Heart/GWR I saw Ben making jingles and idents for the station using Pro Tools software. I would prefer to find work that involves this but with a bit more as well, I want to make programmes and documentaries, as well as helping out with jingles. Ben's job title is 'Station producer', Maybe they could re title it 'Brand manager!' The work I did at Phonic is much more geared towards what I would want as a career. As well as making jingles, I help with editing interviews and making programmes. I helped out the presenters with technical issues and scheduled the overnight music.

I still work at Phonic FM as a volunteer, as well as the duties I have described on this blog, I edit the book review programme, present my own live broadcast once a month and help train new volunteers with the equipment. There is a possibility they will offer me a paid part time role in the future helping out on some new training courses they are planning, this of course is still to be confirmed but I am hopeful. Fingers Crossed!

Links:

http://www.heartbristol.co.uk

http://www.walkthewalk.org

Media Event - Blog 3

I have written up some of the job roles examples assigned to me for the event posters. These posters are to work in conjunction with our media quiz. I chose to write about the sound engineering roles in television, film and radio as these are the type of jobs that interest me. here they are:

Job Roles for media event posters – Tom Hopkins

Location Sound technician for TV/Film

A sound technician on a film or TV set is responsible for capturing all the audio for the production. Setting up sound equipment and operating the boom microphone would be some of the duties you will perform in this job role.

Foley Artist

The Foley artist on a film crew is the person who creates and records extra sound effects in the studio to enhance the sound edit of a production. Using coconuts to simulate the sound of horses’ hooves is an example.

Note - Here is a great video I found on Youtube about Foley artists:

Radio Sound Editors.

The sound editor is responsible for the finished sound that you will hear for any radio show. It involves making sure that there are no echoes, fixing sound glitches, editing the sound so that it fits with the speech, and mixing in music and sound effects.

Work Experience Day 6 - Heart FM Bristol

25/03/09

GWR Bristol is now Heart FM. The takeover is complete and Heart is now Broadcasting.

Here is a recent newspaper article about the relaunch:

http://www.thisisbristol.co.uk/news/New-Bristol-radio-station-launched/article-777828-detail/article.html

This is only the third day I have visited this station but I can feel the atmosphere is different. The head of production, Ben Marks's work load is significantly less due to the network having more of a say over the 'sound' or 'brand' of the station and a lot of the production is now sent to the station from HQ.

There were a few things that had to be done. The trailors for the breakfast show had to be changed to freshen them up and some of the new production from Heart HQ had to be prepared and loaded onto the station play out systems.

I popped in to see Adam who works at Heart as a trainee He is at the station 5 days a week and works for free. He was putting together a showreel to send to Worthy FM, the Glastonbury festival RSL station who were looking for editors to help at the next festival in June.

Worthy FM

Links:

http://www.heart.co.uk/
http://www.glastonburyfestivals.co.uk/information.aspx?id=142

Work Experience Day 5 - Phonic FM

20/3/09

Today's day at Phonic FM was my busiest so far at the station!

My first job was to clean up the audio play out system of outdated jingles. The station had recently dedicated a day of broadcasting to promote International Woman's Day, some of the trailers were still on the system and had to be cleared off.

Next, a presenter called Pete Canter came in to record a telephone interview with a top film soundtrack composer (who's name escapes me at the moment!). This went smoothly, all I had to do was make sure the levels of the interviewer (Pete) and the guy on the other end of the telephone line were good and bounce the full unedited interview down to a WAV file so Pete could take home and edit it for his show.

Soon after this was finished, another volunteer, Josh, popped in with some new Phonic idents he had recorded at home. We listened to them all and I selected 3 of the idents to be added to the Mryiad play out system.

My next visitor was Aaron who is the programme controller at Phonic FM. He also had some jingles he wanted added to the play out system. He gave them to me and asked me to top and tail them (edit them so there was no silence at the beginning and end) and to add a delay effect.

As I was doing this, Phonic Presenter Dave Bowland popped in and asked for me to copy a months worth of his shows onto his memory stick. We keep a log of all programming backed up on a computer for 44 days. This is required by Ofcom in case they get a complaint and have to listen to any shows. After I had located Dave's shows on the log and downloaded them he gave me 2 Cd's of a prerecorded show he had done as he would not be in for his next show. I had to piece together the audio on the Cd's, put it on the Play out System and program the computer to play his show automatically in his shows slot.

Next was my usual job of making sure all the overnight broadcasting for the following week was scheduled and ready to go.

After all this I had to get studio 2 all ready to record the Phonic FM book review show 'The Mighty Book'. I am producer of the Mighty Book so as well as recording the show I had to make sure all the links were OK and make notes of what music I had to get hold of for the edit (which I do at home!). All went well and we managed to record enough content for a 2 hour show in an hour and a half.

Links:

http://www.phonic.fm/

http://www.themightybook.co.uk/

http://www.petecanter.com/

Work Experience Day 4 - GWR Bristol

18 March 2009

My second day at GWR, Bristol. The whole place is preparing for the big switch over from GWR to Heart FM this week as Heart is launched the following Monday.

I met Ben Marks, Station Producer and he showed me a long email sent to him with lists of all the new production that needs to be added to the automated play out systems in preparation for next week, this needs to be all added today so that it is ready for the weekend. All GWR material is already gone.

They are currently running a 'Heart is coming' campaign - but this campaign changes over the weekend as they start to hype the launch of Heart. Bens job is made slightly longer than other station producers on the network because he is producer for Bristol Bath and Weston. So if there was any production that was area specific (ie breakfast show trailers) he would have to add it three times.

Each trailer/jingle/ident/promo/music demo was added and put into it's correct category into the play out database. Some slight editing was needed for Bristol's Breakfast show trailers because they only mentioned 'Bush and Troy' when it should have been 'Bush, Troy and Paulina'.

Imaging idents/trailors in Protools

Ben played me a Heart FM 'Music Demo', in radio, a music demo is a 30-45 second piece of production that showcases the stations typical music output often with listeners commenting on what they love about music, or what they like about Heart FM. These are played once an hour on air. I noticed that all the voxpops were from Woman, Ben explained that the target audience for the new radio station is Woman between the ages of 30-44.

Work Experience Day 3 - Phonic FM

Day of Work Experience - Friday 13th March 2009

Today at Phonic FM was yet another varied and interesting day. I seem to be the only person at the station that knows how to use Myriad the station play out system, so every Friday I am bombarded with people coming in to see me asking for editing help, wanted their music and jingles put on the system. More on this later....

As I was walking into the office I bumped into a friend of mine called Dave, I invited him into the studio so he could have a look around. He seemed interested so I thought it would be fun to get him to make a jingle for Phonic while he was there! He obliged and I showed him how to put together a short Radio Station Jingle.

OK back to the Myriad system. One presenter called 'Peachy' popped in to ask me how to add music to Myriad and to the Station Database. So I gave him a tutorial on importing music. I pointed out that if he wanted his music included on the overnight broadcasts he has to set 'end of intro' and 'end of extro' points on each track he adds. These are reference points for the computer so it knows when to start the next track when in automation. The 'End of intro' points are useful because the computer could fire a jingle as the introduction was playing and would know when to do this without playing the jingle over the singing in the song.

Next, Peachy asked if I could help him record an interview with a local venue owner over the phone. I recorded the phone call and once the interview was over Peachy sat with me as I edited the interview.

At the end of every week I have to make sure the overnights will run properly and will schedule the following week overnights broadcasting. I have to remember to take promos for events are taken off after the event has finished and we try to add more music to freshen up the broadcasts.

Work Experience Day 2 - GWR Bristol

11/03/09

Today was my first day at GWR in Bristol. I had anticipated this day for a while as I have not volunteered at a commercial radio station since I was 18, that's about 13 years ago! I was interested to see how radio broadcasting has gone forward, and was keen to get stuck in at the deep end at something I really feel I want as a career.

I was introduced to Ben Marks a couple of weeks ago when our year had a quick tour of the station. Ben is the head of production at GWR and in a nutshell is responsible for how the station 'sounds'.

I got to the station at about 10 this morning, Ben had to attend the daily meeting so I got chatting to another volunteer called Adam. He played me some of his and Ben's work, which included show promos, Trailors, Jingles, Music beds and Idents.

Ben came back from his meeting and he showed me around his studio. It basically consisted of Pro Tools running off a PC and another audio networking system called 'Glam'. Glam is GWR's way of distributing audio sessions from station to station and provided easy access to those sessions for producers at each radio station. For example, If Ben wanted a script for a trailor performed by a voice over artist, he would send the script to London. The artist would record the script and it would then be immediately be available for Ben to start editing and producing the trailor.

GWR is about to change it's format to a new brand called 'Heart FM'. What a great time to be involved in the production process as all the jingles, trailors, music beds etc are to be changed to suit the new format.

For the rest of the day I shadowed Ben as he continued to produce new content for 'Heart FM'.

Work Experience Day 1 - Phonic FM

Date - 6/3/09

My roles at Phonic Fm today varied from editing an interview, scheduling overnight music and programs, advising a presenter about ofcom rules.

Deborah is a Phonic Volunteer journalist.  She had been asked to interview some people for the International Woman's Day event in Exeter that Phonic FM was covering.  She had asked me to edit the interview to be used on the air that Sunday.  The interview was quite long (approx 20 minutes) and took 2 hours to finish.  She had told me she didn't use headphones to monitor the recording as she did the interview, Consequently  I had to try and edit out lots of distortion and wind noise as well as trying to concentrate on making the interview informative and entertaining.  

My next job was to make sure the following weeks overnight broadcasting was in order.  As no one would be in the studio overnights, the radio station is automated using a piece of software called Myriad.  It was my job to make sure a weeks worth of overnight music was scheduled as well as repeats of some prerecorded programs were slotted in at their correct times.  I also tested the system using a preview setting to see if the Phonic FM idents, programme trailers and other jingles were included in the broadcasts.

As I was scheduling, One of the daytime presenters came in to ask advice on a potentially contentious issue he wanted to cover on his next show.  He wanted to broadcast an interview with a person that was organising a rally against the recent problems in Gaza.  I advised that he must provide balance to the feature and perhaps interview someone from the Universities  Jewish society to get their opinions of the story.

Links:

Phonic FM - http://www.phonic.fm

International Womans Day -  http://www.internationalwomansday.com

Mryiad - http://www.psquared.net

Ofcom - http://www.ofcom.org.uk 

Weston College Media Event - Blog 2

Minutes for Media Event Meeting – 3/3/09

Chair – Aleicia Coombs
Secretary – Tom Hopkins

Present – Aleicia Coombs, Tom Hopkins, Adam Jones, Kim Brooke.
Apologies – Sam Simmonds, Keely Major, Kate Pritchard.

Agenda

Discuss budget so we can ask possible funders for money.
Agree on promotional materials such as posters.
Discuss design for posters/flyers and who would do them.

Discussion

Kim suggested we agree on amount of posters to promote the event and additional Posters to provide information for the students attending the event (Roles within the media). The posters and flyers would be distributed around Weston College and some of the local schools.

The amounts agreed were –

Posters promoting event – 200 x A5, 30 x A3.
Banners for entrance of campus – 4 x 7ft High, 2.5ft Wide.
Roles within the media posters – 16 x A3.

Tom volunteered to get quotes from local printers to get an idea of prices.
Aleicia agreed to ask Gill Falkes at Weston College marketing to get prices and to see if it would be cheaper to get the posters through Weston College.

Kim Suggested she could use her photocopying card to do some printing if needed.

For the day of the event, to help promote the FD Broadcast Media course (which would be a condition that we get funding from Sadie), Tom suggested we do some flyers for the course. Kim said she already had plenty of literature already and this could be used.

For the interactive questionnaire for the students attending, Kim said we could just print those using normal computer printers at no extra cost.

For name badges we could ask the reception if they could suggest something or we could use just blank sticky paper and get people to write their names on them on the day.

It was agreed to share the responsibility of the ‘Roles in Media’ posters for display on the day of the event. If each student did 3 posters each, describing some of the roles within the media, the workload would be less for Kate who initially volunteered to do all the posters.


Kim said there would only be 4 computers used in the gallery as some of the desks in the library could not be used. She also suggested that the roles within the media posters should be displayed in the gallery and in the corridor leading to the performance space. The questionnaire would tie in with the posters and we would encourage the attending students to search for the information on the posters. Maybe offer a prize.

For designing he posters it was agreed that we should approach the graphic design students in the college to help us. Adam volunteered to approach Vicky Norcross who teaches graphic design.

Adam said he had looked into the availability of the performance space for the day. In the morning the space was in use by Ace, but Tom and Aleicia had discussed this with him and he was happy for us to use the space and would invite his students along to the event. In the afternoon the space is booked by Paul Raymond but is happy for us to use the space. Adam said he would now go and book the space for the event.

For the gallery Kim said she would contact Terrance at the college to book the space.

Adam said he had contacted Warren Smith a possible speaker but had not heard back from him yet. Kim also said her email to GWR had not been replied to yet.

Tom had contacted Abby at Technical support about booking some of the equipment via email but had not heard anything yet. Kim has also contacted her.

The structure of the event that was agreed last meeting was reviewed. Tom suggested that we should allow the attending students to browse the gallery before the event and fill in the questionnaires as well as at the allocated half time/refreshments times. No other adjustments to the structure were suggested.

For the title of the event, Kim suggested ‘Working Life as a Media Freelancer’.

Kim suggested we start thinking about the sound equipment arrangements for the event. Adam was appointed ‘Sound co-ordinator’.

Date of next meeting – 10/3/08. Tom Will Chair, Secretary not yet agreed (possibly Kim).


Action

Tom to get printing quotes.
All to think about titles for the event.
All to research and come up with ideas for the job roles posters.
Adam to book performance space.
Aleicia to contact the college marketing department about printing costs.Kim to book gallery space.

Weston College Media Event - Blog 1

As a part of the course we are arranging a Media Event. The aims of the event are to encourage BTEC media students to join the foundation degree, to do this we will invite 4 speakers to talk about their careers and their paths into the industry. We will hold the event in the performance space at the Weston College University Campus, so Myself and Aleicia did a Reece. I took photos of the space and Aleicia drew some sketches:


The first few pictures I have taken here are of the performance space at Weston College. This space would be the obvious place to host our event. There are room for many people to be seated and there is a small stage to the right hand side of the room. The projector and screen is ideal as we can show the speakers showreels and our films if we want.

One of the things we want to arrange is a number of films of industry professionals being interviewed about their jobs in the media. We agreed that these would be shown on computers at the event in the gallery or the reception that the attending students could watch and comment on for their 'quizonaires', if the students were to watch all of the films this would prove to be an advantage for them as many of the quiz questions would be based on these films. We would need someway of putting the computers in the reception/gallery and we decided on these small desks that were in the library

The gallery would be our first choice as a venue to put the computers and or posters for the event.