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.