Production Evaluation

1. Production Evaluation By Sophie Patrick

2. Natalie Palfreyman Sophie Patrick Bearfaced radio Amelia Wilson Georgie Clark

3. In what ways does your media production use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products? • the production we have created is a typically traditional collection of recording to keep it real and believable. • Like real radio broadcast’s, in our production we have used beds, jingles and stings throughout, this is so that it will sound much sharper but run a bit more smoothly than an average recording, a bit more realistic. • We used a bed to run underneath our news stories, stings to separate the different kinds of news e.g. Main Headlines (Hard News) from other such as; Entertainment news, known as softer news and the stings differ to make news stories sound more serious than others. E.g. a more upbeat sting to introduce the entertainment news. Some news readers use the same stings throughout, most don’t so we went for the different stings to add more variety of atmosphere within the news.

4. How does your media product represent particular social groups? • Our product does not subvert to stereotypes, in the process we considered the terms used for people in the headlines. • In our ‘Myleene Class’ story, we referred as the males in the story as trespassers because we thought this wouldn’t aim at anyone or type of person in particular. • In the article they were called ‘hoodies’ which I think is very stereotypical because a lot of people class generally younger generation people to be someone who wears a hoodie or a baseball hat with tracksuit bottoms. So instantly it gives the listeners an image of this specific person, so more people are judged by this. • The ‘Grandma’ story gives an image of someone aged so the way Grandma gives that image is misleading because some people are grandparents at a younger age. • To some extent we have stereotyped our audience by not using stories to do with things such as politics, for example. Assuming they are a younger audience and don’t want to hear about politics but a minority of young people do actually want to listen to politics related stories.

5. What kind of media institution might distribute your media product and why? • I think the BBC would distribute our media product because they are a well established institution and they also charge for TV license, so even though it’s extra money to air it, they would still receive the amount of money they were taking in at first because of the charges for TV licenses. • Also with the BBC you are guaranteed an audience because they produce good stations and TV channels. Also they haven’t already got a student specific station to fund therefore it would attract a new audience and become very popular.

6. What would be the audience for your media product? • Bearfaced radio’s target audience is teenagers and young adults, between the ages of 16-25. We thought this was an easier audience to target as we are in that age group and we decided we would know what stories our listeners would like to hear about. Our audience is also local, aimed at South Cheshire College students and/or anyone in the South Cheshire area that the material used in our radio product appeals to.

7. How did you attract/address your audience? • To attract our audience we decided to start our production with hard news but with stories that our target audience would like and still consider in a more serious way than the other upcoming stories such as our ‘Haiti’ story. • We then went onto our entertainment news which is much lighter news but I think that the audience would be more interested in as most people of the certain age range are. • These are stories such as; Jedward’scollaboration with Vanilla Ice, Russell Brand and Katy Perry’s wedding. To introduce this we used an upbeat sting to bring the listeners into a more relaxed mood after hearing the harder news. The language in the script wasn’t too formal, therefore it was more appealing to our audience Battle for No.1 Christmas spot in charts between Joe McElderry and Rage against the Machine Jedward’s collaboration with Vanilla Ice at The Brits 10’.

8. What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this product? • Since the beginning of the course I have learnt about many aspects of the technological side of radio production. For example, learning how to use the studio board correctly and using it to set levels on the different devices used in recording such as; mini disc and original recordings of scripts. It is important to know how to use the studio board right so your can be accurate setting levels whilst editing the tracks you have recording this is so that there is no distortion in the tracks to cause problems with the production. We also used Adobe Audition to edit our production which is easy once used. We had to upload tracks we’d recorded in and out of the studio then put them into a multi-track to edit onto timelines to check the length of the whole production and make changed to anything that is irrelevant.

9. Looking back at your preliminary task, what do you feel you have learnt in the progression from it to the full product? • I feel I have learnt of lot during this process such as; working together in a team is very important towards the decision making in the editing and scripting part of the production. I feel that Bearfaced did that well to create the final product. • I have also learnt how to use the many pieces of equipment e.g. The mini disc player, the studio board and editing on Adobe Audition which I feel was a great experience. • I enjoyed recording because I feel that after all the practise recordings I had done previously, it helped my self-confidence with speaking aloud. • In writing the script for the Haiti Interview especially, it has helped my to be able to use correct language to aim towards our specific audience but also not to include clichés and hyperboles because they are irrelevant. Also when recording, to use a clear speaking voice and not to sound like it’s being read from a script, it needs to be natural for it to be a good recording.

10. What do you think of the final product? • Overall, the entire news bulletin worked out well. • We considered our target audience throughout all scripting. • Used very clear voices. • In reference to all stories used in the bulletin, we ordered them well and gave them all the appropriate amount of weight, starting with the most important/major story at the beginning to make the news seems quite urgent then slowly take it into softer news with entertainment.

11. I had lots of fun with the Bearfaced team created the entire news bulletin and I’m really pleased with the outcome. This was my evaluation of Bearfaced radio...