Evaluation.

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May 27, 2014 by wirelesstom

Evaluation of Hour Long Show.

 

– View of the Overall programme. 

I was really happy with our hour long show. I felt all things considered we were prepared for the show, knew that outline of the show and what we were all speaking about. There was never a moment where we paniced it all felt quite controlled and calm. I would have liked more of an group understanding of each others content and contributions. I felt that the group felt a little like four individual segment rather than a communal piece of work. I would have liked to have practiced the show, we practiced once which was really helpful, however I would have felt more confident if we’d had another run through. 

 

– Reflection on strategy & approach through the stages of production. 

At the beginning of the project we had a meeting once a week or thereabouts. This over time began to fall away, I think slightly due to complacency and also due to other commitments of the course. We all maintained contact throughout the project but on a much more casual basis, like asking during class time how things were going or facebook conversations. I would have liked more to have full proper sit down meetings. I think it would have been benificial to the whole group if this had been done. Thankfully most of the time everybody seemed to be on top of their work, however if the group had been comprised differently this could have had serious knock on effects on the outcome of the project. I think we should have been more rigorious with our approach, there were times during the process of making our individual projects that other people in the group were getting interviews cancelled or delayed and even though issues were resolved I wished I’d taken a more active role in monotring the progress of other people’s work. 

I wished we had set a group deadline to be finished our individual work, even though we were all finished by the Friday before the programme was due to air, it qwould have been benificial if we were all done by a particular date so we could all collaborate on the group script and running order of the script. I felt there was a bit of a split in the group between those who were finished and those who were so it made it slightly difficult to create a communal show. I also felt that as a group we were so focused on getting our individual work completed that after this was done we switched off a little and didn’t put the adequete amount of effort in to the broadcast which I think was a failing on us as a whole. 

 

– The Hour Long Show and its Purpose. (Style & Target Audience)

 

We were aiming to create a conversational mid-day sports show for BBC Radio Scotland, it was ment to cover a broad range of topics and sport and be enlighting and entertaining for the audience. The target audience was an adult crowd, roughly 30 years plus, possible with a slight audience balance to males, however it was a mid-day show show we didn’t want to make an exclusive programme. To a large extent I think we produced a programme that hit a lot of the these markers. Especially in regards to what we coverd in our individual pieces. I think that this was our strongest point in regards to hitting the style of the Radio station and hitting the taarget audience. I think they were all revelvant topics, The Scottish element was also acutely addressed. The rugby package was a good choice as the 6 Nations had just finished and Scotland’s performance had been questioned and the state of the game overall had been discussed. Rugby and the 6 Nations, is most definetly a sport and event that are attended by our target audience and their families. Under-funding in Basketball I thought was also a good choice as it was reflected a ‘non-mainstream’ sport I felt that this was a positive addition to the soread of the programme. My own package on football and charity in Scotland fitted nicely aswell, if it was on football alone I think it would have been slighty more difficult to justifiy, however the charity element allowed a good amount of discussion of social issues surrounding the charties. The final package on the COmmonwealth games was perfect for the show, the time of our show and Commonwealth games worked really nicely, The games are everywhere at the moment it’s all that the sports media in Soctland are talking about in large parts, its seemed like a very apt thing to put in our programme and worked really nicely as the final package in the programme. 

 

I think where we fell down was in the inserts we did around our packages. I think this could have been improved with more time spent on writing them as a group and practicing them. I felt that the moment when we were on mic felt a little like they weren’t properly planned with regards to thinking about the station style and the targert audience. It sounded a little like it was caught between trying to be a BBC Scotland broadcast and being very much a college radio station. Not just in the quality of the inserts but the content too. We discussed issues around the sports featured in th individual packages which I think worked well in regards to trying to be a BBC Scotland programme, however some of the conversation centred on how we made the work and why, and what we learnt from the process. These I feel sounded to much like questions around college work rather than what listeners of Radio Scotland would be interested in. The topics picked should have been self explanatory and we should have discussed the sports in greater detail. I also thought that a lot of the inserts after we broadcast the individual package didn’t feel natural enough, we had (on a rotanional basis) a 1st and a 2nd presenter on two mics, it felt like the conversations were very much quesion / answer, question/ answer rather than having a conversation.  I think this is down to, like I said before, not enough preparation, perhaps a slight neverousness about time and not enough group working on the script. I thought we got the order of the packages right though, to begin with a package on the Scottish Rugby team and their performance at the 6 nations was good as the 6 Nations was only a few months ago and issue raised would be fresh in the minds of the audience. Then the two middle packages sat well together as the issue raised would be a little less known to the audience but still relevant to them. Also to finish on the Commonwealth Games was definitely right to finish on as it is just about to happen and there’s a lot of awareness around the games, I felt this overall order game the show a nice sense of chronology.   

 

Technical Aspects of the Programme.

 

We only played one song during the whole show, Pharrell Williams – Happy, at the end of the programme.This I think worked OK, a song that would be quite difficult to object too, possibly slighty overplayed but fine for a mid-day programme on BBC Radio Scotland. I area whre I think where we fell down was we used no jingles or BBC Scotland sounds. I think we should have used these to give a more overall ‘BBC’ feel to the programme, we discussed this but it was too late to add them into the show, this again could have been amended with greater planning and organisation. An area where this would have been helpful was during our live Broadcast where we had to shift seats very quickly, I would have been more professional to play some music or a jingle to cover that movement. Listening back to the programme it was apperent that the mic levels weren’t as steady as they should be, at no point did anybody go into distortion however, there were moment during the programme where some of us were coming in slighy to loud over the mics. I feel that we didn’t need any bed music as it was a speech driven show, and many shows on BBC Radio Scotland that are speech driven do not have bed music playing. 

 

Group Working during the Broadcast. 

I thought we worked really well together as a team during the actual prgramme. Considering the slight lack of preparation, we were all aware of our job roles during the show and at different times during the show. We all spoke constantly during the airing of the packages making sure that we were on top of things and we were all aware of what was coming up and that we were aware of our times. We had designated roles of 1st and 2nd presenter, producer and time keeper. I think this distribution of responsibiltly worked really well and was the main reaseon that we were so good with our time. At one point during the show it became apperant that we going to be early (around 5 minutes) for our live guest interview. This was simply die to a miscalulation of the time in the running order, this should have been registered before the show started but we all missed this error. However I think this mistake brought out the best in our team as we didn’t panic and came up withj a solution very quickly. It was to change the 2nd interviewer, and play my package 5 minutes early and then have the interview. I think if there was going to be a moment where things could have gone wrong in the programme this would have been it, epsecially due to the fact that it involved the interview time of our live guest. However the whole team contributed with coming up with a solution and I feel we overcame this problem really well. 

 

Listening Back to the Show in the Mindset of a Listener. 

I think I would be interested in the programme myself. I think that the topics in the packages and the discussions surround would draw me in. I think it helps that I’m a sports fan and I listen to BBC Radio Scotland anyway.  I felt the pace was OK, just about right for Radio Scotland the longest time we were speaking for was around ten minutes this included a live interview. On average we had about 5 to 6 minute audio inserts around the package I feel that this is about right for the station’s pace. I feel we could have all been better when we on the mics. BBC Radio Scotland presenters generally speak with their natural voices, however I feel we needed to project our voices more and been slightly more confident on mic to give a more overall professional feel to the show. Like I said before I felt that some of the content during the discussions after the package felt like college conversations, this aspect would have definelty turned me off as a listener as it shows that we weren’t thinking of the listener directly, which should be the case at all times. Also the lack of any jingles etc, made the show feel a little bare this wouldn’t have necessarily detracted from the overall show as a listener, however it would be something that I would notice. Station imaging helps breed familiarity amongst listeners and this would have addded to the show as an overall product. Also the song we played at the end we faded out to hit the hour mark exactly. In the studio I was really happy that we hit the hour mark exactly, and the reason we picked a song to finish the show was to act as a sort of saftey net on the time so we could aim for a time and we knew we could just bring down the faders to hit the hour mark. However listening back to the show if I was a listner and that particular song was a favourite of mine it would be really annoying to have the last 45 seconds cut off. 

 

 

 

Modifications made during the Broadcast of the Show.

 

During the broadcast we made a few changes during the show. These were mainly minor touches here and there. We discussed adding in to the show more regular time checks and back aqnd forward announcing the show, also we stated BBC Radio Scotland after each package. I wished we’d not only mention the stations but described the show a little more and what we were doing, as listners diop in and out of shows all the time, it would have been benificial if we’d given a bit more disctription between the packages. We also had to readjust the running order of the programme when it became clear that we were coming out of a package 5 minutes early for our live interview. This was purely a mistake of maths, however we came up with a way round it really quickly. We changed team roles and who would be the 2nd presenter, and played out my package and pushed back the interview by 5 minutes. This adjustment ended up working out really well and the programme ran smoothly through this problem. 

 

Evaluation of productions skills. 

 

A problem in our was pre planning, I think if we’d had some more practice shows we would have been a lot more self assured during the actual broadcast. We didn’t leave enough time to write an overall group script that we all were really familiar with on broadcast day. I think if I was to repeat the project I would had appointed more job specific roles within the group. For example on individual who was in charge of making sure everyone was completing their work on time. I also think as a group we should have set our own deadline to have all our indivdual work completed, we all finished at different times which really disjointed things when it came to crafting the hour show and its script. I think if we’d all worked on this we would have come up with a much stronger programme. 

 

Individual Package Evaluation.

 

At the begining of the planning process I had several ideas for my individual package, they all focused around Scotland in some way either identity, the refurendum was also an idea and football was in a few ideas. After a couple of meetings we all found that we had atleast one sports idea and it would be a good compromise to make the overall theme sports for BBC Radio Scotland.I then developed the idea of connecting sports and charity, these were two seperate ideas that I fused together. I was really happy with the theme and the station pick, going into the initial group meetings I had in my head that I wanted to pick BBC Radio Scotland, as I thought this would be a good compromise for everyone. Also, a little selfishly I felt that this station pick suited my own style, I felt that this is an area where I need to improve, I think I would have struggled if for instance the group had decided to go with Radio 1, I would have found it difficult to produce a good piecce of work that was so far removed from my ‘comfort zone’. I think in the future I need to be prepared to push myself to prodce content that I am not necessarily familiar or comfortable with.  

 

After I decided on my topic I needed to develop an angle, I found this slightly difficult. To me there was no obvious angle other than the really obvious point that a lot of people like football and that charities use that popularity. This still was featured in my package, however I needed to find out more about the respective charities I picked to gain a greater understanding of them and  then allow a story to develop. I ended up driving at looking at the universal nature of football and I wanted to give a sense of the range of charities that used football.  

 

At this stage, once I had my topic, station and angle, I started work on my pitch for the show. I felt this really helped me connect my initial ideas with the requirement of the station style, it also gave me confidence in regards to thinking that my idea was viable and was a strong idea. During the preperation of the pitch I researched the remit of BBC Radio Scotland and looked for how this connected to my idea. The idea connected with the remit on several levels, for instance the show idea was educational in respect to bringing light to charities that the wider puoblic may not be entirely aware of. Also Radio Scotland must cover issues that effect listners and their families, I felt that the Street League charitiy filled this role particularly well. Street league is a youth unemployement charity which helps out young people between the ages of 16-25, so either listners to the programme maybe unemployed or possibly parents of kids who have been unemployed maybe listening, therefore the programme directly relates to them, also youth unemployement is often in the new particularlry after the 2008 finicial crash. Multi-Cultural family Base is an ethnic minority charity that has a football project that helps BME kids into grassroots football in the local area, the remit of Radio Scotland states that the station should reflect the diverse communities living in Scotland, I think that this nicely connects the programme to the remit. Finally the Tartan Army Children’s Charity, a charity that helps out disadvantaged kkids in Scotland and wherever Scotland plays. I felt that as it was run entirely by Scotland supports and the charity raises issues of national portayl in an international setting this worked really nicely for the station, as the station must seek to reflect Scotland at all times. 

 

The research process I found to be relatively easy, I feel it is one of my strengths as a producer. I felt the charities came to me quite quickly it didn’t take me too long in which charities to cover. Through doing my initial research for the idea, all three charities jumped out at me as good charities to cover, I also found it appealing to cover three really distinct charities with different aims. The amount of research I did made me feel pretty confident when it came to interview people and writing the script the charities and issues surroundnig the charities became very familiar to me. Each individual charity had their own literature on their websites about what they did and their aims which was really helpful. Street LEague was probably the most well known charity I spoke to, there was as a result media coverage of them as a charity, so I ended up reading quite a few newspaper articles on them online. This helped with the research as often a lot of the detailed research was present in the articles as long as the article was up to date. MCFB and TACC there was less coverage, so I had to depend on their respective websites, which wasn’t too bad as they had quite a lot of information.  

 

The interviews I did generally went really well. I major advantage I had was that I was speaking mostlry to charities, on those who weren’t directly involved in the charities the interiewers were about those charities. I did not get a single rejection from all the people I asked to interview, no unanswered emails. It made the interview process a lot easier. This aspect may have made my life easier during the process of making the package however during future project I must learn to deal with rejections for interviews. Planning is important, back-ups are important and so is persistence. I was just lucky enough not to be tested on this point. The interview I had with Lorraine Grady from MCFB was the first and it was a really good interview, Lorraine was passionate and articulate. Lorraine was a really good person to interview as she’d been involved with MCFB for a long time and she herself set up the football project ‘Scoring a Goal for Inclusion’ she still runs the project every Tuesday. She was really knowledgeable about the subject and responded well to my questions. Lorraine gave me really detailed answers, however some of her best audio was at the end of the interview when we started just having a conversation rather than simply a question / answer session. I think for future reference this is an aspect of my interviewing that needs to develop, as I think this put the interviewee as ease a brings more out of them. I was lucky that Lorraine was a good speaker but I think this an area I need to focus on in the future. 

 

The interview I conducted with Steven Jardine from Streete League was probably the worst in terms of my audio recording technicques. The final audio was still clear and was fine to use in my final piece, however there was a slight echo in the room we were in, I shopuld have responded during the recording, I found it quite difficult to register this during the interview, as there was a lot to think about. The lesson I took from this interview was remember to listen really carefully to the audio coming through the headphones and try and take control of where the interview takes place. The room the interview took place in was the only avaliable room, however there were steps I should have taken to improve the recording. Steven Jardine was a good person to interview as he’d work on the course as a development coach and had been recently been promoted to operations manager for the whole of the Edinburgh region. Steven was very informed and gave good answers.  

 

My telephone interviews with Danny Bhoy, Jennifer Malone and Jim Hart all went well. I had been a while since I had conducted a telephone interview, I was a little unsure of the procedure so I praticed it a few times by calling my mobile and I called my mum once just to check how the levels were sounding. This made me feel pretty confident going into these interviews. I feel that telephone interviews are slightly easier than face to face interviews as you can check your notes without seeming rude and you can monitor the levels of the audio a lot closer. However Face to face provides a lot better audio which adds to the overall quality of tghe package. I would have liked to get more face to face interviews for this reason. I conducted a few telephone interviews due to the location of some of the people I contacted and also I didn’t want to solely focus on people from orbased in Edinburgh, I htought it was neccessary to get a good spread of people from all over Scotland. I feel like there was a slight imbalance towards people from Edinburgh but it was too apparent listening back to the package. 

 

During the interview I tried to work my story arc into the questioning. I knew that the charities would stand alone as three seperate segment however I wanted to make connections between them all. This directed me to ask a fw of the same questions in all of the interviews. Like what are the difficulties faced by those who attend your charity? (in regards to TACC it what What are the difficulties faced by those children who you donate to?). I asked all of those who I interviewed (with the expection of Danny Bhoy what their proudest moment was whilst working with their respective organisations). Most importantly I wanted my interviewees to emote. I knew that this would be the strongest point of the package if it worked well, the aspect that would draw the audience in. I also asked a lot of questions about the origins of each charity as I knew I needed to set up each charity within the package. 

 

I made sure to listen to BBC Radio Scotland more whilst making my package. I already listened to Sportsound (This is a show specifiacally about Scottish football) it helped that I understood the layout of this programme. I wished we as a group had learnt from the conversational style of the programme. A good programme called Sport Nation was possibly the closest thing to our own idea. Their content was similar to what we were aiming at, however their style did not match the end product of my own indvidual package.  

 

I had an overall sense of what music I wanted to use for the package, I knew that I wanted ambient music to sit with the emotion of the package, I didn’t want to overwhelm the speech. I felt with my formative unit I crammed too much music into the piece and it ended up disgracting from the overall work. So in this package I left individual tracks running longer, I felt this allowed the speech to dominate and suit the style of the station. I ended up using two Billy Bragg & Wilco songs, Bugeyed Jim and California Stars. I felt that he audience would probably know these song if not they would certainly know Billy Bragg. I also used tracks from Youth Lagoon and WU LYF, These two are more recent songs, the audience might not have been necceassirly aware of these artist, however I felt that they worked nicely with the overall tone of the package, and if the audicence were unaware of the tracks they would not object to them. I felt slightly with the music that I sourced tracks from my own personal collecti0on that I liked and that I thought would work well in the piece. However I think I should have used some Scottish artists in the piece and possibly some more recognisable artists. I felt that the music was more of a personal choice than in regards to the station style. 

 

The costings was a relatively easy part of the project. We had to research costings for other project on the course so I was relatively familiar with this aspect of the project. I knew I would need to research how much it was to buy an m-box, protools, an adequete computer, studio hire, presenter costs, music and SFX.  I learnt a lot during this part because I didn’t honestly know how much everything cost; however I think I worked hard to find out costings and educate myself in this area.

 

We had to consider ethics during the production. I had to make sure during the interviews that I did not alter the words of anybody I interviewed. Also before evry face to face interview I asked the interviewee to sign an audio release form, with the telephone interviews I asked people to agree either through email or I recorded them over the phone agreeing to be interviewed. 

 

Another factor we had to take into account was health and saftey, I felt that I did not pay too much attention to this aspect of the project. I think I should have filled out the risk assessment form closer to the actual interviews. Although I did not encounter many health an saftey considerations during my time making the project, I think it would have helped me think about atleast some of the things that I may have had to deal with. 

 

Whilst editing the package I was contnually making notes, ideas I was having for the script and music I thought would work. I tried to keep in mind the station style and the target audience as I had a lot of audio to edit I wanted to boil it down to something a BBC Radio Scotland audience could relate to. Editing Lorraine was fairly easy as she spoke really well it was simply a matter of decide which bits of audio was the clearest and the most precise as she had a tendancy to speak at length. She spoke about the sense of affliation football gives you, this was a really great bit of audio probably in my opinion the best piece in the whole package. It is exactly what I wanted to say about football in the piece I just wasn’t sure how to articulate it, Lorraine summed it up better than I ever could. I think this segement works really nicely in the package, it sits nicely just about in the middle of the piece. Although it may be personal to me I also think that the commentary of James McFadden scoring against France works really nicely , that for me is a really good memory and makes me feel happy, coupled with Lorraine’s audio I think they compoiment eacgh other nicely. I do think a lot of people listening though could also relate as what Lorraine really stands out and a lot of people will have their own personal memories of that James McFadden goal and commentary.Steven Jardine’s segments were more direct however I felt brought out his best answers, especially the ones that fitted the overall tone of the package and the other interviewees, especially the story about his proudest moment I think works very nicely. The interview with Jim Hart from TACC went very well, he gave me some very good answers. However he as good as they were he did speak at length, the interview I conducted with him lasted around 25 minutes. This made it quite difficult to edit and to 

boil down the meaning of what Jim was trying to say. I also felt that as 3 out of the 5 people I interviewed were in someway connected to MCFB this led to an imbalance in the package and I had to squeeze in TACC which I didn’t really want to do, I wanted to explore the overseas donations more, there was simply just not enough time. I feel like I should have balanced the show better. At the begining of the project I set out a rough plan th set aside 1 minute each for an overall intro and outro and dedicate 2 minutes each to each charity. I ended up accomadating more time for MCFB due to Jennifer Malone and Danny Bhoy agreeing to be interview, these two were not mandatory however I felt that they added more to the package than they took away. Unfortunatly I felt that the time alloted to TACC suffered due to these interviews being included. 

 

Listening back to my package I am really happy with the way it turned out. It is better than I expected to be honest, I knew I could produce something if I worked hard on it but the piece is beyond my expectation. I think this is the case because I was learning new things along the way that I used in the package and also I was lucky with certain aspects of the programme. Especialy in regards to my interviewees, I learnt that the audio you get for interviews is key to producing a good package, you could write an amazing script and get a brilliant presenter to read it but if the audfio inserts are no good then your package simply is not going to work. I think the quality of my audio really helped in this respect, it was a strong foundation to build upon. I also learnt that research is key to making a good piece, I tried to continually research the topic, even though I had a period when I did all my main research I was contiually looking up article and academic papers, even youtube videos on the charities right up until I finished writing my script. I don’t think you should ever entirely close of all research on a topic whilst you are working on it. 

 

I think my wrting skills improved from the formative unit, I remebered during the scripting process to remeber that th words were not going to be read but heard. I think there was an improvement however this is an area that I need to develop in, the script is good I  think but could be improved a lot. I read it out to myself and it seemed OK but when it came to recording with my presenter it became apperent that some of the lines in the script were difficult to read out loud or slightly too wordy. I ended up changin one or two things during the recording process. I think its important to be flexiable withyour script during the recording process but it is also unprofessional to come to the recording with a script that doesn’t read well. That being said I think that my presenter was very good and read the script well, I also think my direction worked well as his natural radio voice is to be big an bold on the mic, I felt I directed him well to get the audio I wanted. I surprised myself about how assertive I was at directing and how I knew exactly what I wanted, however the person who was my presenter was somebody on the course, I am not sure if I would be as confident as a director with a hired voice over artist. I think this is something I need to take into consideration for future projects. I would definetly give myself more time over the editing process, I feel that writing the script took a little longer than I would have liked, I found it a little difficult to get the wording right and het across exactly what I wanted to say. This pushed the editing back by one day, this could have been put to good use on the group broadcast script and the general planning of the show. All this being said I am happy with the overall outcome of my indiviudal package and the broadcast show.