LO4 Audio Log

 Audio Log 

LO1 The brief

 LO1: THE BRIEF

You have been asked by local community radio station, Sheffield Live!  to create a new and original radio show or drama.

You will create the first 5-10 minutes of the new radio show/ drama and include:

• Presenters/ voice actors
• News bulletin
• Feature/ interview/ narrative
• Jingle/ theme music
• Bedding music/ sound/ effects
• Original advert
• Competition/ social media links

LO4 Evaluating content, audio levels and flow of the final production

 Evaluation 

Now that I have completely finished my pre-production, production and postproduction of my podcast about cars I have realised that there was a lot of different strengths and weaknesses that I cam across when producing the podcast, I have also taken into consideration things that didn't work and ensure that things that I did wrong won't happen again as some of the weaknessess slowed down the production of the podcast and made the podcast come out later than I planned it to. The strengths that I gathered through my project will be carried through to the next podcast that I will make in the future. 

Strengths 

The first strength which I identified was the pre-production and planning stage of my podcast. I think that this was very successful for many different reasons. The first reason is because of the production plan which was a neat schedule on what I would be doing each week to keep everything organised and neat so I didn't fall behind and don't hit deadlines. On the other hand the production plan was successful however I went a little ahead as I could and I had time to other jobs and stay ahead of schedule and allowed me to spend longer on tasks that required more time and more detail had to be put into them. The fact that I created pre-production such as consent forms allowed me to ensure that all of the presenters and voice actors that were in the podcast signed the correct forms to give me the correct permissions to use their voices in the podcast and also meant that there was no chance of getting sued and meant I would not have to deal with any big fines and legal issues. The legal and ethical report which I created meant that I was educated on all of the legal and ethical issues that I could hit when producing the podcast. After learning about ethical issues for the legal and ethical report I learnt about the theorist who talked about stereotypes and I wanted to prove a stereotype of only men liking cars so what I did was I ensured that the voice actor that would win the completion in the podcast was a women which makes the podcast ethically right for both males and females who may be listening to the podcast. The theorist who talks about stereotypes is Tessa Perkins (1979). Overall I think that the pre-production documents was successful to use. 

In my opinion I think that the locations that I used when recording the audio for the podcast was successful. The first location that I used was the recording studio at school which is soundproof which meant that no background noise was recorded with the audio. I only used this recording studio once as I used it to record the advertisement of for the podcast and I was using the voice actor Miss Payne who is a teacher at school so the recording studio was convenient to use. The other room that I used to record other audio was the office at home where I recorded the remaining scenes including the competition bit. On the downside the office isn't sound proof however this room was successful as I recorded towards the evening so was barely any background sound in the audio that could distract the audience when listening. 

Another strength of the Horsepower Hour podcast was the post-production side of the podcast. I used a very good and professional and a very fast software when it comes to exporting things. The software that I used to edit the audio together was Adobe Audition which is a software which was specially designed to edit audio. This software was successful for me to use as it was easy to import my audio and also easy to clip things down using the razor tool which allowed me to remove dead sound which was irrelevant. When exporting from the Adobe Audition software it was a very quick and easy process which I exported to my desktop of my MacBook which I then uploaded onto YouTube. 

The voice actors that were used to produce my podcast were all very good and worked well to produce the final podcast. Their voices were all clear and were easy to understand what they were saying meaning the audience members were able to listen to the podcast easily and understand what people are saying. The main presenters which was only two people was a good choice from me as it was a back and fourth chat and I think that both presenters got a similar amount of lines meaning one didn't have to do more than the other and they were both equal. 

The equipment that I used during the production of the podcast was successful and there was no parts of the process of producing the podcast where I was at risk or did loose audio footage for the podcast. I used a iPhone to record the audio from the podcast as the iPhone has a very clear and good microphone, the iPhone was positioned on the desk in-front of the presenters which captured the audio very well. I just simply pressed record on the phone which worked well and when you listen to the podcast you will see that the audio is clear and easy to hear. 

I used multiple different sound effects when editing during the post-production of the podcast which allowed me to make the podcast more lively and follow conventions of a real podcast as they usually have sound effects in them. The sound effects was successful as they fit in well with when they were played. For example I used a realistic phone ringing sound when the presenters were calling the competition winner which made it seem to the audience that an actual phone was used to call the winner when there wasn't one. I also used a swoosh like sound when the presenter welcomed the audience back after the break which helped to grab the audience's attention to ensure they are still concentrated on the podcast. 

I also think that the use of the jingle that was played after certain things in the podcast helped to create a brand identity for the audience members to remember and allows new audience members to the podcast to remember us from the jingle sound. The jingle sound was played to start the show, it was then played after song had stopped, after the advertisement was over and finally at the end of the show to end the show. The jingle helped to fit the podcast into the conventions of a real podcast. 

Weaknesses

During the pre-production, production and post-production of the podcast there was some weaknesses that I identified which affected the show and sometimes how the audience members would think of the podcast. The first weakness was that the use of a microphone lacked a lot when recording the audio as for the majority of the scenes I didn't use a professional microphone from a brand such as Rhode. A microphone for the scenes could have helped to make the audio quality more clear and would help to just capture the actors voices as using the iPhone was a good source of a microphone however it did pick up background sound which did affect the audio a bit. Later on in the production when I recorded the last scene for the podcast which was the competition scene I had ordered a bluetooth microphone which clipped on to actors, this was a downside as it arrived later on during the production so I could only use the microphone for the last bit I needed to record which was the competition bit. 

Another weakness of my podcast was when producing the podcast I wasn't able to record all in one day and ended up having to record all the different scenes on different days which was not very good. It was not very good as this meant that I sometimes lost track on what I had recorded and what I had and also meant that I recorded some things twice which wasted everyone's time. In the future I will ensure that all of the crew that I needed to record the podcast was available all on the same day to be more organised. 

I also think that I could have wrote the script a bit better during the pre-production of the podcast. This is because I thought that there was some areas when listening back to the podcast where the presenters didn't fully finish a conversation about a car and sometimes meant that the audience members were left on a bit of a cliffhanger. In the future I will make sure that the script that I make will have areas to show the audience members that they are stopping talking about a subject or topic. 

Evaluation - Final production 

When looking back to my final production there is a lot of successful parts to the podcast and also parts that I would change for next time to make it even better. Firstly the flow of the show worked very well and everything went to plan from the brief. In the brief it was stated that I needed to have the first 5 - 10 minutes of the show to be made, I met this as my final copy of my podcast that I have produced is around 8 minutes long which meets what was said in the brief. The first 8 minutes of the show I was able to get everything that was stated int he brief to be in the first 8 minutes of my podcast. The brief then stated that there needs to be a news bulletin so that the podcast that I made fits into the conventions of a traditional radio station. In my podcast I made the news bulletin to be about the new Lamborghini that was being released at the time, in my opinion I think that this worked very well for the genre of my podcast which is cars as the audience that will be listening to the podcast are listening to the podcast because they are interested or have a passion for cars. The News bulletin was only short so that it didn't drag on to much and sound like an advertisement and I didn't want the audience to get bored when listening to the podcast. Also I had multiple presenters in the podcast, I had two in total which was a nice amount as this is not to many people where the conversations in the podcast would get overcrowded and having two presenters meant that it was a back and forth conversation for the audience to listen to. On the other hand the brief stated to have a interview in the show however I didn't include this in the show however I did have a competition where the presenters did ask the winner questions about the car that they just won it the competition but overall I did not have a planned interview in my podcast which is something that I would have if I was to make a podcast again as this could gain a wider reach from the audience as the person we would interview may have a large following on social media meaning their followers would want to listen to the podcast with them in it. The brief wanted to have the show to have bedding music and sound effects. I had lots of different sounds in the podcast for example a swoosh sound to signal to the audience members that the conversation is changing, I also then created a jingle for the show which made the podcast fit into the conventions of a podcast. The jingle said 'Welcome to Sheffield Live, You are listening to Horsepower Hour', this was successful as it created a friendly approach to the start of the show to bring the audience members in ready to listen to the show. Music was also added to the show to ensure that the show fits into the conventions of a radio show and the songs that I used were successful as they were upbeat and lively and created a good mood for the audience members. In the brief they also wanted me to have an advertisement area in the podcast. The advertisement was a good part of my show as it fit into there conventions and genre of a car based podcast as the advertisement was about a new car that was coming out available to buy soon. I think that the voice actor that I used for the advertisement worked very well as they spoke in a posh way and formal way which is what I needed for this advertisement as the are is aimed towards a Ab audience as the cars are very expensive so a formal voice worked well.

Another positive of my final production of my Horsepower Hour podcast was the editing software that I used to edit the final copy of the podcast. I used a professional graded software called Adobe Audition which is designed just to edit audio so this was perfect to edit the audio together and I was able to change things such as the volume of each audio file and I was able to created fades to fade in and out of songs and advertisement breaks. This software was successful to use and nothing went wrong when using the software and I learnt the software first and practised before editing the final copy of the podcast. The actual production of there show was successful as everything was organised and all my presenters came to the specific locations on time and no one let me down. The equipment that I used when recoding the podcast was successful, I mainly used my iPhone to record the audio which already has a good microphone on it and captured the audio very well and clear, however later on in the production for the competition part I decided to use small clip on microphone that I bought which connected to my iPhone to record the audio, the microphone helped to make the audio sound clearer. If I was to produce a podcast again I would use microphone throughout the whole of the production so that all of the audio that I collect sounds the same and nothing it at different levels of quality. 

LO4 Final radio production

 Final Radio Production 

https://youtu.be/B9dMdpMCaFk

This is the final version and completed version of my Horsepower Hour podcast that I have produced for UNIT 14, use the link above to access the podcast and to listen to it. 

LO4 Offline edit

 Offline Edit 

This is my offline edit for my podcast which is called Horsepower Hour. 

LO4 Editing and reviewing content

 Editing and reviewing content 

Editing jingle and opening to the show 

Here you can see the evidence of how I have edited together the jingle for my show with the analogue side of it as well. I started of in wave form on Adobe Audition where I cut down the bits of the audio that I didn't need to have in as these bits were normally just waiting to start talking or just stuff not happening. I then took the edited audio which says 'Welcome to Sheffield live, This is horsepower hour' and added it to multitrack where I will be editing all of the different scenes together to produce the whole podcast show

 The next step I took was by adding my copyright free song to make the jingle come together and make it sound how I want it to. I purposely used a copyright free soundtrack to avoid any copyright issues.  In Audition I then clipped it down and removed any parts of the track that I didn't want in the jingle such as the parts which are not lively enough. The next step I took was by adding small dots to the volume side of the soundtrack which allowed me to add a fade into the track which then faded into full volume when the analogue is getting said in the jingle and then finally I made it so that the soundtrack would fade out as the analogue stops. 

LO4 Evidence of setting up equipment and recording

 Recording footage for the advert and jingles 

Here you can see my voice actor Mrs Payne recording the advertisement segment for the podcast and also the jingles sound. In these photographs you can see that my voice actor is reading of the script which I produced for the podcast about cars. I recorded these sounds with the voice actor in the recording studio at school which is a good place to ensure no background sound is recorded and ruins the footage. The production of the advertisement recording worked well for my podcast because we had a sound proof recording studio meaning that barely any background sound was coming into the room affecting the footage when recording for the advertisement. The organisation of this scene for the podcast worked well as you can see in the screenshot the voice actor had a printed script which was used for the voice actor to read of to ensure they knew what they were saying for the scene. 

In these screenshots above you can see how me and my other presenter have set up the scrip on the MacBook in-front of us and we used a modern day iPhone with a very good microphone on it to record us for specific scenes of the show. Due to technological convergence I decided that it was easier to read of a MacBook over reading of a piece of paper of the script because the rustling of the script when turning the page would ruin the sound quality and would mean the audience can hear the presenters as well. The use of not using a script printed of worked very well for the production when recording the audio for the main scenes in the podcast. Another successful part of the production was that we had the iPhone which I recorded sat next to the MacBook which we read of to read the script. 

I have purposely took a screenshot of the iPhone camera which I then put into the video mode as I would be recording our voices and not taking photographs. You can see on this screenshot the simple red button that you press to start recording and then this goes straight to your camera roll allowing me to airdrop it over to my MacBook where I will be editing the audio for the podcast on the Adobe software called Audition. Using the iPhone to record the audio for the podcast was successful as this piece of equipment as it is very modern and has a good microphone in it which allowed me to capture crisp clear audio for the podcast. 

On the screenshot above you can see how I have organised all of my different content that is going to be in the podcast in different segments including one folder for the jingle sound, one of the evidence of how I have edited content in Adobe Audition, one for the advertisement scene in the podcast, one for the competitions and finally one folder with all the main content in the podcast. Having all the audio files for the podcast in a organised folder was successful when editing the podcast in the post production stage as I can easily find the audio which I need for each scene of the podcast. 

In this screenshot you can see how I have got all of my crew who are in the competition scene for the podcast. You can see how we have gathered around the desk in my house with my MacBook positioned infront of the presenters and competition winners as I used the MacBook to display the script for everyone to read of as this is more effective than using a paper script as there is less chance of creating background sound which could of been paper moving around and effecting the quality of the sound. 

Here you can see how I have set up the small microphone which I used in some of the scenes which helped to gain more clearer audio and to help capture just the actors voices and not any background sound. The object on the left of the photograph is the transmitter which plugs into my iPhone which was used to capture the audio onto. The microphone was wireless and connects to the bluetooth transmitter which plugs into the phone.