Radio Production Progress: Final Piece!

Today is the hand in date for the Group Radio Project! Our radio as you have read on previous blog entries was about Banksy, we included and introduction/history,  interview and finished with a concluding section. The music we used was Teardrop by Massive Attack.

Here is the MP3 version of our group radio piece:



Here is the link to download the original WAV file

In comparison to professional pieces, I think it is clearer that we recorded in different locations as the same voice sounds different. The other thing that could be better about ours is the levels, as at points the music drowns the voice.

Other than that I am really happy with our piece, especially in terms of content. I think we chose an interesting subject and conveyed it in a manner that appeals to young people who would listen to student radio.

An Afternoon With The BBC...

I arrived over at Bath Uni at 1.30 and was briefed with the other 3 people on the "Production" team with events co-ordinator at the university Kate Pizzey who then introduced us to some of the BBC staff and specifically a woman called Steph (I didnt catch her last name). She took us over to the GB Wheelchair Basketball Team and two of the BBC Points West presenters (Will Glennon and John Maguire)  in order to sort out our role for the show. They were preparing for a section of the show where the "amateur" news presenters would take on the professional wheelchair basketballers.

What surprised me at the start was how close and friendly everyone on the BBC team was from the presenters to the crew thay were all very friendly and on first name terms.

At around 2.30pm they began the dress rehearsal, another thing I noticed here was that the flexibility on the show. Though they had a set script and quite strict timings, it turned out setting up the wheelchair basketball set took longer than the script allowed and as it was a live show the presenters had to come up with more to fill the time.

When it came to the real show our group were assigned the extra task of clearing the set after the choir sung during the opening. Though our "starring" role was setting up the wheelchair basketball as smoothly as possible behind the presenting of another award.

Though our role wasnt very big it was really interesting just to be there, see the amount of work and people needed to make the show run smoothly. They had big screens at either end and I picked up on the interview shots used that we learnt earlier on the course. Technically speaking too it all ran very smoothly in terms of correct mic output. At times some of the levels were low but that was mainly when the presenter was sharing the microphone with the interviewee.

I feel like I got a lot out of observing the day and would love to be a part of further productions like this.

Pictures of all the winners can be found here on the BBC West website and a video round up of the show can be found here.

Radio Production Progress: Final Editing

Today we completed our editing of One Nation Under Art: Banksy!





After using the Automation tool on Logic Pro, we Merged our audio tracks down to one track and exported it as a WAV file.

Happy days!

The only thing we have left to do now is submit the file for assessment by Tuesday =]

Radio Production Progress: Editing Session

Monday 30th November

Today we met up in the Gatehouse and assigned ourselves sections of our recordings to edit. I took the Introduction and Conclusion, Carlina looked at the History/Bio Section and Ant has started work on the Interview section.

We have each worked through and basically edited our sections for breaths, pops and any slip ups.

Our next stage is to piece all of the pieces together and set the levels with the backing track.

As an extra play around I took a piece of recording Carlina did of the phrase "One Nation Under Art" and put it through various filters to try and add something to our current jingle. We did not end up using it as it sounded too much "like a Dalek" but it gave me a chance to have a go with the different filters and how they affect audio.

I applied distortion, modulation and pitch shift but the final product wasn't really fitting with the ambiance of the rest of our radio piece.

Final Cut Pro

In todays session using Google Documents  I created an instructional slideshow on the basic tools/uses with Final Cut Pro.

We used screen shots from Final Cut Pro using clips loaded onto the Macs.

Google Documents

As a class in Tuesdays session we created a collective document using Google Documents.

Here is a video from You Tube explaining basically the purpose of Google Documents:



This is our final slideshow about copyright...I think the fluffy cat adds that certain something to the presentation!

Radio Production Progress: Team Meeting 24th Nov

Tues 24th Nov, 2.15pm, Gatehouse

Present: Ant, Carlina, Kirsty

Not Present: N/A

Progress Summary: K had no replies from any of the teachers contacted at Sion Hill, so having to re think interviewees. Chosen 2 students (as it is still fitting with being a student radio production)

Action Points:

• Sort out when and who is booking out equipment
• Have recordings done by the end of the week
• Plan what we want to include in the summarising minute of the programme

Next Meeting:  Fri 27th Nov

Soundscape Assessment

I chose to do my soundscape of shopping, through my recording I found it leaned more towards supermarket shopping.



Here is the link to download my finished edit.

The problems I found during the recording that as I was always recording in crowded areas there was a lot of background noise and I found it hard to get clear cut sounds such as till beeps.

I found the editing stage quite easy to do once I got into it, but it was most difficult knowing where to start! I wanted to tell a story in that it starts by someone getting out cash, their trip to the shops (fom quiet to quite chaotic) and ending with them leaving. I did not aim to make it sound realistic which is why the middle section is a jumble of sounds.

Hope you like it, comments welcome!
=]

Panorama Ephemera vs Brian Eno

n todays session we practiced using Final Cut Pro to edit together footage from Panorama Ephermera together with the song America Is Waiting by Brian Eno&David Byrne:


Taking sections of our choice from the film we took a one minute section of the film and edited together using a sequence. Using FCP we used tools such as markers, making subclips and editing audio levels as well as adding some effects.

The main problem I had with the excercise was having to contstantly render the video in order to watch it during the editing process. In therms of the music there weren't many good hit points either which made it quite difficult to arrange the video sequences.

This however is what I came up with =]

Ephemera vs David Byrne from Kirsty F on Vimeo.

Radio Production Progress: Script for Biography

As part of our radio show we will have a biography/history about Banksy, this is what I have come up with within the context of the programme!

[Jingle&intro]

[Bio]

The first question we need to answer is: who is Banksy? Well, officially no one knows though there are rumours his real name is Robin Gunningham, though as with any guesses about his identity, Banksy denies all often replying with “I am unable to comment on who may or may not be Banksy, but anyone described as being 'good at drawing' doesn't sound like Banksy to me.”

What we do know is he is a graffiti artist originally from Bristol born in mid 1970's, who began by doing free hand work within the underground Bristol scene in the early 1990’s. In the late 90’s Banksy developed his renowned stencil work which got his work more noticed in both Bristol and London.

Though his artwork can now be found all over the world, it was not until October 2008 that Banksy had his first official public exhibition. Held in New York it opened on October 5th and was called “Village Pet Store And Charcoal Grill”. With only 8,500 visitors it is safe to say his more recent exhibition in Bristol was far more successful reaching that amount of visitors in the opening weekend and over 300000 over the 13 weeks the work was displayed.

Though Banksy is a non-profit artist, his pieces have sold for up to £290000 at auction to art fans and celeb fans including Christina Aguliera, Angelina Jolie, Jude Law and Keanu Reeves.

For an artist with such a high profile he is no stranger to controversy. Westminster City Council deemed his work graffiti and their policy is to remove any graffiti regardless of creator or their reputation. So in April 2009 his piece “One Nation Under CCTV” was painted over just a year after it was painted. The political undertone of his work is also often seen as unsavoury, however on more than one occassion the public have given overwhelming supporting to keeping his work up in their area.

But what we really want to find out now is what does Banksy mean to you?

[Vox pops]

[Concluding minute]

Radio Production Progress: Team Meeting

As I was the only one present  in this afternoons session I had a meeting with our tutor Mike to discuss the progress being made within the project. At the start of the session we were told about group work and how to take minutes of meetings so here are the minutes of my "group" meeting.

 

10th November 2.30pm, Gatehouse

Attending: Kirsty, Mike

Not attending: Carlina, Ant

Agenda:

• Discuss progress
• Assign action points to group members
• Set deadlines
• Set time/place for next meeting

Progress summary: Structure for radio show has been set, Kirsty has started scripting the biography section, Carlina has started work on the interview question, Ant has arranged at least one interviewee

Action Points:

• K: Finish biography by 11/11 then try and contact interviewee's
• C: Script interview/vox pop questions
• A: Find&confirm interviewee's
• As a group: Set recording dates and book equipment

Deadlines: After looking at the final deadline (8th December) we worked backwards and set the following dates as guidelines to have completed certain tasks.

• Record interviews week beginning 16th November
• Finish recording 20th November
• Editing process 27th November
• Aim to finish by 4th December
• Final Deadline 8th December

Next Meeting: Thurs 13th November

Radio Production Progress: Banksy

On Tuesday we pitched our idea for our programme to Mike and Holly, we got their approval and some additional comments so the next step is to start planning our recording schedule.

The following things need to be completed before we can actually go out recording:

• Script the opening 2 minutes of introduction and Banksy biography
• Come up with an opening jingle
• Contact people we wish to interview/do vox pop with
• Plan what questions we wish to ask

The final conclusion minute of the programme probably wont be able to be written until we have gathered our recordings from people as we cannot predict at this stage what they are going to say.

In terms of stages of recording I see us needing 3 sessions:

1. Recording the opening section
2. Going out and recording the interviews/vox pops
3. Recording the concluding minute

This will of course be followed by the editing process which may be quite time consuming!

Warning Photomontage Final

The excercise was this: Your montage should demonstrate an understanding of the narrative affect of combining images.  Duration 90 seconds to 120 seconds.

 

Using Final Cut Pro, I put together my photomontage which lasts around 1min 53secs. My pictures were taken on a day trip to Bristol and the song I have used is Warning by Green Day.

I found it difficult to decide which transitions I wanted to use, as I thought simply using straight cuts between photos would look rather amateur. Also with using a song that is quite well known I didn't want it to look too tacky.

This is my final piece uploaded to Vimeo, comments welcome =]

Warning Photomontage from Kirsty F on Vimeo.

Soundscape Progress

The next stage in making my soundscape is to come up with a list of the sounds I want to capture and after that I need to schedule when I am going to get them recorded in order to make the most of my time with the equipment.

As my soundscape is about shopping I want to get the following sounds and where I plan on recording them:

• General high street crowd noise: Bath high street/Southgate shopping centre
• Bell when door opens: Bakery on Chelsea Road, Bath (with their permission)
• Scanner noise/beep: Sainsburys (or generated in Logic if there is too much background noise)
• Rustling shopping bags: at home
• Cash register&money: Bath Spa SU Shop (with their permission)
• Automatic doors opening: a shop in Southgate with auto doors.
• Tannoy announcements and tinny sounding shop music: Sainsburys often has tannoy announcements
• Sound of trolleys: Sainsburys
• Cars going to shops: any road in Bath

Montage Ideas

For my montage I am going to take the theme of warnings

I will mainly use still shots covering different warning signs and examples of when authority tells us what to do. To do this I want to get at least one shot of each of the following things:

• Road signs
• Warnings (e.g. wet floor signs)
• Pedestrian crossings
• Pay&display

For my song I will be using Warning by Green Day as the lyrics are very relevant and it also would give a light hearted look at the excessive amounts of warnings and direction we are given everyday. It may lead watchers to question whether they are really neccessary?

Radio Production: Banksy Research

For my radio production with Carlina and Ant we have chosen to do a piece on Banksy with the main aim of it being trying to answer the question "is it art or graffiti?"

So, for a bit of inspiration and a place to start I have done some research on the artist.

Banksy is an anonymous artist who is believed to be from Bristol. His work is often very topical on things to do with political and social issues.
Banksy started in the early 1990's as a freehand graffiti artist in the underground Bristol scene. After a few years he developed his work with stencils rather than just free hand as it took less time to create a piece.



One aspect that we want to include in our radio show is to take a look at his recent exhibition in the Bristol City Museum and Art Gallery it was his largest exhibition to date with over 8500 visitors on opening weekend and a grand total of over 300000 visits during its 12 week stay.

Here is a compilation of clips found on Youtube relating to the event:


Controversy
Keep Britain Tidy spokesperson Peter Gibson is one who considers Banksy's work graffiti, even going as far as to say it is "simple vandalism". Another spokesperson from the organisation Diane Shakespeare goes one step further in saying: "We are concerned that Banksy's street art glorifies what is essentially vandalism".
This article by Charlie Brooker also goes to some lengths of rubbishing Banksy.

Beatsystem

On first listening to Beatsystem by Beatsystem, I immediatiely thought of a church, mainly due to the sounds of bells. To begin with it sounds more sombre and serious, but it does continue to sound more joyful.
This immediate association to churches made taking photos of a couple of different churches in Bristol the perfect idea!
As the music at the start feels quite cold I also include some other images that give a sense of loneliness and the cold.
Using Final Cut Pro in Fridays session, this is the montage I created:

3 Russians Walk Into A Blog...

...and each have made an impact of cinema. Okay so that wasn't a joke, but you cant blame a girl for trying...

Sergei Eisenstein     (1898-1948)

Eisenstein is often referred to as the "father of montage" he is a leading figure in the modern cinematic form. It was in his 1924 film Stachka that he first showed what he called "dubbed montage". This contained a series of conflicting images which aimed to overlap symbolic meanings, who's emotional effect on the audience was more powerful than the individual images themselves. Eisenstein became a scholor at the Moscow film school where he wrote essays about montage and motion picture direction.

Here is an example of one of his montages from his film Oktiabr:

 

Dziga Vertov    (1986-1954)

Highly influenced by Marxism he was a strong believer "that the impartial eye of the camera is far better suited to recording and organizing the truth than the subjective and often faulty human eye". His films provided a reflection on Soviet 'reality' and were often seen as highly poetic. An element of this is that came out later in his career is that he wanted the viewer to identify himself through the filmmaking process.

His most famous film would be Man With The Movie Camera which was filmed in the Ukraine with Lev Kuleshov.

 

Lev Kuleshov     (1899-1970)

What Kuleshov is probably most famous for is the Kuleshov Effect where he juxtaposed an expression less actor against several different pieces of footage of various items creating an emotional piece. The concept of the montage was very important to Kuleshov and said that it is not neccessarily the content of the film that is important but actually the way it is structured and put together. Therefore when looking at montage theory he is a very important person to consider.
He worked with Eisenstein and Vertov on films in the late 1920's such as The Man with a Movie Camera.

Here is a short video of Alfred Hitchcock going some way of explaining the Kuleshov effect:

"Do I Really Need..." Proposal

This is my proposal for my television programme "Do I Really Need..."

Everyone wants to be up to date with the latest technologies, they want to have the newest, fastest most powerful peices of equipment. To an extent they are all just fashion accessories but effectively they aid how we live our every day lives. As quickly as something is released, something newer comes along and in this day and age its important to keep up with the changes.

I propose to make a consumer show which will in each seperate episode will take a certain piece of technology, for example the iPhone. It will take a look at the brief history, the pro's and cons of it, the alternatives and a conclusion as to whether you do really need it. The production will take both expert opinion as well as vox pops from the public to find out what people truly think of the technology in question.

Not only will my production aim to inform which technologies are best to have and where the future lies for them but it also provides decision making. In the current economical climate people dont want to be wasting thier money on flashy technology that will go out of date within a couple of months.

The programme is aimed at anyone from teenagers up to late 40's, the main consumers of technologies. It aims to be informative and will be delivered in a way that can be understood by all ages and isn't just filled with technical jargon aiming to impress/confuse.

From my production I hope it can help people of all ages looking to invest in technologies make an informed decision about which products they will go out to buy. It will be delivered in a relatively light hearted tone to keep it entertaining but will include all the facts and information required to keep it informative.

Voice Over Editing

In todays session we looked at editing an audio file, we were all given the same file accessed from Minerva containing a voiceover describing how to use the Sony Z1 cameras.

Using Logic Pro on the Macs it was a process of going through the unedited file and taking out any mistakes, breaths and just any other bits we would not want to include in a final edit.

I opened the .aif file in Logic and began working through the audio. Using the scissor tool I was able to "cut out" sections and then delete them. On occassion Richard Wood (the man providing the voice over) would mess up and then repeat a section of the text, so cutting out and deleting the mess up it was just a case of moving the rest of the clip back into place, effectively joining up the gaps made by deleting bits.

After editing the clip, I "glued" all the sections of audio back together to create one audio track. After doing this I could then use "normalise" to normalise the levels of the track as a whole.

The next step was to export the file as a .wav file and then put it through another programme called Levelator.  It is a free programme used to automatically balance audio levels.

My final piece sounds something like this, I have also uploaded the original version so that you can hear the difference between the two files.

The Film Programme: Radio Content

I have been set the task of looking at the content of a radio documentary/programme. The one I have chosen to look at is a podcast from The Film Programme, it was released this week by BBC Radio 4 and talks to Terry Gilliam

The Film Programme, is a weekly programme broadcast on a Friday and it is hosted by Francine Stock.

The content of the show was structured as follows:

• Standard BBC Podcast jingle
• Francine Stock giving brief intro/history of Gilliam
• Clip from his new film The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus featuring Heath Ledger
  
• Stock speaking of Ledger's death and the effect on Gilliam's filming
• Interview between Gilliam and Stock about how the film came about and the concept of the "imaginarium"
• Another clip from film then fade back to interview about cast
  
• Continuation of interview talking more about Ledgers death and how it changed him & the film.
• Questions from Stock to Gilliam about how other actors getting involved.
• Stock talks to Gilliam about future projects
• Further clip from film
• Interview continues to compare his work
• Gilliam discussing the state of Hollywood
• Interview ends with clip from film
• Stock closes programme with what is going on in next weeks programme.

The programme has quite a simple structure and if it werent for the clips from the films they are talking about it would be quite monotonous, however it does have very in depth interviews and is very informative considering it only lasts between 25-30mins.

Soundscapes

The Wikipedia definition of a soundscape is :

A soundscape is a sound or combination of sounds that forms or arises from an immersive environment.

 A soundscape is something that allows us to picture a scene or environment through sound and without us actually having to see it. It can tell a story or just be a general insight into a place.

A key figure in soundscaping is Raymond Murray Schafer, more commonly known as R. Murray Schafer. He was an author, composer, musical educator as well as an environmentalist.

Schafer suggests that there are 3 elements to a soundscape:

• Keynote Sound A keynote means the same here as it does when talking about any music, a keynote is that which defines the key of a piece.
  
• Sound Signals Are the sounds that stand out to us and we probably pay more attention to, for example sirens or alarm bells.
  
• Soundmark Similar to the term landmark it means a sound that is specific to a place.
  

A simple example of how to build a soundscape can be found here.

Vox Pops

According to Wikipedia, the definition of a vox pop is:

Vox populi (pronounced /ˈvɒks ˈpɒpjʊlaɪ/), a Latin phrase that literally means voice of the people, is a term often used in broadcasting for interviews with members of the "general public".

 So put simply, a vox pop involves having several interviewees, often in a public place (perhaps relating to the news story/question itself) giving a spontaneous opinion on a given topic of concern or question.

To make this explanation a little clearer here is an example of a vox pop from a northern news programme:




As we can see, from a  technical perspective they are often shot with a medium close up shot with there being no evidence that there is an interviewer (though in this case there was an introduction) as each person is asked the same question there is no need for one.

The aim is to get a variety of responses and is particularly used on the news particularly on local stories in order to gauge a range of opinion.

A good checklist on making sure your vox pop is well filmed can be found on the BBC Training Website.

A vox pop isn't purely restricted to television though, radio interviews can also be structured in a vox pop style. The presenter of the radio programme may introduce the question and then peoples responses are edited together in the same way as is done on television. There are different things to take into consideration for example whether you want background noise or not, but in terms of content the two are very similar.

Do I Really Need...

As part of our project production lesson a couple of weeks ago we looked at the ways we think of ideas.

One of the tasks we were set was to come up with an idea for a 15 minute television programme to be aired on a channel similar to BBC3. All we were given to start our ideas was that the title of the programme would be "Do I Really Need..."

With only this and the target audience in mind I came up with the idea of doing a short informative technology/gadget programme similar to Channel 5's The Gadget Show or- looking further back- BBC's Tommorows World.

An example of a show could be "Do I Really Need...Blu-Ray". The show would run in the following format:

• Introduction to blu-ray: what it means/what it is and does/how it developed etc. It would be wrong to assume every person watching knows about the technology.
• The pro's and con's of the technology, including some brief interviews with the public to get their opinion on it.
• The other options currently available (e.g. HD DVD) and whether they are considered better or not.
• The future of blu-ray and general DVD format.
• Conclusion: whether it is worth having/using blu ray.

Other technologies could be: iPhone, HD/LCD TV's, iPod, mobile phone, laptop, a digital camera.

I think this concept could work quite well as a series as there are many areas to cover and also as with the The Gadget Show because technology is always changingthe programme could be revisited after a few months with a new set of technology to focus on.

Sound&Vision 9th Oct

In todays session we had our first attempt at doing some stop-take animation working in a team of 3. I worked with Mandy and Simon and we came up with the idea of using a stuffed toy and telling its story of eating some crisps...it was just before lunch that I thought of this (maybe I was hungry!).



I think the end 5 seconds work the best because by that point we had got into the rhythm of it and also had worked out how little to move the toy and the crisp packet without it looking too jumpy.

Welcome to my blog!

Well hello there.
My name is Kirsty and this is my blog for Media Production FdA.
I dont want to sound too cheesey or nerdy so will cut this first post quite short!

On our induction week we went out on a photo marathon in Bath, the categories of our photo's were set by our tutor Mike  and we had to take the photos in order, which with a hangover can make your mind boggle a bit! The categories were: autumn, activity, colour, water, repetition, musical, light, contrast, decay, self portrait, old and flash.
This is my result of the expedition:



Can't wait to get started on the projects =]