How did I use media technologies in the contruction and research, planning and evalution stages?

How did I use media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stage

 

During the  construction of my work i used final cut pro to edit my raw recording into something more substantial. 

During the construction of my poster and feature i used both In Design and Photo shop to edit and create my layouts.

Mainly all my research was based on information gathered by the Internet and first had information from previous life stories or films I had previously watched. I attempted to create a face book page for my radio drama however being new to face book my self i had some difficulty gathering enough friends in time to actually view and leave feedback on my blog. Instead i created a link to my blog for whoever gets to see it in due time.

ME : Editing

This is a recording of me edting my selected section of the radio drama. In this video i cover the techniques that have been required for this specific section and choices i have made whilst editing.
ENJOY!

Natalie clip.mov

What have you learned from your audience feedback

What have you learned from your audience feedback?

During the production of my radio drama as well as my poster I worked in a drop in class where various student from different courses gathered I asked some of them for their views on my work and here are some quotes form what they had to say

"I did enjoy the comedy value however i think it was too short and a bit rushed for all the drama that it included."

Unfortunately this is not feedback that i could act upon because we were given a certain amount of time for our radio dramas so extending it is not an option. I believe that the rushed quality it has adds to the drama and in turn gives the audience an empathetic feel.

I also asked a lady who had experience with dramas and script writing she said that
" The comedy aspect was immediately evident and the characters showed commitment to the roles that were playing.

I believe this was achieved by taking opinions into consideration within the group by doing this everyone feels involved and also enjoys the work they are doing when they feel they are playing a significant role without keeping this into consideration this feedback would not exist.

Paige, Jo, Natalie clip.mov

How effective is the combination of my main product and ancillary texts?

Green black and white were the three main colours i used for my poster and double page spread . The colour green connotates jelousy and I wanted to highlight the relationship between the rivals Lauren and Vivienne. However the Genre of my radio drama is comedy so i decided to use a liem green instead of a darker shade to portray the comedy quality which my radio drama includes. I decided to use the same title style for both feauture and poster, I used it in place of a Logo so that my radio drama has something it can be recognized by. Unlike most radio drama's my feauture did not revolve around the main character mainly because she is predictable as most prolatirats are. I believe that Vivienne the rival adds the comedy value to our radio drama so I created a feature based on her including a poster and Exclusive interview with the "REAL" Vivienne de la Boosh. This is where i took the previous feedback into consideration by revealing the real gender of our vivienne which i previously hoped would be an ongoing mystery for the audience.

Bothe my poster and feauture played different roles in terms of advertising my radio drama. The aim of my poster was to grab my audiences attention by including vibrant colours, bold text and important information. I beleieve my poster is quite informative as well as eye catching.

My feauture on the other hand was meant to only inform the audience and tell them more about my radio drama. However i believe My feauture is not effective in that area because it lacks text and body. However it does use the conventions of colour and consistency which lets my audience know that they are advertising the same product.

I created two final posters. the first had Fashion sketches in the background and a scissors cutting through it representing the role Vivienne plays in Lauren's life. The scissors represents Vivienne and the sketches in the background represents Lauren's dreams to make it in fashion. I decided to use sketches for the background to make my poster to look more ethnic. most media products based around comedy involve hand made sketches to make it look less uniform and give it more character. However my image was too pixelated to use for a final so i decided to use a green silk fabric for the background. Not only does this fit into my colour scheme and story line/ pitch. It also gives it an sophisticated look.

Evaluation

In What ways does my media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

Before planning my radio drama i researched into radio dramas and their conventions such as attributes of the voice, music, sound effects and significant silence. I looked at the specific radio dramas such as the Hitch hikers guide to the galaxy, twilight zone, The archers and their conventions. The radio dramas that i would say have influenced me the most out of that list would be The archers and a bit of The hitch hikers guide to the galaxy. 

The archers has a soap quality. what i mean by that is, it consists of real life stories and affairs that we can relate to, with my target audience being young ladies to young women that is an important quality to keep into consideration as women like things they can relate to, when media products have this quality they are more than likely to sell their products as their target audience feels as if they have been understood. I believe the convention of the voice and regional identity plays a major role in this outcome. Generally people of middle class feel more comfortable being in conversation with people who speak informally because it provides a laid back atmosphere to build conversation on. The archers consists of a range of regional accents and some voices which are formal. i believe this was done to represent the progress in education over the year and that many people would rather associate themselves with people who speak formally as they are stereotypically linked to success although this may not be appealing for the middle class audience, it may increase the audience as a whole by reaching a wide range of social classes and in all uniting them with the element of life which is represented in the story lines which we can all relate to.

The Hitch Hikers guide to the galaxy as well as War of the world have been quite successful radio dramas due to their great use of sound effects. Sound effects play a major role in radio dramas especially because the story line can not be expressed visually which means more imagination is required from the listeners. For some this isn't as easy as it may be for others which is when the assistance of sound effects becomes handy. I listed The hitch hikers guide to galaxy as inspiration instead of War of worlds because the intensity of the sound effects can be easily compared. This may be due to the year in which it was released where technology has advanced greatly making radio dramas seem more realistic. I used sound effects a lot in my drama because its a comedy.

I challenged the use of Sound effects as i added certain sound effects for comedy purposes only not just to make my drama realistic.

Here is a clip that i have edited

Another convention I have challenged is my choice of language. We chose to do this so that our characters and the situation they are and in turn their responses to them can be related to by our target audience.

Another convention i have challenged is the use of silence. We used silence to create a dramatic effect in the last runway walk and reveal of the sabotaged dress. The only sound effect used were slow footsteps we did this to create suspense and keep the audience intrigued. We also used silence to break up the scenes. during our feedback they did say that our silent sections were the longest. however i believe this was necessary due to the nature of our radio drama being a comedy built around the fashion industry. The long gaps were needed to allow the audience to recollect previous scenes and also let the storyline unfold in their minds to keep them following. it is also used for clarity to show there is a new scene being involved. our scenes have been chosen depending on a change of setting or to show a substantial period of time has past.

Group feedback and alterations

Our radio drama was played to a panel of media student in higher education. They were asked to give each drama a score out of 10 and also give us feedback on how we can inprove our dramas. The panel gave Rough cut (our drama)  9's they said that the comedy value was definately there and they also suggested that Viviene should remain a man to make the drama more intereting. some of my teammemebers liked this view and took it on board. However i was not that open to the idea. Mainly it wasn't our initail vision for it. However because the panel hve been there before and know what thewir talking about i did take their feedback on board but decided to make Vivienne a Drag that way it would not complicarte the drama or confuse my target audience.

ANCILLARY TASK: NEWSPAPER ADVERT

 After the Funeral: A BBC Full-Cast Radio Drama (BBC Audio Crime) (CD) 

By: Agatha Christie (Author), John Moffatt (Narrator) and Full Cast (Narrator) 

• This is a crime radio drama
• Twisted plot about a deadly family mystery being unravelled
• colours used brown connotes historic/ rustic which represents the story line very well as it is a crime. the brown also connotes mud implying something will be dug up or revealed from he past

Rough cut

I then moved on to fashion magazines but came to a dead end that is when we came up with Rough Cut. siginifies Lauren's personality. Everyone is rough at the edges and has something if not a feature that is not quite perfect whether it be personality or aqppearnace because we wanted Lauren to be a character our target audience can relate to we wanted her to be as inperfect and natural as possible instead of perfect.

There is also the connotation to fashion with rough cutting of materials or fabrics.

Recording production: Part 2

WHO IS DOING WHAT???

Now we are all ready to start recording we needed to decide which roles each member in the group is to take on. We all decided that Jo should be Lauren because she is soft spoken and plays the role naturally.

During the reading of the script in front of the class we asked one of our class members Jo (boy) to act our Chris' character and he did a very good job of it, so we asked him to play the role for our recording as well.

We were now left with three more characters; Vivienne, Jeffrey and our less important characters like the radio reporter, model and the Vogue Editor, which are roles anyone can do including our already existing actors.

Character Vivienne was who i was most concerned about. We made her a very strong character with an accent and i didn't want her character to be altered in any way. So I asked my cousin to play the role of Vivienne. My cousin's first language is french so her accent is very strong and accurate. She loves drama and does write plays as well as act in her spare time having someone like her to the team has a lot of advantages not only because she's french but she can also give us her opinion on the drama and Vivienne's character that can make our radio drama better.

Personally i didn't want to take on a role in the radio drama mainly because i really enjoyed being behind the desk in the recording room and learning how everything worked. I think the best way to truly monitor how effective the radio drama is, is by being behind the desk and watching it take form that way i can see the drama from the target audiences point of view.

Having two people behind the desk is even more effective because you then have a second opinion and then as a group review work done and see which areas need improving.


After some complication and clashes in lesson timetables my cousin was proven not to be a good candidate for Vivienne so we asked our form teacher Stephen to take her place.

Radio Production: Part 1

Recording studio induction

Today our teacher gave us an induction in the recording studio. He took us through the switches and process of recording.






 

The first thing he told us was to make sure that we changed the initial settings so that whatever we do record will automatically be sent to our groups folder. doing this reduces the risk of loosing waste and efficiently saving time.





We were shown how to record and we took turns in recording in the booth and working on the switches. When i was in the recording booth we were told to do a practise run to make sure everything is running smoothly. We were told to practise this whenever recording our radio drama before doing the real thing. When i was in the recording booth i realised that every single sound was picked up by the microphone. This worried me a bit because it could sabotage our recordings. The recording studio room is located right next to the ladies toilets and the hand dryer is constantly used which would also cause trouble. So our teacher suggested some tips that may help.


 TIP NO. 1

Lay script out before recording separated each page to avoid touching it.


TIP NO. 2

Put sign on recording studio door that says

• recording in session 
• please do not disturb 
• silence

TOP TIP

PLACE AN OUT OF
ORDER SIGN ON THE
DRYER TO PREVENT
RUDE INTERRUPTIONS

Colours and Language

These are the colours that i believe have connotations to the radio dramas theme and the relationships between the main characters.

• Red: connotates anger which could describe the emotions between the two rivals Lauren and Vivienne

• Green: connotates envy/ jelousy again words that relate to the feud between our protagonist and adversary.

• Black: As well as connotating darkness it also connotates sophistication which is what to be expected in the fashion industry

• Purple: Is known to be an luxurious colour a positive correlation with the fashion industry

• Grey: To me connotates uniform this is relevant to the lifestyle and attitude everyone would expect from Lauren being in the industry and her struggle to fit in. It could also mean an extra meaning. For instance 'everything is not black and white' or 'Reading between the lines'

• Blue: The connotation of sadness relating to the sad events that occur in Lauren's life which keeps our target audience empathetic towards her character.

There is usually a stereotypical relationship made between fashion and France- Paris known as the place of fashion for this reason translating these colours in French could give us an ideal radio drama title.

• Red = Rouge
• Green= Vert
• Black= Noir
• Purple= Violet
• Grey= Gris
• Blue= Bleu

Radio drama title research

We realised that the title for out radio drama was a bit misleading.

The initial title was Village girl however Lauren is not from a village and never has been, she is just a quiet individual trying to break loose in the fashion industry. The main theme of our story is 2 women who are rivals fighting for success in the spotlight of the fashion industry. So our radio drama should reflect rivalry, fashion, success, or Lauren's life as she is the main character. Whatever we decide on must be subliminal and make listeners think and grab their attention. This is the only piece of information as well as a brief overview/summary of what to expect from the drama- Therefore it has to be good.

To begin my search i decided to look at 'fashion slang' websites to hopefully find fashion terminology that describes our radio drama. I came across two useful websites and found two possible titles.

Website number 1:

Website number 2:

Initially I thought something original like Fashion would be okay for a drama title. but after looking at TV dramas such as Eastenders, The Bill, Holby City, and radio drama such as the Archers I saw that it covers a range of individuals living or residing in the place the drama is named after. In this case we have a set Adversary and Protagonist If we were to name it after something so broad like the fashion industry it would be misleading as our audience would be expecting a wide range of characters and multiple story lines running at once, not that this can not be achieved in the long run, but i think it's best to relate the title to what we are offering our target audience at this very moment.

[ SCAN OF MIND MAP OF POSSIBLE NAMES]