A2 Media 2010 : Radio Coursework Introduction

This blog will contain my A2 Media Radio coursework. 

A2 MEDIA 2010: RADIO 
NORTHAMPTON COLLEGE
KIERAN JONES
JON05113800

The History of Radio and Important Milestones.

Towards the end of the 19th century many scientists and experimenters began researching into wireless communications, Many different experiments led to the development and introduction of radio and communication systems that we know of today.

In 1831, Michael Faraday began experimenting on electromagnetic induction and discovered that electromagnetic forces could extend into the empty space around a conductor, James Clerk Maxwell extended this experiment between 1861 and 1865. In April 1872 William Henry Ward received a US Patent for radio development and in 1872 Mahlon Loomis also received a US patent for a "Wireless Telegraph" however both Mahlon's and William's inventions could not yet transmit or receive radio waves. Many other scientists have explored the theory of wireless radio including Edison, Hertz and Stubblefield.

In 1901 the very first broadcast was made by Marconi between Cornwall, England to Newfoundland, Canada. People were amazed with this experiment as it was the first ever wireless transatlantic message ever made, However it was not voice sent over instead Morse code was sent.

In 1922 Radio broadcasts started from 2MT in Chelmsford on the AM Frequency. The British Broadcasting Company was setup with agreement from the Post Office and other radio manufacturers, Daily broadcasts also began from a London radio station 2LO.

In 1923 the first valve wireless is put on sale and replaces the original crystal sets also the first edition of the Radio Times was released.

In 1927 and 1928 the British Broadcasting Company became the British Broadcasting Corporation and also American, Paul Galvin invented the Battery eliminator so radios can be installed into cars.

In 1932 the first BBC broadcast was made from Broadcasting house, with the BBC Dance orchestra with radio DJ Henry Hall in 1939 the BBC Home Service launches but sadly a bomb was dropped on the Broadcasting House in 1940, Killing seven people. By 1946 BBC's third programme launches and the first BBC FM broadcast was made from a transmitter in Kent.

1956 brought the first transistor radios to the UK making it possible to listen to the radio anywhere with portable radios and in 1957 the combined license fee was introduced costing £4 however a radio license was charged at £1.

Ten years later in 1967 BBC Radio One was introduced and the other existing radio stations were renamed Radios 2,3 and 4.

In 1971 the Radio license was abolished.

1973 brought the launch of Capital Radio.

In 1979 Conservative Government were elected with the idea to expand commercial radio, In 1989 the Government relaxes certain restrictions on commercial radio.

In 1990 BBC radio 5 started and in 1992 Radio Luxembourg closes down.

In 1994 BBC Radio 4 was renamed as Radio Five Live, Also in 1996 the Broadcasting Act begins planning for the launch of digital broadcasting including DAB Digital Radio.

In 1998 the first commercially available digital radio tuner was invented and made by Arcam and demonstrated in Scotland. Also Digital One was awarded a national digital broadcast license.

In 2001 the first digital portable radios were put on sale and in 2002 BBC launches five new digital radio networks including BBC 1Xtra, Five Live Sports Extra, 6 Music, BBC7 and the BBC Asian Network.

The History of Radio Drama And Notable Broadcasts

Radio drama is a style of storytelling that is broadcast on the radio. Radio drama contains no visual aids so solely relies on dialogue, sound effects and music alone to aid the listener to imagine the visuals in there own minds. 

Radio drama gained a huge popularity since it's first stages of development in the 1920s. In the 1940s, It was a leading player in the international entertainment industry until the release of television in the 1950s. Since then radio drama started to loose popularity and in some countries has never regained a large audience since. Some older radio broadcasts are still available to listen to via online download, archives or museums.

Today radio drama has a very little existence in the United States of America. However the United Kingdom still have largely popular radio drama shows such as Little Britain and The Archers. The BBC produces and broadcasts hundreds of new recordings each year on Radio 3, Radio 4 and BBC Radio 7. Radio 4 in particular broadcasts drama broadcasts in the afternoon in forms of dramatical plays and also a one off Friday evening play. BBC Radio 3 broadcast dramas on Sunday evenings and also reserve a slot for experimental drama called The Wire. Radio 7 usually broadcasts older archived programs however sometimes broadcast dramas in the categories of Thriller, Comedy and Science Fiction. 

The first recorded english spoken radio drama was titled "A Rural Line on Education" which was broadcast on the american radio station "KDKA" in Pittsburgh in the year 1921. One of the first drama broadcasts in the United Kingdom was the BBC's "Danger" by Richard Hughes in 1924 which was about a group of people who become trapped in a coal mine in wales. The first most influential radio broadcasts was the French "Marémoto" also known as "Seaquake" which was about a ship sinking before finally revealing that the characters were actually actors. This broadcast was later translated for both German and English broadcast by 1925. It was set to be aired on Radio-Paris on October 23, 1924 but was banned from being broadcast on french radio until 1937 due to the government believing that the SOS messages would be mistaken by coast guards as real distress signals. 

Americas most famous radio drama to be broadcast was the Orson Wells's "The War of the Words," in 1938 which was a recording of the H. G. Wells novel, This broadcast amazingly convinced many listeners that aliens from mars were actually attacking earth in several parts. The broadcast in total was 60 minuets long and consisted of simulated news bulletins which scared listeners into belief that martians had landed on earth. The broadcast was made more believable by cutting out all advertising breaks during its runtime. After the broadcast  there was alot of negative response and widespread anger as it was described as being cruel and deceptive. In the history of radio drama this piece could be considered to be one of the most famous pieces of all time. 


Another famous science fiction radio drama broadcasted a while after "The war of the Worlds" was The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy which first broadcast on the 8th of March 1978 until the 25th of June 2005 and is still broadcasted sometimes today. It broadcast a total of 26 episodes and was created by "Douglas Adams" who was an English writer from Cambridge. Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy was a Science Fiction-Comedy which was broadcast in both England and eventually America, The show won several awards including The Sony Award in 1979. 


Followed by "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy came The Twilight Zone which was an adaptation of the classic television series, It's first broadcast was in October 2002. The Twilight Zone was broadcast first in america and can be listened to online. Many of the stories are based on the same scripts Rod Serling had written for the original Twilight Zone series that aired on the television in the 1960's 

 

Since the 1st of January 1951 until present "The Archers" has been broadcasted on the radio with over 16,000 episodes, created by Godfrey Baseley "The Archers" is a 12 - 15 minute Soap Opera based in the United Kingdom, It was first broadcast on the BBC Light Program followed by the BBC Home Service and now BBC Radio 4. The Arches is now one of the world's longest running radio soaps, about people living the country life in England. 
Set in Ambridge in a fictional county called "Borsetshire" where the middle-class "Archers" family own "Brookfield Farm." The show is a story of the Archers life and daily dealings. 


My final radio drama to note was titles "Mrs Dale's Diary"  which is known as the first significant BBC radio drama. It was first broadcast on the BBC Light Programme on the 5th of January 1948 and later moved over to Radio 2 in 1967, It came to it's finale in 1967 on April the 25th.  A different episode was broadcast every weekday afternoon with a repeat the next day. 


Mrs Dale was a doctor's wife, who wrote a diary of her day to day middle-class life, They lived in a fictional suburb called "Parkwood Hill." The program was considered to be the first British radio drama to include a homosexual character acceptably with a leading part. It was very bizarre to have a gay character in Mrs Dale's diary as at the time of broadcast, homosexuality was still illegal in the United Kingdom.

Here is a short audio clip I have found on Youtube of Mrs Dale's Diary.

Radio Drama Production Diary: Log 1 - Thursday 22nd October 2009

First start date of this project, we first started to think of what style of recording we were going for film noir and then started to think of a recording name to go with the work. We began thinking of names for our Recording today and ended up with the name “Transgression” We started to plan the characters and start writing the first scene for the piece in brief detail. 

Radio Drama Production Diary: Log 2 - Thursday 29th October 2009 (Study Review Week)

Kieran Jones (me) and Simon Stanford meet up in a Coffee shop in Northampton Town to finish the script as college was closed, we spent a few hours writing the script and then finished for the day.

Radio Drama Production Diary: Log 3 - Thursday 5th November 2009

Today we Decided that our script was not long enough, Joe Hesketh and Abi Brennan added an extra scene onto the script whilst Kieran Jones and Simon Standford began Research On Film Noir style Radio Dramas. 

Radio Drama Production Diary: Log 4 - Thursday 12th November 2009

Today we all began to Record our piece in the Radio room-using soundtrack pro. We finished a scene and a half. 

Radio Drama Production Diary: Log 5 - Thursday 19th November 2009

Today we continued Recording our Piece from where we left off last week, We got to the end of the script and ran through it one more time to give use two tracks to work with when we start editing. 

Radio Drama Production Diary: Log 6 - Thursday 26th November 2009

Today we ran through our script in the radio room one more time so we had three tracks to work between. We then went into the Mac suite to begin editing our work with soundtrack pro, We spent today cutting out the parts we would DEFINATLY not be using.

Radio Drama Production Diary: Log 7 - Thursday 3rd December 2009

Today we started editing our recording further with soundtrack pro, we cut more work out that we would not need and started slicing parts that we wanted to separate. We also started to do rough sketches of what we wanted our poster to look like. 

Below are the two poster drafts I have designed (Fully Annotated), I will be working on both of them as final designs and choose which one of the two is my favorite design when they are digitalized.

                             POSTER DESIGN ONE                         POSTER DESIGN TWO

                                                           (CLICK POSTERS TO ENLARGE!) 

Radio Drama Production Diary: Log 8 - Thursday 10th December 2009

Today we started adding effects to the first scene of our recording, we also continued drawing drafts for our page spread listing. 

Radio Drama Production Diary: Log 9 - Thursday 17th December 2009

Today more editing work has been done on our recording; we have also began to search for useable sound effects on the web to use on our recording, we downloaded them and saved them into our folder.  This was our last lesson until the Christmas period was over. 

Radio Drama Production Diary: Log 10 - Thursday 7th January 2010

Today we started adding sound effects onto the recording and began working through the whole recording; we have been editing the levels of the sound and cutting parts out in smaller detail. 

Radio Drama Production Diary: Log 11 - Thursday 14th January 2010

Today we searched for a few more sound effects, we added more sound effects and background noise onto the track, we have also adjusted a lot of the audio level to try and keep it level the whole way through. We have done further research into Film Noir recordings. 

Radio Drama Production Diary: Log 12 - Thursday 21th January 2010

Today Kieran Jones, Simon Stanford, Abi Brennan and Joe Hesketh hired a digital camera from the Technician Office in the Media Department of College and began to take photographs to use for our final posters, I took a selection of photo's to digitally transform into silhouettes on Adobe Photoshop.

Once we had finished taking our photographs we returned back to the digital suite, put the photo's onto our hard-drives and began to work on what we have designed, Below is my final edited photograph to use on my poster and the original photograph that was taken.

THE ORIGINAL PHOTO:

THE EDITED PHOTO:

Radio Drama Production Diary: Log 13 - Thursday 28th January 2010

Today our group discussed the digitally manipulated image that was created last week, We have all decided that the image will not be used on the poster as it is no longer attractive to our tastes. At this point we split off as individuals to create/design our own separate posters and bring them back together at the end of the session.

I used the other draft that I drew out a few weeks back, I used a photograph that I had taken in the past of a friend, cut the image from her knees and just below her waist. After the image was cut I imported it to photoshop and made the image grayscale and added a number of effects and filters to modify the image. I also collected some images on a Pistol, Alcohol bottle and a set of playing cards and used the same process to digitally manipulate the images to make them my own.

I then put the three images together on adobe photoshop and added text and other images to create my poster, Below is my final image:

(CLICK TO ENLARGE) 

Radio Drama Production Diary: Log 14 - Thursday 4th March 2010

This thirsday we had a radio listening party during our lesson where we all got together to listen to each others work and give feedback and opinions on what was good and what needed to be improved, another group of students also came into the lesson to give feedback.

We presented ours and got a good collection of good feedback however we needed to finish of the ending with a "Next time on..." style of ending, followed by our "Production details" for example who plays who and who wrote the script. We have taken these points into consideration and will work on them in our next session.

Below is our most up to date recording of our drama peice.



NOTE: If you are trying to listen to this recording behind a firewall or college network, you might encounter problems as the host may be blocked!

Radio Drama Production Diary: Log 15 - Thursday 11th March 2010

Today in our radio media lesson I began work on designing my double page radio guide for our radio drama piece, I have started using Adobe InDesign and started using my skills in my AS Year.  My color schemes is black and green and I have began to put the names of my radio stations onto my work. 

Radio Drama Production Diary: Log 16 - Thursday 18th March 2010

Today I finished off my double page radio guide, exported it to a .pdf and then into a .jpeg file, I then uploaded my blog, All of my work is now complete.

Styles within our Radio Drama Recording

A Deffinition of Style
Style: The way in which you write will vary depending on genre.

Before we decided what style of radio drama we were going to produce we listned to a selection of radio drama recordings that were made the year before. After hearing them we decided that we wanted to create something different that hasn't really been worked on before, everyone in our group were huge fans of film noir style films.

We started by looking a selection of films that were film noir, we started by looking at "Sin City" a famous film noir film based around a detective solving crime in the Los Angeles underworld 'Sin City' whilst solving crime he comes across a number of strange and unusual characters and evil villains, The whole film is in black and white and points out important points in the scene with objects being red.


The film also contains an attractive woman who falls in love with the detective after he saves her life from the evil villain. Sin City also has the main character narrate his thoughts throughout the film; we thought this would be an important factor when creating our radio drama.

After looking at Sin City we decided that the main concepts we should use in our drama is the character narrating his thoughts, a female "Bunny Boiler/Femme Fatale" character who would involve herself with both the good characters and the criminals. We wanted to play our drama around the same story that is portrayed in Sin City so we had our own detective and villain as well.

We felt it was very important to have our characters to narrate there thoughts in our radio drama as there was no visuals available and everything would have to be described using vocals, music and sound effects.

As we were inspired by a film we knew we would have to use additional cues in order to help our listener understand our genre. We looked at a radio drama called twilight zone in order to understand how a similar radio drama communicated their genre to their listeners.

The twilight zone used several techniques to make their storyline and going’s on sound believable for their listeners; these include use of cues, sound effects, music and vocals.

The twilight zone used fades in-between scenes to allow the episode to flow smoothly until the end. They have also used a huge range of different sound effects from small things such as doors opening and closing to lasers and gunshots. Through-out the episode they used dark and eerie sci-fi music to create atmosphere and suspense whilst the story is in process. Vocals were also a huge part of making a twilight zone episode as the emotion and tone of voice varied between characters to show their status and placing within the story, I listened to an episode of The Twilight Zone which involved a family that had robot servants built by the father, it was clear who the robots are by the tone of their voices, all of them had monotone and emotionless voices and were very well spoken. The humans in the story could express anger and other emotions in their voices whilst talking.

Cues and Links within our Radio Drama Recording

A definition of cues and links:

Cues  Links - How you fill the bits between scenes, intro's and credits

When writing our script we had to think about how the scenes, intro and outro would all fit together nicely for example when we were creating our radio drama we decided to add a musical intro to the drama to explain the cut between our "Previously" scene and the current episode. Also at the end of scene one we used a fade and slight pause to explain to the audience that another scene is starting in a different location with a different selection of characters.

Here is an extract of our script to show how we used cue's:

"Scene One ends with fade"

"Cue few seconds of silence to show scene change"

"Fade in Scene 2# INT. LA BOOSH BAR - Night. Jazz music is playing quietly in the background, the sound of a busy bar with various sounds of drinks being poured, general conversation and the sound of Abbey's chair being pulled from it's table"

As you can see from the quote above, we have thought carefully about piecing our drama together to flow easily through to the end without breaks and confusion. This helps the listener understand that the scene, location and characters have changed.

Before our drama started we used a technique that explains briefly to the listener what happened in the episode before the one that is about to be played. We used cues to show the listeners the cut between the previous episode description and the current episode by adding a brief pause followed by some theme music. Here is a quote from our script to show you what it looked like:

"Previously on Transgression....."

"Cue a couple of seconds of brief pause."

"Begin theme music."

This helps to break our drama up slightly and to inform our listeners that our episode is starting.

Radio Drama Micro Elements

Voice: Due to our script being set in the style of Film Noir we decided that we would have to use American accents to ensure our radio drama sounded correct as if we had just used our typical English voices it would not all tie together as our story was set in Detroit. We did however acknowledge that this could have been a huge risk as it could take the seriousness away from the story line and turn it into a mockery... We still however went ahead with the decision and the outcome was relatively successful. We spent two sessions at the beginning of our assignment practicing our voices to ensure they were correct and level all the way through the recording, this was difficult as sometimes we let our voices slip as we went through our scripts whilst recording, eventually we achieved our goal and perfected our voices. Another problem we had whilst recording our voice was page turns whilst using our scripts and loud students outside of the recording room. The recording room was only sound proof on one side of the room and was next door to the bathrooms, so when somebody used the hand dryer in the bathroom we were forced to stop recording. We went through our script four times to ensure we had each scene complete for editing.

Silence: The main use of silence in our recording was to indicate the change between different scenes, Using a moment of silence between scenes was a good technique to indicate to listeners that the scene was changing, This was important for us as there was three different locations used in our episode that ranged from a back alley to a busy jazz bar. I played Chief Justice in the Radio Drama and during the second scene in the office where I was being grilled by my boss about spending to much time on the case I was told to go home and leave the case alone, to show that I wasn't happy about my boss's decision I used a pause between my dialect and said "Ok Chief...(Silence)... Cya Tomorrow" This was a good idea as it brought out my feelings and emotion on the subject. 

Music: The use of music in our recording was used in small amounts however still played an important role in perfecting our final piece, we used a short clip of music combined with sound effects as our theme tune to create a link between our "Previously" section of our recording and the current episode, this was important as it explained to the listener that the current episode was about to start if they were not interested in the brief catchup. we found our theme tune music in the royalty free music archive owned by our college. We also acquired a royalty free piece of jazz music from the college archive for our "La Boosh Bar" scene where the chief’s daughter and the Villain "Scooner" are making conversation. This was used to create a Jazz bar style atmosphere along with sound effects of people talking in a group over the top of the music.

Sound Effects: Collecting sound effects was one of the most time consuming tasks out of all the micro-elements of our drama recording, Thankfully the college radio editing rooms had a large library of sound effects and ambient sounds to browse through that were available to use. Some times we found it difficult to find a sound effect so we used a program for the mac called "Audio Hijack Pro" which aloud us to record streaming audio off of the Safari internet application, this meant we could record sound effects straight to .MP3 off of the web and import them into Soundtrack Pro for implementation into our recording. The last thing we had to do with sound effects was to record our own, we struggled to find a suitable matching "Door Open/Close" sound effect for our recording so we decided the only way to get the sound effect we wanted was to record it ourselves. Our college technicians provided the equipment and software we needed to record our sound effects. I believe we used our sound effects extremely effectively, they sounded realistic and were put in the right place at the right time, there were times in our recording where we thought our sound effects worked amazingly for instance in the first scene (Alley Way) we used a section of traffic with a siren driving by, we cut the effect up and turned the levels down so it sounded as if it was in the distance, we also used a doppler effect on the siren so it sounded as-if it was coming from one side of the street, past the characters and down the other side of the street. 

I felt we have mastered the techniques when using Micro Elements within audio, If we were to create another recording I think we should have focused more on recording our own sound effects to make a more unique sounding piece of work, overall I am happy with our outcome.

How Sound effects and Music built our Recording

As I have said in my previous posts, Sound Effects, Music and other Micro Elements are all needed to build up a radio recording, As we saved our recording after each session as we went along it was easy for me to go back and cut some clips out of what we have done and take a look at the importance of combining Micro Elements together when creating a recording. 

CLIP ONE: Beginning of Scene One, Lt. Justice has just pulled into the crime scene and is narrating his surroundings. 

This clip was taken from when we first imported our recording into Soundtrack Pro, If you listen to the clip you can see that it is hard to imagine what is going on in the story and where exactly the character is, even though Lt. Justice is explaining where he is there is still no background noise to aid the listener into imagining the scene. 

This clip was taken from half way through our editing stage, we had almost finished editing scene one. We decided to add the sound of cars going by as Lt. Justice had just pulled off the road into an alley way, we liked using this particular sound effect as it has a doppler effect where the cars seem to go from one side to the other, this is good as it sounds like the cars are traveling past our character. 

This clip was taken towards the end of our editing, we were almost finished but decided to go through to see if there were any parts we could improve on, we decided we could make this scene sound better by possibly adding more effects. We looked through the archive on Soundtrack Pro and found a sound effect of a Helicopter flying over. We added this over the top of our recording to make the city sound busier, we did have to turn the levels of each sound effect down so it sounded like background noise and just just an effect slapped over the top of our voices! 

CLIP TWO - Scene Three, The Sconer and Abi are discussing what they are going to do as they are about to be rumbled by the police. They are in La Boosh Bar having a drink amongst other people. 


This clip was taken from when we first imported our recording into Soundtrack Pro, If you listen to this clip it would be absolutely impossible to tell that the two characters are sitting in a bar as both of them do not even say anything about where they are. 

We decided to add some general background talking over our recording to try and make a bar style ambience to give a clue about where our characters are, however we decided this would still not be enough to help our listener imagine where our characters were. We also had to adjust the levels of the sound effects as it was hard to hear our main dialogue. 

The final effect we added was a piece of music we found from the college sound library, this worked perfectly and it now sounded like the characters were in a public place with lots of people, the general talking in the background was clearly recorded in an indoor environment as there is no other background noises such as wind. The music complimented the background noise as it suggests they are in a place to socialize. We choose Jazz music so it would fit in with the name of our bar that appeared in the script and made the venue sound a little classier. 

CLIP THREE - Scene Two, Lt. Justice is in his office narrating his thoughts on the crime case he is working on, He becomes tired and decides to open the window to get some fresh air. 

This clip was taken from when we first imported our recording into Soundtrack Pro, You can tell that Lt. Justice is in an office environment as he mentions sitting at a desk and looking through some paperwork, however he says in the recording "I opened the window to let in some air." We decided that it would be a good idea to include some kind of effect to show that a window is being opened. 

We added a "Window Opening" sound effect on the clip to show that as he was narrating what he was doing he was moving to open the window at the same time, however this would not be enough, we needed some kind of street noise to go along with the opening of the window. 

Lt. Justice says "The sounds of the busy nightlife flooded through the window." We found some street noise and sampled it without the window to see if it would go well, we adjusted the levels so the effect increased in volume whilst the window was being opened. 

This was the final clip from this scene, We agreed that the two sound clips worked well together so put them together to make the clip work. 

The end of the clip has some high levels of sound which seem to clash with each other, so after this stage we went into the level editor and adjusted each channel so they all sounded right. 

Double Page Radio Guide with Transgression Feature

Before I began working on my double page radio guide, I thought that it would be a good idea to build a template before I started adding the text so I knew what was going to go where and to ensure I was happy with the colors and layout of the page. This was a wise idea because if I had added all my listings and feature straight away and then decided I did not like the layout, I would have had to re-design the whole thing.

                                  

I also Decided it would be a better Idea to design my listings in two separate documents and then join them together at the end, this would give me more space and would allow me to easily change the green headers on each page, using the pre-made template. 

Below is my final double page radio listing, Including my feature on Transgression on Page 14, I used my Transgression poster as the image for the feature as I thought "If people had already seen the poster, seeing it again in a radio listings guide might draw there attention."

I have also sticked to the same color scheme between the two pages, I have used pink on the titles on both pages and a black and green table scheme. This makes my listing easier to understand and easier to read. I have also blocked each station into different tables as that is how it appears in real radio listing guides. 

Evaluation: How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary texts?

Apart from our main product we had two other ancillary texts to complete, these were an advert that would appear in a Newspaper and a Double page radio listing spread with a feature for our recording. These were created to support our radio drama recording.

Newspaper advert:

Before I started creating my newspaper advert I drew some rough sketches of what I wanted it to look like, I scanned the photos in and put them onto my blog. I then decided to take some photos for my poster which I would edit later in Adobe Photoshop, this would be used as the background for my poster. I then put my photo into Adobe Photoshop and edited it, once it was edited I began to work on the poster it's self. 

The advert would be an effective piece to have as it advertises my drama when it is broadcast on air, without advertising my listener count would be low as nobody would have heard of the product, having an advert in a newspaper would be a good idea as millions of people read printed newspapers everyday. 

Double page spread:

Once my poster was complete I began work on my double page spread radio guide, this supported the poster in terms of advertising as a feature in a radio guide can be used to advertise my product further and give more information into what the show is going to be about. It also targets a specific audience as people who read a radio listings guide are clearly going to be interested in what there is to listen to on the radio. 

These to pieces combined with my final recording are a great start into getting the show on air and ensuring that the show will have listeners. 

Evaluation: Audience Feedback

To get a collection of feedback for our final radio drama piece we hosted a radio listening party for an around 40 students from Northampton college, many of which we didn't know, The students were aged between 17-19 therefore only a small number of the audience would have just fitted into our target audience. Although this idea was still good as it gave us a chance to receive some ideas about what we should improve and what was good about our performance.

Most of the feedback we received after the broadcast was good and almost everyone enjoyed the clip. The points that were raised for improvement was the ending, as some listeners became confused wether or not our recording had finished or not. Another point that was raised was the way the story was told, many listeners became confused with the narrative and sometimes did not understand what was happening in the story, In my opinion the story was pretty straight forward and easy to follow however I am a Film-Noir movie fan so understand how the style of a film noir story is set out, I think that if the we received feedback from people with an older age range that point would not arise as they would understand the stories narrative. 

Even though I have a different opinion to some of the points that have arisen I would still have to listen to the views of my potential audience and work on them to make the broadcast more enjoyable and easier to understand.  The things I would change in the recording would be the ending, which would need a little tidying up and finally drawn to a close with some sort of audial end credits. I would also try and improve the narrative to help my audience understand what is going and finally I would spend a little more time working on our accents to ensure we don't change them slightly or fall out of them throughout the broadcast. 

There was also a great deal of positive feedback collected in, Listeners particularly liked the use and placement of sound effects and music, many also enjoyed the story line and the way it was set out. I agree with the responses I was given and am very happy with the final recording of Transgression.

Evaluation: Media Technologies and the Construction and Research, Planning and Evaluation of our Project

Research and Planning of our Project:

When Researching and Planning my project the main Media Technology I decided to use was the internet, I used a lot of different research pages to find out about the History of radio and radio drama, some websites such as wikipedia.com were very helpful when looking up the history of radio. I also used the listen online tool on the BBC Radio website to listen to a number of different shows and broadcasts to get an idea of what a Radio Drama episode looks like. I also used my Facebook account to ask friends what genre of radio drama we should decide to create, this was a good idea as it was almost a way of conducting primary research as people could comment on my post with there suggestions! Another found another useful website that had an archive of clips from radio history that are well know and famous, I hosted these to my own file host and made a flash MP3 player for my blog, now my audio files can be played on the blog! 

When planning my Poster and Radio listings I used a scanner to scan my hand drawn images onto the computer to post onto my blog, this was a quick and easy process as it scanned my photo's and saved them as a .jpeg file straight away. 

Construction of our Project:

Hardware - 

When recording our radio drama we used a selection of different tools to record our voices, The college has a Sound room where we could record our work using there soundboard and microphones, These were all connected to an Imac which had a piece of software installed that was listening and recording our voice and surroundings. We also used a Digital Camera when creating our first poster design and I used a DSLR camera to capture the image for my final poster. 

Software -

We used a huge amount of different softwares when constructing our Recording, to begin with we used the Mac OSX Leopard operating system for all of our work. Within that we mainly used Soundtrack Pro to edit and modify our recording, we also used a piece of software called Audio Hijack Pro which was used to record sound that was being played on the computers Line-In, We used this to record sound out of the Safari web browser to use on our work. When creating our posters I used Iphoto to import my photo's from the camera and sent them straight to Adobe Photoshop for editing, My whole poster was constructed in Adobe Photoshop however my double page radio listing was designed in Adobe InDesign as it is a tool design for creating publications. I also used the Safari web browser to access blogspot.com to write this blog out, sometimes I used Microsoft Word to type out my blog posts when I was unable to connect to the internet, I also made my first post via e-mail, Blogspot offers a service where you can write an e-mail and send it directly to your blog as a post.

I also used a website called mydatanest.com which is a file host, I used this to host my .MP3 files on my blog, which included my sound clips and final radio recording, I also created a flash MP3 player to play some famous clips from radio history. 

Evaluation of our Project:

When evaluating my work I used the Advanced HTML text editor that is provided with your Blogspot account to type up my posts, at some point I had to upload some sound clips so I used a website called mydatanest.com which is a File host to host my .MP3 files, once they were uploaded onto my host I used a piece of HTML code that would help Blogspot understand that I wanted an MP3 file to be played on my blog. 

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

My media product uses many different conventions of real media products such as a theme tune, sound effects, music, speech and style of story line, there have been many other radio drama broadcast set in the style of Film Noir such as High Sierra which was broadcast in april 1947, other radio drama broadcasts that are set in a Film Noir style include Gaslight, The Big Clock, Criss Cross and Shadow of A Doubt. All of these radio drama programs use the same or similar conventions as the ones we have used when creating our final piece. 

We have challenged real media product conventions by keeping the actors who's voices appear in our recording a secret and not revealing them at the start or end of our radio drama production. This  originally happened as we lost the final audio clips of our broadcast however towards the end of our time we decided it might be a good idea to keep them secret to play with the "Who Done It" concepts of the actual story.

Evaluation: Representation of Social Groups

The characters in our radio drama are very stereotypical when looking at Film Noir films and recordings. The main character "Chief Justice" is a stereotypical american detective that is hell bent on catching a particular criminal. He also has a deep voice and seems to have a carefree attitude when solving crimes. 

Our female in the broadcast "Abi" was described through narration to get what sort of character she was to our listeners. We described her as being very attractive and seductive however she is also powerful and is capable of doing anything that a male is capable of doing including extreme things like carrying out a murder. 

Evaluation: My Audience and My Media Institutions

I think the audience that would be listening to our radio drama would be between twenty-one and thirty-nine. We understood that our radio drama would not be played before 9PM as there is bad language and our story-line touches on controversial topics, therefore it would have to be played after the watershed. I also think that males would be more interested in our broadcast because it has manly themes such as blood, gore and murder. However I still think there would be a female audience as there are many Film-Noir movie fans in the world and I believe that they would also be interested. 

I think that stations such as BBC Radio 4 would play our recording however I think our drama would be more suited on BBC Radio 3 Drama as it plays experimental dramas rather then classic style drama broadcasts. BBC Radio 3 also play the show "The Wire" which aims to push the boundaries of drama and narrative, I think our recording would work well on this show. 

I also believe that my drama could work well if it was released as a weekly podcast or online stream, this way people can download the episode so they don't miss anything and can also share the episodes with friends to get them listening to the story too, that way we would gain more listeners and our ratings would increase.