Evaluation Questions
- How does your media product represent particular social groups?
- What kind of media institution might distribute your media product and why?
- Who would be the audience for your media product?
- How did you attract/address the audience?
- What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this product?
- Looking back at you preliminary task, what do you feel you have learnt in the progression from it to the final product?
How does your media product represent particular social groups?
I think that because of our huge range of conventions and articles we were able to represent many different social groups in Vox Radio. Although our aim was too target around the age group of 16 to 30 years olds. For example the beginning of the news is mainly international and would appeal generally to older members of our target audience along with subjects like politics, driving and university fees that parents will have to pay. Subjects like sport and music generally appeal to teenagers and people in early their early 20s. However these aren't strictly the audiences for each subject but they are good estimations of them. We also had a section for local news which appealed to anyone local near the village Kidlington. These are just three social groups alone covered in the news. When representing different genders in our media product we mainly targeted males. This was because all of our news was mainly sport which tends to catch the eye of man more. One audience that we didn't tackle was females in there late 20s. This could of been achieve by having some celebrity gossip in our news to target more females through our media product.
What kind of media institution would distribute our media product and why?
I feel that our radio station would be distributed by a local radio station much like the ones I researched into (Capital FM London and Yorkshire Coast Radio). This is because many of the attributes of local radio that i researched are applied into our media product. Examples of these attributes used are our use of local weather and local news.
I think the way we structured and presented our show was a lot like local radio aswell. In the script we deliberately used slang and informal language just like we had heard in the local radio stations. I believe that this would give us a connection to the audience.
Who would be the audience of your media product?
Our target audience was 16 - 30 year olds because we spoke in a way that we liked to think was universal. We also feel that we are more modernised than other radio stations. When comparing us to stations like BBC Radio 2 you can see this. For example our use of sound effects in our product is very modern. There are no silly sound effects in most major radio stations especially Radio two because there target audience is mainly 30 and above and this is proved by their constant playing of old music. When we ask the listeners to ring us we inserted a sound effect of someone dialing a telephone number. This is the modern and silly side of the radio station. However there is a contrasting side which is the seriousness of the news. By reading the news like any local or major station as it should be read (in a serious way) we can keep the show interesting and listeners will be able to relate to us, idealy those listeners who are in the age group of 16 - 30 years old.
How did you attract/address your audience?
We had to adress and attract the audience if we wanted them to listen which meant we had to make the listener feel important. Our section on traffic in the final piece is a prime example of how this was achieved. When researching the local radios I found that some listeners are more than happy to text or call in. This is common in traffic sections. Listeners call in with any traffic details and they are broad casted on the air. We chose to feature this in our local radio to address the listeners and make them feel important. We allowed them to text in starting with the word JAM if the had any traffic information. Also we gave a little thanks to Dave (the person who texted in) so that more and more people will text in and call in.
You can see plainly in our choice of language how we connect with the audience. By starting with "Good Morning" we straight away have a friendly welcome. to attract our audience we had a catchphrase "We'll Vox your socks off." Most of the radio stations I researched didn't have a main catchphrase but we thought adding this in would attract the audience and keep them listening because it is one of the first bits that they hear in our product.
What have you learnt about technologies in the process of constructing this product?
We used garage band to record our media product. We were advised to use audacity but we thought that Garageband was s step up from it. I had successfully used audacity at home many times before but in terms of recording at school Garageband was a lot quicker and easy to use. Garageband provides you with sound effects and loops. Many of which we used on our show. These include the loop in the back ground at the beginning and the end of our final piece. This gives the radio an edge and more of a smooth flow to it. My part in the technology side was to decide where the sound effects go.
The sound effect in the jingle was made by one of the main speakers. Using a synthesiser he made the background music and then used a vocoder to record his voice saying "This is Vox Radio" in a robotic voice.
The recording process was mainly done in bits and although we thought it would take a few hours, to our surprise it was very time consuming. Obviously we had a structure but it was proving hard to record the whole thing in one go. If I was to do this again I would make sure the levels of the voices are all equal. You notice that in some parts of our final piece (particularly in the news section) the voice gets quieter. This is because the speakers are wondering away from the microphone without realising. Next time i would keep the volume of the voice at a constant level or record it again and make sure they stayed close to the microphone.
Looking back at your preliminary task, what do you feel you have learnt in the progression from it to the final product?
The preliminary task had a lot more planning involved whereas we chose to improvise a lot of the final task. I felt that by improvising some of the time there is more flow to the show with lots of radio banter like i had seen in the local radio stations when they had talked between songs or done interviews.
As said earlier my part in the preliminary was to be the voice of the interviewee. At the time "I'm a celebrity get me out of here" was on TV so we decided to do a rather silly interview with her describing her time in the jungle on the reality TV show. This sounds a tiny bit rushed on the preliminary. This was becuase we wanted to get started on the final piece but we should of concentrated on the preliminary and put more features from the preliminary onto the final piece. Most of the attributes in the preliminary did make it however the inreview didn't make it onto the final product because of lack of time but i have learnt that we needed to get more of a variaty of sunjects or activities on our final product. If I was to do this again I would make sure we had featured an interview. However because we recorded the final piece in chunks the final product was a big improvement.
