ALICE WASS
Exploring Media

This week has been a nice recovery week from the past few hectic ones. I am back to my normal roles as a Broadcast Assistant along with some new tasks and challenges.

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One of the Presenters, Vicky, has been away with Feed The Hungry in Zimbabwe this week. Whilst over there she has been sending back radio journals, which I have been editing and uploading to Soundcloud. I have also been catching up with editing and uploading Ruth’s guests to Soundcloud from last week. A new responsibility which used to be the Content Producer’s was informing the Staff Writer of the UCB1 and UCB2 Newsletter which are the best pieces of audio on Soundcloud to include in the newsletters. I am now taking on that responsibility and once a month I will send across a range of pieces to go into the newsletters. As this is a new role I have had some catch up to play, meaning I have had a lot of audio to upload for Paul Hammond, as some of the pieces they wanted to use were not yet on Soundcloud.

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I have continued to record and edit Impact Stories, which have become like second nature to me and I believe that I am improving at getting the best responses by asking relevant questions. I have continued uploading people onto Raisers Edge who gave their testimonies during the Appeal. I have been recording and editing more Christmas Traditions from around the world. I am now confident about using WaveLab for these recordings and I have really enjoyed speaking to people about how they celebrate around the world. I have so far succeeded in recording twelve different countries, the only thing I am struggling with is finding people from some of the continents such as I have not spoken to anyone from South America or North America or Africa and I feel that it would feel more complete to speak to at least one person per continent as one per country just would not be possible.

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I have continued booking and finding interviews for Ruth’s show, which is becoming easier the more I book. However, as I am trying to have an interview for every day of the week, I am worried that I am going to run out of leads in the future. Therefore, I am going to have to start trying to explore other ways to find interviewees. Such as, asking people who have been on the show if they have any recommendations of other people with amazing stories, and trying to network more in my everyday life. I am also trying to think of ways to make sure the interviewees are the best story-tellers possible, one way I could try that is before committing to an interview trying to give them a phone call and guage if they would sound good on air.

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I had the Wednesday off work to attend my sister’s graduation. This made me think about what I am going to do after I finish university and which areas I would like to build and develop on during my placement year to make sure that once I graduate from university I am in the best position possible to get a job. Also, whilst on my day off I was brainstorming potential Christmas content ideas for the radio shows. My ideas included: before Simon plays out the Christmas Tradition recordings that he could say a fun Christmas Tradition fact for the country he is playing out and get people to send in their guesses for which country Simon is talking to that day. E.g. ‘This country has the longest Christmas Season in the world, starting in September and ending in January’ then once people have put in their guesses he would reveal that it was the Philippines and play out his recording for the country to find out more about how they celebrate Christmas.  Other general ideas I had were to have presenters read out more obscure lyrics from well-known Christmas songs or carols and get people to write in which song/carol they think it is then they could slowly reveal more of the lyrics getting more well known, before revealing what the song was and playing it out on air. Alternatively, I thought about maybe giving out anagrams of different carol titles and getting people to send in their answers of what they think that day’s carol is going to be.

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I have also attended an interview training session with the famous David Lloyd, an important person in the radio industry. My session was much shorter than that of the actual presenters but in the time I spoke to him I feel like I learnt a lot about how to do a good interview for radio, and I will be trying out the methods in my next phone interviews. Being able to meet David Lloyd was a massive privilege and I wish I had more time with him to ask some non-interview related questions, about the radio industry which he knows so well.

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Once again I helped Simon with his pre-recorded show ‘The Weekend Starts Here’. I was running the desk once again but this time Simon did not instruct me how to do something unless I asked or made a mistake. I felt I remembered quite a lot from the week before, and I am already starting to get quicker at using the desk, but I do still make quite a few silly mistakes. I hope with more practice I can become more efficient.

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My main new project this week has been organising and helping with the preparation for a radio drama which is going to be recorded in the New Year. I have been sorting out food and rooms for the guests, working with Mark to get the studio set up and talking to TV about getting a camera set up. In addition I phoned the actors to discuss what their expectations were and worked with UCB heads of departments to make sure everyone’s wants would be fulfilled. On Friday there was a trial run and I was in charge of looking after the guests, and doing the briefing meeting as well as working out any logistics that might need changing for the actual recording in January.

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Next week I will be working on another shoot of ‘Facing The Canon’ which I am looking forward to and hopefully I will be more helpful with set up and set down.