YR2 - WORK EXPERIENCE – HEART RADIO

I didn’t get the best reviews about the placement at Heart from the students who done it before me. They both thought it was an extremely boring experience, and for the most part, I would have to agree. I didn’t really do anything whilst I was there, it was the stuff I learnt about that interested me the most.



My first day was spent doing pretty much the same thing I done every other day, shadowing producer, Ben Marks. It was interesting watching him on the first day, seeing how fast he works, how he generates different ideas. He got to telling me about how he got into the industry, how long he had been working in radio. I was very surprised to hear that he was still quite new to the industry. He had only been working there for about two years but had already progressed to producer. By watching him work, you would have thought he had been in the job a lot longer than two years, he was so fast using Pro Tools. He got into the industry through an interest in music, which turned out to give him the edge that would put him above the rest.

At first, I thought his job was pretty straight forward. The first couple of days I sat in on him working, all he was doing was creating jingles and links to and from different segments of the show. However, after spending more time with him, I found out that his job and his influence played a very big part in the branding of the station. This was more noticeable when the station was GWR, before it merged into Heart radio. Back then, he had the job to brand the whole station, make it unique from all the others. However, since Heart has taken them over, he has less say in how things are to sound. Economically, the merge to Heart radio was a good idea. It means that there will be less work for each individual station to do because they are all using the same brand. Though less work means less jobs, and Ben has had to do extra work for other Heart stations around Britain to keep himself busy and in the good books. Whilst I was there he was working on promos for Heart Exeter, previously known as Gemini. It was kind of sad to see the industry in such a way that a good producer like Ben would fear so much for his job, as does everyone at the station.

Although I have no desire to work in radio, it did seem like a fun environment to work in. listening to the links for Breakfast with Bush, Troy & Paulina made me laugh. Ben took me in to meet one of the DJs, Stuart Elmore, who showed me around his deck. It was surprising actually seeing how easy his job was, all he done was push a button to play the songs that have been lined up by Heart already, add a bit of personality to the links and job done. He also took me around the news department. I spoke to Cormac MacMahon for a while about how he got into the industry...http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6CE6I-YfplI

Although Ben seemed very happy in his current job, he did tell me that he didn’t wish to work there forever, and that he would love to work for stations like 1Xtra or Kiss, stations that are better known for the kind of music he’s in to. Whilst I was there, he was emailing one of the producers at 1Xtra that he met at the Sony awards, at which he collected a silver for his promo Bristol's Big Give. at the moment he’s working towards another nomination for Race For Life for cancer research.
And his interests aren’t just in the radio industry, he still has a massive interest in music, and is DJ’ing a reggae set at the Bijou lounge in Whiteladies road.

YR2 – WORK EXPERIENCE – ACROSS THE POND PART THREE

The third day got off to a better start than the day before…we didn’t have to rectify any mistakes made by the sound and camera people. I was in a much better mood than the days before, as they only needed me, the stills photographer, to be there a short while. The day’s locations were in a Weston chip shop, so we were going to get fed, and the Blakehay theatre, so we were going to be warm. The day was shaping up well.










We met in the Six Ways Chippy around mid day. it was good filming inside, though it was a bit cramped and i couldn't take many good photos. Though i couldn't complain, the cast and crew were bought a meal of their choice...i went with LARGE cod and chips, it hit the spot. we didn't spend long in there, which was a surprise seeing how the last couple of days had gone. But we only needed a couple of shots of the character ordering some food, then we were off.

The next location was in the Blakehay theatre. It was fun setting everything up inside. i enjoyed wandering around the old theatre and taking snaps. It was great place to film. Someone from the theatre production was helping out with the stage lights. There was a cool little Romeo and Juliet style balcony that was going to be used. Unfortunately, the lightning was just a little too dark for me to take pictures without using the auto flash. As it turned out, i didn't end up taking many pictures whilst filming was going on. As usual, things were taking forever to get up and going. The actors were rehearsing, people were sorting out the lights, the camera man was trying to frame his shots. The biggest hold up was to do with the script. The directors had a problem with the language the characters were using. You could tell the writer wasn't English, and he obviously didn't do his research on how English people speak. The directors liked the kind of language i used, so asked me to take a look at the script. In the end i had to go through most of the English characters lines and change them to how i would say it. At this time, we could sense the tension between the directors and the script writer, they were having a lot of disagreements. unfortunately i couldn't stay too long after i was assigned the new job of script editor, i had a train to catch.


Although i did have some fun working for this production group, i was kind of disapointed in the way each day was treated. I was hoping for a lot more to do, and for a bit more professionality from the crew. I dont think i learnt anything from working on this project. I do know that i dont really have any desire to persue a career in film. I did find working with the Americans more enjoyable than i thought i would. As with all Americans, they were very polite and fun to spend time with. They showed us students with as much repect as they did with the more important members of the crew. The director/producer/actor, Javier, was especially friendly and a great laugh. He's a good lad!

YR2 – WORK EXPERIENCE – ACROSS THE POND PART TWO

The second day really didn’t move too well. It got off to the worst start when we found out that none of the audio from the shoot the day before was usable. This kind of confused me seeing as the camera man and the sound girl were supposed to be professionals, yet both failed to recognise the settings on the camera were wrong. That it was set to mic input instead of line input, something we were taught in the first week of learning about audio. This meant that we had to go back to the same location as the day before and do it all over again, which wasn’t very welcomed considering it was sheltered from the sun and it was freezing.

After finishing up in that location in the morning, we moved on to the next, filming actor Pete Nicholls reading Shakespeare’s “to be, or not to be” speech from Hamlet whilst standing on top of a bench in town. This was kind of embarrassing. The piece he was acting was so cliché, everybody knows it so well that it’s just a bit cringe-worthy to hear it now, especially outside a theatrical environment. I did feel sorry for him, reading out the same lines over and over again. At least we had big coats and scarves on. All he had to keep himself warm was the breeziest of shirts. He was shaking so bad you would have thought he had drunk a barrel of RedBull. I really don’t know why it was taking us so long to get just a few shots. I think there could have been a lot more preparation, a storyboard maybe. Another thing that they failed to take into consideration was the lighting. The location was smack in the middle of a line of buildings, which was fine at noon, but as soon as the sun started to dip, a big fat shadow appeared half way up Petes body. Somehow the directors seemed to think this wouldn’t affect the continuity, I failed to share their optimism.


Most of these days were spent standing around waiting for what seemed to be nothing at all. I know film sets have a reputation of being incredibly slow, but that’s when there are millions of pounds resting on the high quality result and need everything to be perfect. We had everything we had available to us on location. All this waiting around could have and should have been avoided. We could have got so much more done if more preparation had been made.

YR2 – ORGANISING AN EVENT – THE END PRODUCT

After months of preparation, the day of the event was finally here. A lot of hard work had been put into this project, so we were all looking forward to seeing how it would all go. It didn’t get off to a great start, there was far too much waiting around for things to get under way. After Sam had finished warming the speakers up in Loxtons, we were all ready. There were a few minor technical difficulties at first, but soon after we were ready for our first speaker.



Valerie Burke was the first to try to spark interest with the very gormless looking audience. She started with a clip from a program she produced called Challenge America, a spin off from the British series, Challenge Anneka. I think it dragged on just a little, but was quite interesting to see. Her story of how she got into the industry was a big shock to everyone. To hear that she didn’t follow the conventional routes to get her foot in the door, which actually turned out to be a very similar story to all the other speakers.

Cormac MacMahon was up next. At first, I was worried he wasn’t going to get much of a response, seeing as he’s a journalist at Heart radio in Bristol, and as far as I knew, there weren’t many in the audience with an interest in those fields. However, he was actually one of the better ones. His job didn’t really interest me, it was more his personality and humour that got me hooked. You could tell that this wasn’t his first time in front of a large crowd. He was very engaging, and though he was of an older age, he did seem very much in touch with the youth of today.

Of all the speakers, i was most looking forward to hearing from Jason Holmes. he’s just finished producing one of my favourite programmes on TV at the moment, and has a lot of experience in the side of the industry I’m most interested in making a career. Out of all the speakers, he was the one who provoked the most questions from the audience. Although it was good to see the audience showing an interest, I was kind of disappointed. Every speaker had only a short amount of time to answer people’s questions, and there were just too many to get around to answering ones I had. So I was kind of bitter that everyone decided to ask this speaker all their questions, but I wasn’t too down seeing as we were planning of having lunch after as a group, so I could ask him stuff then. But as a first time speaker, he didn’t show any sign of nerves and was very interesting.

The final speaker to take the spotlight was the young independent Producer/Director, Laura Abrahams. This was the first time she had spoke to a large crowd, and you could notice it. She wasn’t at all bad, but was a little nervous. I think she made a big mistake, at the beginning of her talk, by mentioning that she worked on a show where she was required to walk around town and get men to rate her bum. I think all the men in the audience spent the rest of her talk doing exactly that. But she didn’t just have a pleasant derrière to offer, she had a very interesting career to talk about. it was funny hearing how every one of the speakers, of no intention of their own, had been led down a certain path in the industry. Laura had worked on Big Brother then moved out to Australia and got a job working on I’m a Celebrity, get me out of here. She later admitted to us that she cant stand reality TV shows (though they were fun to work on), and that she had fallen into that line of program making.

I think all of our hard work paid off on the day. the speakers were very interesting to talk hear from.The audience were happy, mainly due to the free cookies in the interval. The meal in the cafeteria afterwards was a bit of a let down. Jason and Cormac were unable to stick around, which was a shame because this meant i wasn't going to be able to ask Jason what i wanted too during his talk. Though it was good to hear Laura and Valerie compare careers, and talk about the industry in a more casual environment.

YR2 – ORGANISING AN EVENT – HOSTING “YOUR MEDIA, YOUR FUTURE”

As expected, it was an early start on the morning of the event. I wasn’t nervous or anything. We all had our own jobs to do. Mine was to sit at the front desk and be stills photographer, both jobs that didn’t really require much preparation. I did need to make a delegates list so that we knew who exactly was coming. This actually turned out to be quite pointless. Only half the people signed in, it didn’t help that everyone was pointed our way all at the same time, leaving a massive cue throughout the reception area. This just made things quite stressful for me and Kate who had to try and get roughly 40 bored students to sign in, sign the release form, take their food ticket, find their name tag, organise them into pairs, and give them their questionnaires. We could tell people were getting very bored standing around.








After getting most of them signed in, all we had to do was observe them filling out the questionnaires and making sure nothing went wrong with the equipment. Whilst doing this, we didn’t get the best feedback from the students. Walking down the hall me and Aleicia over heard a student commenting on the question “have you found the event entertaining?” for which he responded “at the moment, f*** no”. We got the impression that most of them had similar feelings about how things were going. It didn’t help that half an hour was scheduled for them to finish their questionnaires, when pretty much all of them had finished after ten. It was for this reason we tried to get Sam to hurry the speakers into finishing their breakfast and get started. They were keeping to the schedule, but couldn’t see how bored the audience were getting, so we had to try and get things started early.









After everyone was in the performance space and sat down, there wasn’t much need for anyone to be out near reception, though someone did need to supervise the equipment. As I had to take the photos, I managed to get out of supervising, which I was more than happy with. I was looking forward to hearing from the speakers. Things got quite hard taking photos. The lighting was pretty bad in the performance area so the camera had difficulty focusing. I managed to take a good few pictures. I tried to get pictures of the speakers as soon as they stood up, this way I could turn my attention to what they were saying and enjoy the event as a member of the audience.

YR2 – ORGANISE AN EVENT – TAKING MINUTES

In order for everyone to contribute their ideas and to keep up to date with each others progress, we gathered together every Tuesday morning and held a weekly meeting. To be sure we all done our fare share in the build up of this event, we rotated the roles for the meeting. The chairman and minute taker would be the only ones physically doing anything leaving everyone else to contribute their opinions.


Taking minutes was pretty simple, just type down everything that was being discussed, decisions that were being made, and actions that had been taken. It was a bit boring, but so were the meetings themselves. I was lucky enough to only have to take minutes once throughout the whole project.

Here's how my minute notes were layed out:

BC2003 Event meeting 6

21.04.09

Present: Tom Hopkins (Chair), Keely Major, Sam Simmonds, Kim Brooke, Kate Pritchard, Adam Jones (minute taker)

Absent: Alicia Coombs

MATTERS ARISING

TV screen for studio should be ready for deadline.

Poster information has been submitted to the graphics department.

Action:
go down to graphics and ask about progress with the posters (sam)
Kim sorting out flyers
Kim chase down any further info concerning budget, and Sadie
Foley pictures to be submitted to graphics dept
Arrange a meeting with actors

Keely’s having problems downloading the icould video clips, but have 5 from careers box

Charley Stoddard is not yet confirmed as a guest speaker, Keely is chasing up

Ester may Camble replaced by Charley Stoddard
Ester may Camble hangs out at the Q, if Charley is unavailable, she will need to be chased up.

Budget:
No further progress.
Sadie can give up to £500.

Contingency plans:
In case actors aren’t available. Student films and show reels.

THIS MEETINGS AGENDA

Weston College will no longer be running this course. Text on flyers and banner will have to be changed from promoting the course, as it will no longer be running. Can no longer describe it as an annual event. Advertising has got to be directed towards Bath spa rather than Weston College.

Weston banners will be used instead of making our own, which reduces budget costs.


ANY OTHER BUSINESS

Things to do:
Facebook event (adam)
Tom is going to setup a website. Needs content (domain may need to be purchased)

NEXT WEEK IS OUR LAST MEETING!

NEXT WEEKS AGENDA

Pin down everyone’s roles, products from the graphics dept.
Kim will have a definite list attendees.
Sam and keely will decide on where to have the refreshments, and get permission.
Visit classes and gather questions from them for questions and answers for guest speakers.
Write up a questionnaire.
Kim is taking the refreshments order list to Luxtons.

NEXT WEEK: 28. 04. 09

CHAIRMAN… Kate Pritchard

MINUTE TAKER…. Keely Major

It was the chairman’s responsibility to structure each meeting and to make sure peace is kept and everyone is heard. This job suited some more than others. There are people within the group that are more outspoken than others, which sometimes results in those persons ideas being final. To make sure this didn’t happen, and that all decisions made were fare, we would vote on everything. This wasn’t really too effective, because there wasn’t really any disagreements. I think it was fare to rotate the role of minute taker because every can do it. I think the meetings would have been more constructive if we had established someone to chair the meetings throughout the project, rather than chop and changing.

YR2 – ORGANISE AN EVENT – WORKING WITH ACTORS

It was me who originally came up with the idea to use actors as a way to fill the gaps between the guest speakers, so it was left to myself to organise. Finding actors wasn’t to be a problem, I went through my first year surrounded by them. Whilst living in Weston, I became good mates with one drama student, Matt Ward, who is currently studying on the FDA Perfroming Arts course at Weston College. It was him who I first contacted about the opportunity to take part in the event.
When we finally established that we wanted three short comedy sketches, I got hold of Matt and let him know the rough details. I told him that there was a budget for actors of £150 for a minimum of three actors that he was going to arrange. At first we didn’t know whether to come up with the sketches ourselves, then have the actors just play them out. However, seeing as they were getting paid for the job we figured we would let them come up with their own material. There was a brief hold up in progress as we were trying to finalise a budget, and I wasn’t sure whether or not they would be willing to take time out of their busy schedule for doing me a favour.
We kept contact via mobile and E-mail, and when the final budget report came through I gave him the go ahead to start preparing sketches.

Adam Jones
23 March at 17:15
Alright mate,

how you been? I’m just writing to see if you and some of your fello actor people would be interested in acting in front of a small audience for our media group. we've got this media event we need to host and were thinking of including a few short sketches in there to break up the entertainment. Just wondering if you were interested, let me know what you think.

Matthew Ward
23 March at 22:46

Possibly be interested. Got quite a lot on at the moment. what does it entail?

Adam Jones
25 March at 19:54

well, 5th of may, we've got to arrange an event which aims to inspire, entertain, and inform people about the media industry. we've got a load of guest speakers, but so the audience isn't just sitting there listening to them, we were thinking of haveing three short little 5 minutes sketches in between them. we put together a rough budget the other day and worked out that we could pay 3-4 actors about £50 each, so you would be getting paid, for 15 minutes isn't bad. all the sketches need to be something related to the industry, like the interviewing process for example.

so thats it really, if you're not interested i could probably get you a brief soonish to hand around to someone else that might be interested. just thought i would ask you first.

Matthew Ward
26 March at 11:43

I am interested in the job and I am sure I could find 3 others to do it. Could you send me a brief and will let the others know as well. I am going to have to ask my tutor though unless it is in the evening? Let me know.

Also, are they comedy sketches?

Adam Jones
28 March at 19:06

Getting you a brief will be no problem. I’m not sure whether we wanted 3 or 4 people, so don’t ask anyone yet. Its on the morning of the 5th may, 9:30-12:30.

yes the sketches are meant to be comedy ones, we haven't got any as of yet. We'll meet up before hand and come up with some ideas. Does that sound alright?

Matthew Ward
30 March at 19:15

Yeah. I have asked 3 other people but it doesn't matter because I will just drop one if you only want three. That’s fair enough about coming up with the ideas. There is quite a lot of scope with the topic. Meeting up would probably be ideal.

Adam Jones
30 March at 23:40

Alright then mate. I'll let everyone know, find out the exact details about the budget, and get back to you about meeting up before hand. sound good? speak to you soon.

However, as keen as they were to take part, we didn’t take in to consideration how much their tutor was up himself. Apparently letting his students perform for us would only damage his course' reputation. Matt was disappointed with his tutors’ decision not to let them participate, and thought that two weeks would have been a stretch, but would have been enough time to organise something. The lack of confidence in his students is unfortunate for not just us, knowing that your mentor doesn’t believe you can pull off what other professionals would be required too, must be a bit of a confidence blow. Hopefully in the future their tutor will put the welfare of his students before his reputation.