13 May Interactive: Workbook submission
Across all the weeks:
March 4-18
The roles within a multimedia team are Editors within radio and television, who are responsible for managing their reporters and assuring that the writers find suitable stories and produce scripts which are suitable for the time slot given. It is also the Editors responsibility to make sure all video footage is formatted correctly and uploaded to Dropbox and then submitted into Inception. Inception is a software we use to create a running order and to keep up to date with the teams roles and responsibilities being submitted on time.
Reporters have many responsibilities, preparing the script ahead of filming, making sure that speech is clear and picked up by the mic. Reporters not only deliver a story but have to have the confidence to do so. I struggled with this role throughout my 3 years at LSBU, i initially underestimated how difficult was to deliver a story. I found it particularly difficult to slow down my natural fast paced speech and felt great pressure under camera, this resulted in me forgetting a word or phase. Essentially starting all over again, I learned quickly that I was better at writing the scripts and sourcing stories as oppose to delivering the news.
On the day reporters, as previously mentioned I found great difficulty pre recording stories for live news days. Live reporting is something I struggled with even more and the role requires you to stay composed and calm as you are live. This is quite a stressful role as you have to mentally prepare before going live and my nerves when it comes to speech is not a good combination for a successful live reporter. Live reporters are an important role in a multimedia team as it provides a new depth into the news and professionalism, as it requires dedication and provides a traditional ambiance to our live news days.
Writers are the foundation to the multimedia team, once given a topic or area it is their job to source and story or find an original through their own doing. Once this has been confirmed with the editor, they then produce a script to fit the time slot given as well as being able to synthesise all the crucial information that is relevant to the public. I found this role quite easier than the rest as, I am more comfortable with writing in general and sourcing stories. Even when I was doing other roles, I always found myself assisting those who were writers that day. Once a story is written it has to be put on inception, a software that provides the multimedia team with a running order of the live show and what has been submitted so that the team is aware of what is left to do.
Auto cue is an incredibly important and challenging role. You require full understanding of your fellow presenters and hosts, it is crucial to synchronise the auto cue with their natural pace of speech as well as keeping it in time given for the show. I found this role challenging, more than I thought I would, I had a lot of assistance from the production team and understood how crucial it was to have run throughs before a show.
Audio and production team are the group who make sure that the presenters and guests have fully charged mics, cameras are correctly angled and the run through is in order in time for the live show. It is important to communicate effectively with the production team as if any changes are to be made they need to be informed so that they can ammend anything in time for going live. From the opening soundstrack to the credits at the end, the production team is responaible for every screen, audio and video that shows. I spent some time doing this for the radio show, it was far more complicated as everything is dependant on the time, in particular I found live calls on radio to be particularly stressful and arranging the prerecorded audio.
Feb 6- 25
I learnt how to improve the standard and quality of my work in line of my future career choice and developed my own style of delivering stories to my audience. I had to change a lot about my writing, delivery and visuals, however this helped me improve the standard of my work both in university and for work experience throughout the weeks. Through using Moodle in the past weeks I started to compare my previous work with the weekly learning outcomes. The voice coaching in the early weeks encouraged me to start a show once I had perfected my style of delivering a story to my target audience. I started off in Week 3 with attemptig audiograms however, my voice did not quite translate very well, I then evaluated my ideas and whether they were an audio topic. Being in the line of beauty and fashion I soon realised it was not entierly suitable for that to be the topic of discussion as visuals are crucial. After voice coaching and refining my ideas I considered to soon start my own YouTube show. I learnt a lot from Week 6 in respect to audio and camera angles, before I was not having much success making my show look professional. It took me a while to figure out what I was doing wrong, i’m still trying to perfect my perfect set up but I realised that angles play a huge part in professionalism and keeping the attention of your audience. As well as allowing me to pair my verbal delivery with visuals for my audience, which keeps them better engaged and informed.
I have learnt how to effectively communicate and present my ideas in both visual and verbal media. My verbal media has always been a weak suit but since I had my voice coaching with Vanessa it has helped a great deal with my speech and pace, in turn it has improved my communication skills in general a great deal. This has helped me take on more verbal roles within my work experience roles and allowed me to develope my own style of presenting professionally in a clear way. My visual media skill have developed throught my years at LSBU, I have seen this progression through my website submission, my personal blog and through my work experience. I want to highlight how crucial my visual media communication has improved through my website, as prior to this knowledge and experience I had a relatively standard looking blog. Since being encouraged to create a professional website for our submission earlier this year, I analysed and researched into the kind of website I would like to work for and mimicked a mix of layout elements, styles of images and fonts for my own website. I then compared my writing style to the same publications and improved to better suit my audience and to convey my work in a more clear and professional manner.
Aside from visual and verbal progress, my interpretation skills have developed tremendously over the years at LSBU, particularly adapting from working as a team and working as an individual. LSBU gave me clear group work and individual work, through my work experience I have had to tackle these two roles within the same projects. This lead me to rely more on myself for my work towards deadlines and being resourceful when it came to effectively doing my group role. It was definatly a struggle for me to do multiple roles within the same project with close deadlines, however I feel I have been well prepared for it and aim to execute this in the future with greater precision.
I was a writer for the Radio news bulletin, March 18th 2019. This news day was not like our usual news days as we did not have any preperation beforehand, all roles and information were given to us on the day. This made everything feel a lot more stressful which made teamwork a crucial aspect on this day as we had limited time and ideas as out disposal to produce a live show. This meant that everyone had to effectively communicate their progress and fulfill their roles as each of us were relying on one another to make sure that we met the deadline in time at a high standard. This required professionalism and dedication to our roles, I sourced a local story for the radio bulletin, wrote my script then spoke to James our Editor and proceeded to record my script. I felt a lot of pressure to do this in such a short amount of time and found even more difficulty in fitting in my story in a 90 second slot. I spent over an hour attempting to record my story, it was important that I executed this well as I struggle with my pace of speech a lot. However in the previous weeks Vanessas voice coaching helped me a great deal and I was very happy with the outcome of my recording. Once I recorded and confirmed with the Editor I uploaded the recording and changed the format and uploaded it to Dropbox then Inception with my opening line and time. The communication between Editor and the team that day was exceptional as I was constantly told what to do next and what to ammend. Although the live show went well, unfortunatly the radio show did not go live on time due to techincal issues. We completed the show with everything done before the deadline.
During this show I confirmed what I wanted to do for my competition entry as I found a suitable competition to enter that was in line with my future career choice. I had already started my entry a week beforehand as I was trialling vegan only beauty products for the month. My review entry was suitable for the competiton and I began altering my review to suit it better to the standards of the assignment.
Although for personal reasons I was not present for numerous classes I always kept up on Moodle and asked my peers for assistance and understanding. I was committed to improving my verbal communication, Vanessa’s classes helped me in and out of university to improve my speech. As previously discussed I am creating content for my own YouTube show and the past weeks have prepared me well for developing my content and how to professionally produce it and the technical advances I have needed to make. I have changed my mind a lot this semester about what I thought I was good at and things I was reluctant to attempt due to my lack of interest and confidence in certain areas. However I am glad I made these changes as they have better prepared me for my future aspirations.
