7. Looking back at your preliminary task, what do you feel you have learnt in the progression from it to the full product?

Comparison of introduction of Final and Preliminary Projects

From the prelim to our final project our group has made many advancements. In terms of understanding our audience and many technological advances. This first clip (above) shows a comparison between the introduction of our preliminary task and our final project. First of all the main improvements are that in the prelim we where not very aware of our target audience, therefore the music used is outdated, however we rectified this issue within our final project by researching our target audiences' favourite types of music and from knowing this information we looked through the media departments copyright free resources for a suitable style and genre. Furthermore in terms of technology we have improved because we have used 'key notes' ( as seen in Q.6) within our final project to alter the sound so it may fade out as gradually as we feel necessary or crescendos, to make for a more varied and professional sound. For example we have brought the sound in gradually to a crescendo within our final project and build up the sound along with the added voices for emphasis and urgency to attract our audience. Whereas in the preliminary we did not have such knowledge of the programme 'premiere' therefore the sound was very much on one level. Also in the prelim the voice over seems quiet and over powered by the music, this may have been because we did not correctly adapt the sound levels within the recording studio so the voice was not loud enough. However we have now learned that even if the levels where not correct initially on 'premier' we can change the volume by altering the auto gain which helps balance the music and speech more accurately.

Comparison of Ending Sequence of Final and Preliminary Projects

Within these two ending sequences there is a clear difference in flow and continuity, this is because within our prelim we didn't add any music to the ending to round off the programme, this in turn leaves the broadcast disjointed and a feeling of being unfinished. Also the music in my final project gives a coherence to the audience again which links to the beginning and gives a sense of circling to some to an appropriate end. However we had difficulty in the prelim task of importing sounds that we had cut within audacity making the mistake of converting the file to an MP3 or saved it as an audacity project rather than exporting it as a wav file.

Sound Effects

Within our final project we have used a lot more sound effects, because within our prelim it was lacking in a continuous flow because there was lack in underlying music, sound effects and atmospheric sounds ( eg at the races crowd noise). This really helps to keep the broadcast upbeat and flowing and helps the reader to relate to different sections of the news bulletin. For example the sport report jingle and the trumpet sound effect for the Ladies Day segment. We edited the sound effects using premiere to keep them short and snappy and to be careful not to take up too much broadcast time, so we could still keep vital news information. We managed out time more effectively within our final project from our prelim also because we had the time line on premiere which helped us to keep all sections of our broadcast within correct time allocations. Also we felt more organised on a whole as a group.

By Megan Armstrong