Radio Ad

The creation of my Radio Advert is now at an advanced stage as I begin to clear up and condense all of my clips into a seamless advert which applies to my target audience for the Element newspaper. I have omitted a couple of clips that I deemed over-accented as the Bristolian accent was somewhat exaggerated and began to imbalance my advert.

I want to ensure that my advert applies to my audience throughout from the tone to the lexical choices. I have created a clip that isn't too long however isn't too short, and the balance in length of my advert is healthy and sufficient. I have managed to include features that I initially planned to include, such as expressions and sounds relating to a busy scene.

Important features currently inside my advert include:
- clear busy scene
- evident accent, relating to location of newspaper - close to Bristol area
- clear knowledge of brand and purpose - not irrelevant
- family appeal/scenes - ie. pub/dinner/community/talking/neighbour
- reference to jobs - local community
- upbeat- relevant song choice - ideal for captive audience

Specials - Music Choice

Rudi, A Message to You

The current song choice of the Specials cover of Rudi, A Message to You works well with my target audience as it hints and targets certainly the family man in my audience which is predominantly middle-aged. The song represents the youthful side of the men that are an integral part of my audience that are now likely to be married and have children.

It is also attractive to my younger audience as the song is perhaps deemed something of a classic today after being used in other adverts for national chains. The song represents the status of a young audience which applies to 'the Element' as a paper aimed for the family audience in this modern town.

The song which was originally recorded by Dandy Livingstone as part of the rock-steady  movement as well as the fashionable 1960's Jamaican ska . Bearing the originality and popularity of this song at the time the track contains a nostalgic appeal to my audience which again is bias to men due to the sort of sound it creates.

The choppy chords create a rousing and positive sound which maintain the demographic of my audience as well as clear aspects of the cheeriness and happiness that my paper is supposed to connote. The chords and offbeat sounds connote positivity from the music and about my newspaper, thus promoting 'the Element' efficiently.

Radio Advert

I have also began to use alternative software from my home-computer in order to maximise the use of time and use all of the technology available to me, to create my Radio Advert. Using a basic and perhaps lesser quality sound recorder from my computer, I have recorded more snippets of voiceover as well as music that could feature in my Radio Advert.

I have experimented with plenty of apparatus and also used my own kitchen utensils in order to gain certain parts of my radio scene, for example the use of real-life knife and forks in order to create a sound effect to use on GarageBand, via saving the clip as an MP3 compatible with iTunes.

Since beginning the production of my Radio Advert I have also contemplated a few other ideas to perhaps include or dismiss:

- include an musical intro for 'bulletins' or speech in advert
- the idea of a dispute over music to kick-start advert, which would create family feel as well as reality
- the use of ongoing background noise as well as background music track
- background music track cannot be too lively or override/derail speech itself

I will now gain some initial feedback from my initial ideas and recordings from my peers about what works and doesn't work so well in my advert.

Newspaper Feedback

As part of my ongoing practical production I have flashed my newspaper in front of people in order to gauge the feedback of what would be my audience for my newspaper. The Element newspaper was designed with a specific audience in mind, that of a family audience for a chic town, hence the modern and sleek appearance.

But I know this, now it was a case of gaining crucial feedback from potential and prospective readers about my newspaper. Below I have listed some of the feedback from my audience:

"Great use of colours, like the bold colour scheme which works effectively"

"Story is local and close to home,written with all members of family in mind, ie job emphasis"

                                    "feel-good factor in appearance"

"bold and clearly understandable"

                                        "different style and unique lay-out"

                 "positive newspaper!"

"pictures on inside page are captivating and dominant without overpowering whole page"

" like the stat for Waitrose story, again different from conventional paper"

                                                    "unsure on the lower case 'the"

"statistics appear evidently fictional"

Radio Advert advances

I have now finalised two certain tracks in the form of 'Message to you Rudy' and spontaneously 'Give it Up' by KC and the Sunshine Band as I feel they both offer upbeat feel-good factors to my radio advert, which simply needs to stand out and reflect my community brand.

I have started to trawl through 'soundbible' an online site in search of sounds which I can add into my advert in order to make my advert phonetically sound more realistic as well as importantly entertaining and engaging. My use of GarageBand is improving day-by-day and I have already established new skills such as that of varying the volume to fade in and out by simply adjusting it at different 'points' on specific tracks.

The detail I can go into would appear huge which is great as GarageBand will allow me to create a Radio Advert of maximum quality. I have also made simple changes such as renaming the tracks instead of the default name, to something that will allow me to recognise a track, without playing it aloud.

I am aware that at the moment my advert is currently very 'male-heavy' even at this very early stage and I need to address that in order to gain this family feel about my newspaper. I want my newspaper to be professional and for it to be solely one-sided and revolve around just men speaking would appear cheap as well as even sexist.

I need to make sure I have a good balance throughout my advert, whether it is about what gender is speaking over my background noise. Or the mix between noise and silence as well as formality and informality. I have plenty of things to constantly consider when creating this advert as I mustn't diverge and be distracted and as a result create a irrelevant advert for an audience that just doesn't match.

Radio Advert

Radio Advert

I have now started the production of my Radio Advert as one of my subsidiary tasks to match my brand that I am creating 'The Element' newspaper which I have already created. I have already drafted some initial ideas on the blog as well as a script, of which crucially included music in the background.

This music via the use of a connection from my iPod to the Mac I am using to create my advert enables me to select any of my thousands of songs from my Music Library to then choose to put into my radio advert, as an experiment in GarageBand.

I have selected music by the Specials 'Message to you Rudy' as I feel it incorporates my brand as a song, even without the dialogue. The track is well-known and upbeat, it also applies to a range of ages having originally been released in 1979. My newspaper has a distinct target audience that are modern and live in a chic town that has this funky brand as its newspaper.

I want to gain the normality of my audience through the music and dialogue to allow it to interest a 'family audience'. I want my paper to get people involved, bring the family together and as a result the community. My idea of my radio advert is to recreate very normal every-day scenes with the occasional touch of class which will be expressed through word choices and even the prosodic features of my advert.

I am using GarageBand which is an application installed on the Macs, an application that can professionally create music as well as something like my advert. GarageBand is such professional equipment it has been used by multi-million stars such as Rihanna to actually create music tracks on her album.

I am steadily getting used to another new application and programme to add to my portfolio of programmes which I have started to adapt to since starting A Level Media Studies. GarageBand is quick and easy to use, and the use of being able to simply speak into the microphone and for it to accurately record my voice, is priceless in terms of 'playing around' with my advert to experiment with the software to ensure the best possible result.

As a result of this experimenting I have already noticed things such as people speaking at the same time in one recording sounds messy and jumbled. It isn't clear and as a modern and fresh newspaper, the 'Element' radio advert has to be just that in all of my practical productions; Newspaper,Radio Advert and Poster. I have also simply experimented with the amount of decibels the microphone can listen to as well as applying basic affects to alter original voice.

Newspaper

For my newspaper I have encountered a difficulty with PhotoShop as the one holiday image I want to use on my front cover is coming out very small on InDesign when saved as a JPEG after editing. I need all of images to appear clear, crisp and of the best quality.

My newspaper is at a very advanced stage. I am satisfied with the overall appearance of my paper however I need to still adjust the following things:

- Holiday advert
- Image quality
- Writing quality
- Narrative
- Lexical choices
- Proof read

Poster

I have now created a very rough draft for my other ancillary task which involves the Element logo, that of the art that appears alongside the masthead on the paper. I want to maintain the same house style throughout whilst retaining my minimalistic and modern appearance.