Here you can access my interactive Prezi Presentation for my creative self reflection, or if preferred, here is the link to said presentation. Additionally, included below is the full text in essay form if you favor to read it on blogspot instead.
Introduction
Around 3 months ago, in the beginning of our school's 2nd term, our media class was assigned a project of making a 15 minute radio show. Firstly, I chose my team of Me, Timo, Satria, and Theo, and together, by conducting research on our audience, and conducting research on the industry by looking at other radio shows, we came up with the initial concept of what would become RegentsX FM. Next, across those 3 months, we then recorded, edited, created logos, jingles, adverts, chose songs, and more, which ended in the final product of our RegentsX radio show.
How does you product use or challenge conventions and how does it represent social groups or issues?
The Radio Show "RegentsX FM" focusses, and is targeted towards high school students in Bali. More specifically students from our school, Regents Secondary School. This is due to most of our segments on our radio show relating to events that happen in school, and even gossip that mainly students from our school would be interested in. The radio show is mainly meant to entertain and act as leisure for Regents students as they may be updated about events that are happening/will happen at school, while also being able to tune into the hottest gossip as to not miss out. This was decided due to the results we got from our survey, which showed us that the majority of students would want to hear a gossip segment.
Our radio show mostly conforms to the norms of other radio shows that target similar audiences. For example, radio shows like MTV often hook in their viewers by using celebrity gossip. Additionally, a majority of radio shows like RadioX and Phoenix FM, from the UK and Indonesia respectively, which target similar demographics to our radio show, (albeit having a slightly older audience than us) often include news segments in which hosts generally talk about the events that happen locally, in their city, or their country, or even on certain occasions, global news. Similarly, our radio show follows these tropes and conventions of the radio industry and conforms to audience expectations. Furthermore, our radio show embraces conventions by using songs that are popular in the current time. Hit charting songs that resonate deeply with most teenagers worldwide are played on our radio show, similar to a lot of other radio shows of similar genre. This is because, to attract an audience, we must use what said audience enjoys to reel them in. This was confirmed from the data we got from our survey, which told us the type of music our audience is most likely to enjoy. We found this out by asking them their favorite artists. In this case, music from artists and bands like The Arctic Monkeys, Childish Gambino, The Neighborhood, and more, were the most mentioned. Thus, they would also be the most enjoyable for our targeted audience. In addition, we conformed to norms in the industry by speaking English to expand the reach of our radio show to more people. Lastly, in our gossip segment, which included an interview with a student (whose name is Dyfan), there were portions where obscene/profane language was used. Generally, radio shows that target similar audiences to RegentsX don't include obscene language/profanity. Thus, we also conformed to these conventions by "bleeping" out the portions of the recording where profanity was used by the guest.
How does your product engage with audiences and how would it be distributed as a real media text?
I believe our radio show would be a perfect pick to be aired by our school's broadcasting department. This is because our target audience is incredibly niche, as only students from our school would understand the gossip or even the news that's currently happening. To put it simply, people from other schools, cities, countries, etc, would most likely be confused/not be interested in the affairs of people that they do not care about. Thus, I believe our radio show would best be broadcasted in our school. Our radio would best be played in the afternoon after students had finished their classes/lessons to give them an opportunity to relax and cool down after a long day and be entertained. Other than being broadcasted by school however, we could also incorporate forms of new media like YouTube. This means that we could upload the radio segment/show to YouTube so that the audience can re-listen to the show if they missed it, or just whenever they please.
As mentioned previously, our radio show targets and appeals to the demographic of teenage high school students (aged 15-18 primarily) and may appeal to any gender. This is mainly due to our gossip segment that will most likely be enjoyed by people of that age range, as adults may not be as interested in listening to gossip and rumors as they have their own lives to deal with and do not have the time to waste by listening to teen gossip. However, when it comes to race and ethnicity, we most likely appeal to Indonesians specifically, instead of people outside of the country, as events discussed will mainly consist of events happening in Indonesia.
Furthermore, our radio show consists of 2 male, 16 year old, Indonesian hosts. This is representative of the high school student audience and also the male and Indonesian audience. We did this as Stuart Hall's representation theory believes that audiences will be more inclined to consume media where they feel represented. However, it may not be as attractive to females as they may rather want to listen to a radio show which utilizes female hosts instead, as they may find it more appealing/relatable. Additionally, when it comes to socio-economic status, i believe people of lower socio-economic background/people in the lower class may not be attracted to listen to our radio show. This is because our school is a private, international school which has a tuition fee high above the Indonesian average. This means that people of the lower class may not be so interested in listening about the lives of teenage high school students that, to them, may be "out of touch". Thus, I believe that our radio show represents and appeals to mainly people of the upper-middle to higher class.
From Katz’s and Bulmer’s Usage and Gratification Theory (UGT), I would state that this radio show falls under the category of "diversion", "surveillance" and "social relationships", as audiences are most likely tune into and listen to the radio for leisure/to be entertained. This is achieved by the gossip segment of our radio show, as well as the music we play as people listen to gossip about others as a form of excitement, and music also serves as a form of diversion from everyday life for most people. However, at the same time people may also want to know about current affairs and want to be kept in the loop of things, thus it may also fall under the surveillance category, as our news segment and gossip segment allow our listeners to keep up with what's going on at school. Additionally, new media allows us to upload our radio segments to YouTube, which allows audiences to leave comments, share it to their friends, and more, which may enhance their social relationships, adding yet another reason for why audiences would want to consume our radio show.
How did your production skills develop throughout this project?
Through creating this radio show, I have learnt a variety of new things in the realm of sound engineering, including how to use mixers, microphones, and how to edit audio together in a way that is auditorily pleasing, as I was the one who edited our radio show. I did this by using Adobe Premiere Pro CC 2020 and I believe I was able to learn a lot while editing the radio show. The recording of the radio show was done using the OBS Software that recorded Me and Timo's voice through a call we had on the app Discord. Furthermore, I have also enhanced my team work capability as I had to work with a team and was able to successfully delegate tasks to different members of my team to be as efficient as possible. I would like to hope that I was able to create a high quality radio show that would be enjoyed by people in my school which talks about interesting topics that people would like to know/hear about.
In the beginning of the project we were hesitant on whether we would include a gossip segment or not, and whether we would include an interview segment with a teacher or a student. However, my team and I decided that going through with the gossip segment would be a good idea as it would be entertaining for students to be able to hear the insights on gossip they may have heard at school, and we may be able to give clearer information about the event that led to the gossip. Additionally, it was also the most requested segment from the options in our survey, which solidified our judgment.
How did you integrate technologies - software, hardware, and online - into this project?
To create the radio show, my team and I used various different software and hardware to develop a well furnished final product. To record Timo and I's lines, we used our studios at home, using a Scarlett 2i2 Studio Mic and BM800 Condenser Microphone respectively. For our guest Dyfans's lines, we provided him with a Samson Meteor Studio USB microphone. We then entered a Discord call (an online application that allows you to chat, call, and video call with others, similar to Skype), in which Timo recorded our lines using the OBS recording software. He then uploaded all recordings to a google drive where I downloaded them and put them into Adobe Premiere Pro, where I edited all the recordings together. I was able to download the songs used from a website called soundlouder.com which allowed me to download songs from the app Spotify as mp3 files. The jingles were made by Satria using the application Bandlab, using recordings made from his phone. While Theo created the logo using Adobe Photoshop. All in all, I feel like technology has helped us greatly in creating our project as editing, recording, and sharing files and ideas had become far easier. Using discord helped me and Timo as we did not have to meet at a location to record, as we could just do it online. Adobe Premiere Pro also helped in editing as it streamlined the process and made everything very simple, compared to if I had to use other editing software's.
Conclusion
This project definitely helped me in becoming a better team player/leader as I had to cooperate well with my team in order to get things done. As I am not the best artist, I had to find help from a team member who is more gifted in the field than I am to create our radio show's logo (Theo). Other than that I had to work together with another group member (Timo) to create a dynamic duo of presenters that would make our radio show as entertaining as possible. Additionally, I also had to work with my team member who knew far more about creating audio snippets and using instruments (Satria) to create the jingles for our radio show. Furthermore, I believe I now know more about what types of microphones to use during different types of recordings based on what type of audio that needs to be recorded, and how to edit audio using Premiere Pro, which is the editing software that I used. In the end, I am quite satisfied with me and my group's performance during this project as everyone put in their designated amount of work and we were all able to reach our deadlines and together as a team, were able to create a good quality radio show.
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