This post will be one on the learning objectives that i set myself of this project and state whether I did/didn’t achieve them and to what extent i did.
The first learning objective I had was to improve my confidence in approaching contributors and in talking to people, even if they do say no to being involved. I would say that I have achieved this halfway as I am definitely more confident ringing people than I was before the project started. This was helped by the research that I undertook online, as the idea of gaining confidence from having background knowledge is truthful, as when I did ring up an organisation I knew who I was after, what they did and what I wanted to interview them about at a later date. Furthermore, the point that helped me was just doing it as once I had done it once I lost an element of the stigma that I had once had for this. Alongside this, I am now being required to ring people more often due to work, so this helped me towards this. However, my change in attitude did come too late for this project as Molly sorted the majority of the interviews and I was too laid back about this because she was being successful in booking interviews meaning that she did most of the work, thus meaning the number of people I got for an interview was tiny in comparison to her. Furthermore, when Molly went to conduct Vox Pops I shied away from doing so and shouldn’t have done as this would have forced me to be uncomfortable. Yet in the future, I feel that I would be okay approaching people for an interview despite the potential risk of me not getting an answer or it goes wrong and.
My second learning objective was to create strong multiplatform content that was on par with what professional companies produce such as the BBC etc. I would say that this has been achieved by us using a website styled approach, as we decided to put everything up on this such as the actual episodes, videos and full-length interviews where possible. This approach also allowed for us to be able to cater to every disabilities need, as we created subtitled videos so that deaf people were able to follow along, something that was drawn from the research I did as every facebook video I analysed used some form of subtitles. Ultimately a website approach was a good idea, however, the one area we didn’t touch was social media in any form, something that I regret due to the majority of my research being around how social media is crucial for the age range that we were targeting. This means that we really should have utilised Facebook and Twitter by having an account an simply just posting the videos out through them, rather than simply just a website.
My third learning objective was to create a strong piece that could stand up well in a portfolio. Again I would say that this has been achieved as the audio that we have produced would not be out of place on a radio network, or simply being placed on Itunes for people to download. Regarding the professional aspects of the audio i.e levels, the right contributors and the right tone of narration I would say that we successfully hit all three of these and that there is no problem with either. Furthermore, by producing the website to such a high standard this also reflects on how the piece would be received as it is professional to look at and helps to ‘sell’ the podcast. Finally boosting why I think this was achieved is the amount of visual content we produced that goes with the audio side of it and again this feeds into the professionalism of the project. My one criticism is of how this is that it doesn’t really fit our target audience very well due to the interviewees we have, thus dampening the professionalism of the project. Yet if everything is combined into one product I think that what has been produced is incredibly good and that all of the content we have produced is to a high standard.
The fourth learning objective I had was to be able to write a professional script and make sure that it worked with the content we had. I would say that this again was successful as nowhere in the podcasts does the scripting feel of ‘tune’ or out touch with what is being said. But I can’t take all the credit for this as it was a combination of me and Molly writing it and where we got the combination right was in the sight episode, this because of the scripting engaging the emotions of the listener, whereas in some of the episodes this doesn’t happen as much. I also did try my hardest to implement the ideas of the research such as using a word count approach to work out a rough length so that we didn’t under/overrun, furthermore, I also made sure that each episodes introduction was clear and set the premise of the podcast as this was a problem I had last time. As a result of the listener now instantly understands what is going to be discussed in the next episode. One area that was an issue was trying to keep sentences below 16 words and I did try as this creates more impact on the listener and impact is what we wanted them to experience. However, one area for improvement would of been not to rush the scripting as that is exactly what we did and when we spent time on it undoubtedly came out sounding better and this something I will take for future projects. Overall though I do think that the scripting was effective and lead to us impacting the listener, furthermore my tone of voice was also suitable.
My final learning objective was based on asking better questions to people and improving my confidence in doing so, again I would say that this was achieved. This is evidenced by the fact that i wrote the majority of the interview questions and then when conducting the interviews I was the one who would ask them to the contributor. To start with i was a lot more strict on writing questions down for myself, these would be based on the who what where etc approach, however as my confidence grew I stopped being so regimented with my questions and was much more confident in ad-libbing and thinking on my feet. This doesn’t mean to say that everything was all plain sailing as it wasn’t because if I was nervous i would sometimes elongate questions and not be concise meaning that the interviewee didn’t know what they were being asked to talk about. Furthermore I would also at times be very nervous and as a result Molly would sometimes take over for me to calm down. Overall though I would now feel comfortable going to interview someone.