Media Studies - Nayana Sumaniaka: November 2022

https://www.canva.com/design/DAFSrRN77Q4/ty0m6wK39jnbTXzd6gN4lA/edit?utm_content=DAFSrRN77Q4&utm_campaign=designshare&utm_medium=link2&utm_source=sharebutton

I created my self reflection using Canva as Prezi wasn’t working well for me.

CRITICAL SELF REFLECTION

Few months ago, we were instructed on our term long project, radio. For this project, I chose to work with Nadine and with that we started our research and pre-production and created Double Tiger Radio. We created everything from the content, target, logo, jingle and many more. All this have finally made our final short radio show.

How our product use or challenge convention and how it represent social groups and issue

Some existing typical conventions in radio may include factors such as radio being live and recorded on the spot, having a formal intro/outro and having short jingle for sound effects as well as pre recorded audios. In our radio project, we have use and challenge a lot of the existing conventions. Firstly, our radio is not recorded live (on the spot) this is due to the sudden changes in our schedule. We had a miscommunication with the responsible team for recording making us unable to record on our booked time and because the sudden switch to online school and limited deadline, we had to record our audios seperately which then is combined through editing. Our intro and outro was not exactly formal and follow the usual template, which instead was more personalized and informal. Other than that we mostly follow the typical conventions in a radio which includes having a short jingle, background music as well as pre recorded audios for the news.

For the content and target audience itself, I’d argue that we challenged the stereotype of females, this is because in our discussion topic we talked about work and internship which in my opinion is not what stereotypical female would talk about especially as in the world today, work have a stronger image in male meaning they are more expected to work than females. But at the same time, we also follow this female stereotype as we talk about music specifically on this certain genre called K-Pop which are usually seen liked by female more than male. At this, our target audience is high school students in Bali, talking specifically of Regents Secondary School as our first discussion topic was based on the activity the school provides to the students.

We hook audiences through more relaxed and chill yet informational talk which in my opinion challenge the usual method radio uses to attract audience which is usually from using controversies. However, we had news segments in our radio making it alike other radio shows that targets possibly similar audience, ours in particular are more engaged locally as the story we chose was based on the proximity. In our news segment we talked about G20 which was a huge event that happened in Bali hence so affect those living in Bali (local people) the most. Nonetheless, we still had factor that follows the typical stereotypes of a radio which includes using current songs that are famous or at least iconic. We chose songs that people chose to be their favorite on average through a survey done to all students. From the results, we found out the 2 top genres listened are Pop and K-Pop, then we chose songs based on this genre, these includes HypeBoy - NewJeans, Dancing in My Room - 347aidan as the 2 main songs and Con La Brisa, Indo Black Magic and Antifragile.

How we engage with the audience and how would it be distributed as a real media text

Realistically speaking, it is best if our radio is aired in school, only for students and even teachers in school, This is because how distinct our audience are to the point community outside of school won’t get any of the reference making them most likely to not enjoy the radio itself and have an oppositional reading with it.

Another way to distribute the real media text is through social media such as YouTube and Instagram, this way it is more accessible to audience and they can listen to the radio anytime they want to. Although we plan to air this radio live in the morning as the concept is accompanying the audience as they start their day so it would be around 8AM.

The demographics we have established for this radio show are: the age would be 15-30, meaning it is suitable for everyone, from students until teachers to listen along, although we do focus on the senior high students‘ interest more. Our radio can be for all gender and all race but for the race, we do pay more attention to those in Indonesia as the news are focused in Indonesia even though what we talked about was an international event as well. The social class/status we applied was middle-high considering how Regents itself is a National+ school.

As previously mentioned, our radio target the demographic of our target and can be found appealing to all in general. The content of our text is also very personalized based on the survey results hence can be very engaging towards the audience. This is due the audience hearing what they want to hear and can create a preferred reading as the audience and the hosts would have the same idealogy and concept of leisure which helps increasing the engagement overall.

Although radio is considered to be a more of traditional media example, the audience are considered to be more active where they play a bigger part in the decisions and is very influential towards the progress which is most obviously seen from our “Weekly Questions” segment where it depends on the audience response.

Me and Nadine are both hosting the radio. Here we act as the representatives of the student and even the female, Indonesian audience. This follows the representation theory as they might feel more comfortable listening and consuming texts where they feel more represented in. But this might work opposingly towards the male as they might not feel very represented in the show and may create a negotiated reading towards the show.

This radio can also fall in Katz and Bulmer’s and Gratification Theory, in categories of diversion, social relationship and surveillance. This falls in diversion as people can listen to the radio show in their free time for their leisure and it become a form of escapism. This is achieved from the small talk segments as well as the music that was put in. This is considered in social relationship as this can be a conversation topic to build relationship and to know the hosts better. I also consider my radio to be part of surveillance as there is a news segment that inform them about the surrounding which can also satisfy their curiousity.

How did your production skills develop throughout this project

In the beginning, I already had a lot of thoughts for this project. Because of our very limited members, the distribution has to done more concisely hence automatically each of us need to work on more stuff - we planned for Nadine to most of the pre-production as in research and the sound effects while I worked on script and editing while we worked together on the logo. I personally had a lot of hesitance and doubts on this project but I have worked with Nadine previously, so I already had an experience of her working style which what leads me to teaming up with her, because we have the same ideology, where we have the same idea of what we like and don’t like and what we enjoy and I find it is easier to communicate with her.

There are a few aspects I felt more confident working on which is the editing and the hosting, this is because I already have an experience in editing as I already tried editing previously, for competition and performing, I have edited a lot of music remix. I also used a software I am already familiar with which is CapCut which I will explain more later. I felt comfortable hosting because I would consider myself to be communicative enough to be able to entertain an audience which is also helped by the factor I am already comfortable talking to an audience and hosting a talk.

But there a few things I am still improving, these includes my skills in scripting, recording and designing. In my opinion, my scripting could be much better, it doesn’t flow as smoothly and it some parts I could’ve make it more casual and less repetitive. As I’m used to talking live, when I record my audios I can sense a quality drop as I didn’t have proper equipments to produce one, by using what I already have, there were a lot of noise which later was reduced during the editing process. I personally never really tried designing a logo, it’s far from my expertise, because of that I only use the software I already know - Canva.

There were a lot of sudden changes made during the production. It started with the recording, we planned to make the recording together in one location, we booked a spot in our school’s radio room as it provides all the equipment but due to some miscommunication and conflict in schedule, we couldn’t use the room hence we had to resort to recording it at home with our phones at our own time. This created a lot of issue such as a difference in quality as we use different phone microphones which is handled by Nadine by using a different recording software. This also leads to the suddent scripting because at first we wanted to do it naturally as in without a script but because we recorded it differently, we had to make a script to make sure our conversation at least connects.

There were a few changes that happened to the segments as well. We wanted to make 2 discussion segments but because the time available for the whole radio show was a bit limited, we ended up doing just 1 discussion which was about the internship. Even the discussion topic was changed, originally we wanted to talk about the Book Week event and the Gebyar Sabang Merauke event but because Nadine didn’t attend both, we changed to something we both are familiar with. This ends us with a 13 minute show, which is less than our target duration. So to reached our target, I had to think of another possible segment and I spontaneously chose a segment that involves audience participation where they send messages to a fake number and I read it out. This was thought by me as Nadine was absent on that day.

How did we integrate technologies - software, hardware and online - in this project

We surprisingly didn’t use a lot of softwares. For the discussion and research we used Google Docs, I recorded the audios with the microphone that came with my Iphone 11 Pro Max, “Voice Memos” while Nadine used the applications, Pro Audio, Voice Changer and MP3 Audio. To design the logo, we used Canva. To edit the radio itself, we used CapCut and to share our files, we used Google Drive. For our main communication, we used WhatsApp.

Firstly, for all sorts of communication, we used WhatsApp, we send our audio recording there to check each other’s part and we try to connect both. We used Google Docs and Google Forms to plan most of the research and to be able to work on it even in different places. For all of the songs, I screen recorded it through various apps like Spotify and Youtube and in CapCut, I extract the audio only. In one of our learning sessions, we had a lesson with Mr Wayan who taught us the basics in recording the audios using professional microphones and Audacity software. But he also mentioned that an alternative in recording is by using our phone microphones as the quality is still suitable enough for production. Due to some issues we ended up going with that method and honestly, although it can be better, I am still quite satisfied.

All of these technologies have helped us a lot. It made all the process more efficient and although we had a lot of bumps and obstacles we managed to finish this project on time. I am most grateful for CapCut and Canva. Both softwares was really simple to understand and use and it did the job very well. Canva saved a lot of time because of the existing features such as the template and elements where we can use a lot of PNGs and pictures. I edited our radio show in CapCut and it was all very simple hence quite quick for me to finish.

(you may want to check the Canva presentation for the picture references)

Conclusion

To conclude, this project really helped me to be better in many ways, I learned a lot in how to produce a radio and realized how tedious research for a radio can be. There are definitely a lot of things I can improve in, starting from the pre-production, time management and to be a better teammate. I really think I need to work more on cooperating and dividing tasks because there are a lot of things I regret. I realized I don’t work best in groups because I find it too time-consuming to wait for others’ opinion and I saw I made a lot of spontaneous decisions. I had a lot of issue with my teammate as well as she had a lot of absence making me have to take more work of both of us which is not something I prefer as I would rather work on it myself than holding risk for other people as well.

From this project, I learn I have to change a few things for my future projects. I definitely think I need to change my team in means of either finding someone else that I can click with or just work on it alone which I will try to avoid as I want to learn to be a good team player. But I am grateful for this project and I regret nothing, I am very thankful together we created a satisfying radio show.

Media Studies - Nayana Sumaniaka

RADIO FINAL PRODUCT

RADIO SELF REFLECTION

CRITICAL SELF REFLECTION

Component 3: Final Piece