Paul Interview

EVENT: Personal Reflection

In regards to my role I think what worked was I was always able to listen to other peoples opinions and problems during the planning stages of the event. I think that being able to hit certain targets on time and keep some organisation in the meetings was also a good strength. I think that some of the problems with my role were that I didn’t have enough time to personally tend to all the activities and rehearsals prior to the event as some problems arose that I couldn’t deal with, the best example of this was the introduction of new software for the green screen room two days before the event. I thought that the team in the green screen room had got to grips with the software but they were still encountering problems and getting to grips with using it during the event, if I’d known that they weren’t confident with the software I would have told them to stick to the original plan which involved using a vision mixer instead. I think during the event were where my biggest weaknesses came out, from before the event I made it clear that I didn’t want to be a main speaker as I felt uncomfortable talking to big groups of people. This meant that during the event I shyed away from speaking a lot when I would have been required to speak. I also think that in terms of planning, in the last session before Easter (and technically before the event) we went through the event and marked down every small detail and made sure the event would work effectively step by step. I think that if we had done this in earlier meetings then the planning and event would have ran even better as we would have had more time to prepare for our own roles. I think it was also a shame that we didn’t have any pamphlets or handouts for the people in the work experience room.

I think that overall there was a good effort from the team from the planning stage to the actual event. During the planning stage the class was particularly helpful when discussing the event and working towards our main objective. I admired the fact that Jake volunteered for a lot of the tasks for the event but it became apparent that he was taking on too much, it got to the point where he was volunteering for every task. I think that overall the class work together really well and some people definitely have strengths that the roles of the event served to highlight. For example the green screen room personnel were Rob, Jake, Lance, Chris and Will, who are for the most part interested in the technical elements of the course so it seemed a good fit that they signed up to do the technical demonstration segment of the event. People like Mike and Balve are confident speakers and this served them well in the Gatehouse for the work experience presentations.
It’s hard to say how well the green screen team worked together as I was not present for that section of the event, I think the general opinion is that they failed to get the students involved with the activity and this is probably because they needed someone a bit forward to take the initiative. I’ve seen them do presentations and I think they’re all very capable public speakers so I trust their presentations for the equipment went well. I also admired the fact that Will provided some hands outs on lighting and green screens. I think that the biggest room for improvement would be that we needed practice and that would have helped us all more confident and assured with our delivery of presentations and the event as a whole.

I think that the experience with event organisation was helpful for me. I am interested in different roles in the media such as producing, editing and writing. I think that this management opportunity has helped me with gaining skills for a producers role, as this role is most similar to a managers role when film sets are concerned. I think I will continue to actively pursue all three of these career paths and continue to learn about the roles into my third year at Paintworks. I would not rule out doing management in a different sector, I think that being an events manager has helped with a more broad experience of learning about management, and I've been told many of the principles are the same. As far as events management goes I would love to do it again, particularly a media event like a film festival or live music event. But at the moment I have produced some material for my showreel, as well as my multiplatform project D.O.A. which was a short film. So I plan to pursue my interests in producing or writing television drama and film.

EVENT: Pictures

Here are some more pictures from the event...

Here we are preparing for the event, I'm still editing the Bath Film Office Video.
Balve, the face of the event, meeting Tim Hammond the guest of the event and tutor at City of Bath College.


Some of the college students. They seem unimpressed.The event was recorded so that we could be assessed at a later dateOur lovely CRB ambassadors, Sian and Gemma.
The Green Screen Set-up, with Lance as News Reporter.Chris talking to the students about lighting.Will Wynn, the other half of the lighting presentationReuben using hand gestures and personality to get the students involved.
Reuben is the prettiest girl at the ballOne of the students Boinxing it up

Filling out the evaluation forms.
The students unwind, with some Bath Spa goodie bags.

EVENT: Event Day Part 2

I arrived in the Work Experience Room (Upstairs in the Gatehouse) in the middle of the Charlie Brooker clip that was shown as part of our intro:-


I think the Gatehouse talks went well Mike’s introduction was great and I think he’s particularly good at public speaking and being able to think on his feet. He’s also very funny which makes his presentations great to watch for us as well as the visiting students. I was supposed to be the first person to do my presentation however because my video was still sitting on a computer that wasn’t connected to the widescreen tv Balve did his presentation before me…

I think Balve’s presentation was great he showed a good clip of Friday Night with Jonathan Ross which featured his interview with Chris Moyles, his Powerpoint had some good visuals but I don’t think he used all the stills he had taken which was a shame. Balve is an extremely confident public speaker and I think he extremely well, which was expected. You can see the episode that Balve worked on here:-


Jakes presentation was on the company Benderspink and was also a powerpoint presentation with a youtube video showing a clip from American pie a Benderspinks production. I found Jake’s presentation was extremely interesting as most people are interested in the inner workings of Hollywood and his story was particularly interesting for people who want to do scriptwriting and also to demonstrate that it is far from impossible to get your work out into Hollywood. Jake provided some helpful information for the students as well as being entertaining.
When it came time for my presentation I showed them the Bath Film Office video, I was a bit worried that my presentation would not be as interesting as the others since they were about scriptwriting in Hollywood, the jonathan ross show and the special effects company the mill. As the video was playing I noticed some problems in the edit that were only slight and not as bad as I had anticipated. I think a few of the students noticed too. I’m usually nervous during presentations but I think of all the presentations I’d done this one I felt the most comfortable, potentially because I was making it up as I went along and the worries of sticking to a script weren’t bothering me, so potentially I think I will try and be less scripted in my presentations.

I will upload a version of bath film office that doesn’t break copyright laws soon, as I included some clips from The Duchess and Chocolat.

I think on the second groups run through, the group themselves were less receptive and didn’t laugh much but this is potentially just because they were a bit tired. I think that Mike, Balve and Jake did a better job on their presentations, however I think when it came to mine I was not as keen on doing it, I’d done it once and put slightly less effort but I doubt it was noticeable. For the second run through I wanted to changed my order from being last to going 3rd as I didn’t think Bath Film Office was such a great video to end on as there was less to talk about if we needed to fill the time.

We had to fill the time often which I think Mike did the best, leading off and asking the students questions trying to get them involved there seemed to bit a bit of reluctance on their part and I think if we had a bit more experience in dealing with these situations that we would have been better off as I think a discussion type setting was definitely a good thing to have.

We took the students to the Student Union for a 15 minute lunch break. This caused a massive disaster as now the students were free to roam we had a hard time getting them back into the two groups for the campus tour. Eventually Mike and Jake led a group of about 9 people in a tour which left Reuben, Balve and myself with a group of 20 people for the tour. Luckily our CRB ambassadors Sian and Gemma were happy to take over the tour.

And that was the end of the event, it happened fairly quickly and I have to admit that I was glad it was over although it wasn't nearly as bad or disastrous as it could've been, apart from the tour going slightly wrong I think it was mostly successful.

EVENT: Event Day Part 1

The day started with a lift from Reuben as I had a huge amount of equipment to return to the University and failed to do so the day before thanks to a hangover (EDIT: A hangover that would last for the next week)

I got to the Gatehouse with Balve, Mike and Lesley to find the upstairs room locked, and Lesley pointed out that on the schedule Rob and I were supposed to pick up the keys for NE G08 and the Gatehouse, so we were already off to a good start.

I had unfortunately been unable to finish editing the Bath Film Office video and as soon as I got in the room I was busy editing that. As the CRB ambassadors arrived I continued to edit until about 10:20 when Tim Hammond called me to say they had arrived on campus. Now this was technically about 20 minutes early and I had anticipated this but failed to inform everyone else which was another example of my great management and organisation ability.

As Balve and Lance escorted the students to the Italian Garden, Lesley came up to inform me that it was too chaotic downstairs and I had to intervene, which I tried to avoid because I was still editing the Film Office footage!

When I got outside I spoke to Tim Hammond and admitted we were running ahead of schedule, he assured me that everyone was relaxed since the weather was so nice. This really helped put my mind at ease and I simply told Balve to start with his introduction to the event and begin the icebreaker in which the students had to throw a ball to each other and each student would be put in either Group A or Group B. This could have gone better because for one thing the students weren’t even in a proper circle and I don’t think the game was explained well enough for them to even understand what was happening. I was just relieved I didn’t have to throw or catch a ball, as this was the source of my most embarrassing high school moments.

Lesley asked me to check that the Green Screen room were aware that the students would be there soon and they needed to be ready. (If only there were green screens to tend to during my high school PE classes…) When I got to the Green Screen room I had enough time to ask them how things were going and to learn that things weren’t going well. Then the students arrived and Lance herded them in, (Richard Wood later suggested that at that point I should have told Lance to hold on and keep the students out until the others were ready, I told him that I would’ve but I felt that it wasn’t my problem and that I had to be in a completely different room at the time)

Continued in Next Post...

EVENT: Day before the Event

The day before the event was a slightly stressful one for most of us. While Mike and I were editing our videos for the presentation room, Chris and Reuben were getting to grips with the new software (BoinxTV) to be used in the Green Screen Room. It looked like using the software would render the Vision Mixer completely useless in the setup, at first we tried to see if we could still incorporate the Vision Mixer into the setup as Lance had a presentation based on it and in most live green screen setups the Vision Mixer is a key part so we wanted to include it. In the end it was decided that Lance would speak about Green Screen's (or the software, I forget) instead.

Here are some screen shots of the software in use taken from Softonic:-

As far as the Work Experience Room was concerned we just needed to decide who was going to head the room. It seemed like Mike and Balve were both up for the job but eventually it went to Mike. We spent the session continuation with our tasks and Rob, Chris, Reuben, Will and Lance went to set up the equipment in NEG08, which the next morning at 11am-1pm would be “The Green Screen Room” or “The Fun Room” I really don’t know what to call it anymore...

I think we were all quite disorientated to some degree by having to deal with the imminent event after being off university for three weeks.

For more information on Boinx TV you can visit their site here

EVENT: Poster

Here's the Flyer sent to Tim Hammond of City of Bath College, it was created by Jake Martin...

WORK: Bath FM - Day 5

I sat in on Paul’s show again, this time I spent more time analysing the show and it’s running order and asked a few more questions. He obviously really enjoys presenting the show and when the question came up of whether he would ever leave the show to focus on managing the stations he said it was unlikely, unless of course Pat Sharp offered to take over!

At around 6:30 Paul reads the headlines of national papers. Luckily there is a website that has this information for him to read out which saves him from having to buy ten newspapers every morning and leaf through them.

Every hour of his show he reads the local news, a traffic update and reads from the local diary, which are some local events that have been emailed to the station. I think the local diary is vital for the stations community-friendly image.

The national news is read during peak hours like 8am-9am where the listenership is highest because of people driving to work or dropping their kids to school.

As part of their programming policy Paul’s show contains a local themed feature every hour. These features are:-

Where am I? – A location in Bath is described and the listeners have to guess where the location is.

Bath’s Big Vote – A topic that affects the local community is open for listeners to call in and share their thoughts. An example of this was when there was a possibility of the Bath rugby grounds to relocate; there was a huge response to this.

Bath FM Coffee Break – 15 minutes of back-to-back music with features from local sponsors.

Paul also uploaded the Marmaduke’s track onto the companies’ FTP site so that the track could be added to the companies playlist. While uploading the song he had to quickly run from Studio 2 to Studio 1 as the song playing on air was finishing.

After that I spent time watching Paul record the Vinyl Countdown idents by editing the background song with the pre-record presenter voice over. This was done so that it was available in time for the Vinyl Countdown show on the weekend.

I was extremely happy with my experience at Bath FM, the work environment is good, everyone who works there is very friendly and I would love if I had the chance to work with any of the people I met there again. I am now more interested in management either in a business setting or potentially utilising the skills I have observed and using them as a producer for television or film, which is another role I'm interested in. I think it's a shame I'm not more interested in actually managing for radio. I am very passionate about music however I listen to wealth of different styles of music and bands that usually aren't commercially successful. I think from this experience I have learnt that Radio is a business and having commercially listenable music that appeals to people is what drives the business. I think that there isn't really a place for more underground types of music to be as successful as a company like Bath FM, however I would be very interested in the programming and content management side of a radio station that caters to a more niche market, if this oppurtunity ever arises I think what I've learnt from Paul will definitely come in handy.

WORK: Bath FM - Day 4

Today Paul and I drove up to Swindon as there was a problem with the offices broadband connection which needed to get fixed, mainly because the presenters needed the internet for aid them with their shows. This was especially important with the Bank Holiday weekend approaching where there would be no office staff at all apart from the presenters and therefore no-one to help if they had any problems.

Paul issued the studios with broadband dongles, which worked fine (eventually) and will hopefully hold out till the end of the bank holiday at least. The next task on the agenda was to visit the new Swindon offices with builders to arrange soundproofing the offices to move the studios into. The empty studio space looked good and both office spaces seemed big enough for two studios.

I think one of the best experiences of the day was meeting the builders who knew exactly what they were doing and were completely up for the job even though the work had to be done really soon. The builder Paul originally consulted gave him a high price quote and so he consulted his Uncle and Cousin to do the job, which they seemed more than happy to help with. Paul obviously knew a great deal about construction and I’m not sure if this came form working with his Uncle previously or perhaps his farming background but I thought it was extremely helpful for him to understand the in’s and out’s of construction and I wondered if I was ever to be a manager if I would need to have similar knowledge as construction is something I know absolutely nothing about. Paul seemed sceptical about whether it was possible to get the studios built in time before their eviction date from the current Swindon office. Both his uncle and cousin replied at numerous times “nothing’s impossible” which such certainty that I now consider it fact.

Paul's job seems extremely hectic, he could have a day planned but have to drop it at a moments notice to tend to emergencies like the Broadband incident today. I think one of Paul's best qualities is his ability to remain calm in highly stressful times. I think his job is exciting as he always has something to do which is the kind of job that suits me. I think that if I had the kind of knowledge and experience that Paul has with Radio for Television or Film Production that I myself would be interested in setting up a production company as it seems to be very fulfilling to work on a project like Southwest Radio and watching your own company grow and flourish seems exciting. I can tell Paul does this job for his love of Radio and I think his passion for the medium is what makes him a good manager.

WORK: Bath FM - Day 3

Today Paul was preparing for a board meeting so couldn’t do his morning show again. Once again Oliver filled in for him. Our day was cut short because of the meeting however Paul managed to fit in an informative talk as we looked over the groups programming policy. As the document is confidential and contains information sensitive to the company I will not be reprinting any of the contents.

WORK: Bath FM - Day 2

I had an early start with Paul today and sat it on the breakfast show, which he presents, I also got to meet Steve who does the early morning breakfast show.

What’s notable about watching someone on the air on the radio is the need for some precise timing as Paul had to often backtime what songs were being played before certain segments like the news, which starts one second after the hour. Paul stays true to his companies catchphrase "keeping it local" by hosting a competition, "Where am I?" Where he describes a nearby location and the listeners have to call in to guess the location. There is a definite sense of community in the station as most of their competitions have prizes to local shows like the Drive-Thru screening of Grease and the Katy Setterfield concert who is a Dusty Springfield tribute act. Paul also supports the Bath Comedy Festival by giving information on the upcoming gigs and plugs the upcoming Joke-off between himself and fellow presenter Kate Constance.

After the show Paul dealt with invoices for a while and answered some emails before launching my favourite part of the day: Listening to new music. I learnt that invoices usually need to be checked by Paul before going to Head Office to get processed.


We listened to new singles to see which he would choose to potentially get played on air. The artists included U2, EG, Daniel Merriweather, Kelly Clarkson and Marmaduke Duke and I found it pretty exciting as he was getting early listens to new singles.

He decided which songs would go on his A or B list for this week and possibly the following week and which songs would not be played at all.

He had to update the playlist for the other station programmers to see as well as the band's publishers.

We spoke about the PRS, I was curious to find out how artists got paid for their music being played on air. He explained that PRS take a percentage of the companies’ annual gross for playing copyright music.

Paul took calls from the manager/promoter of a band who had sent him a promo CD for the band Grasshouse (or something like that). He listened to it while still on the phone to the manager, which I thought was extremely courteous, he even admitted there was a chance of the band getting some airtime since he liked the song. A lot of the choices Paul makes regarding the music depend solely on the song and whether its good or not, it seems that even being a big name doesn’t secure you airtime as we discussed with Steve that some of the songs by artists like Pink and Justin Timberlake weren’t suitable for the stations image, however they do have some songs that they will play because the audience like it like Justin Timberlake's "Senorita".

Most of what he did today was regarding the radio side of things; he also spoke with his sales department about looking for weather sponsorship. It's a shame I couldn't spend more time with the Sales team as they seemed like nice guys and I think that knowing about Sales and having some experience with it would be vital for business management.

EVENT: Last lesson before Easter Break

The last session before Easter had us really making sure that the event would work out. There were a lot of loose ends to tie and we needed to go over our proposed plans with a fine-toothed comb.

Unfortunately Chris and Balve weren’t able to make the meeting but Balve did email me the questionnaire he was supposed to do. This questionnaire is to be given to the visiting students at the end of the event as a way of evaluating the experience. The floor plan from Chris was absent but we’re certain that the green screen equipment will be able to fit in Newton G08.

We went through the event blow by blow making sure that everything was covered. Some of the big problems we needed to sort out included things like

- How we were going to split the students into two groups
- We needed to arrange for the CRB ambassadors to meet at a specific time
- Who was going to be present at the icebreaker/introduction
- Who was going to be in charge of creating name badges
- What the running order was for each room/activity
- Which areas we were going to take the students for the tour
- How many groups we would do for the tour and how many students would be in each group

One of the problems we encountered was that Balve and Jake didn’t have any work experience over Easter and so wouldn’t be able to show any profiles in the work experience room. We decided that Balve could talk about his experience at the Jonathan Ross show and Jake could talk about script writing and networking in Hollywood.

We also decided to drop teaching sound in the Green screen room so Chris could help Will set up and teach lighting instead, since there would be two lighting kits now I think this would be appropriate as the job would be too big for one person.

We were also told that we would be provided with Bath Spa polo shirts for the event by Steve May, Head of Creative Studies.

Some of the other tasks we had to do during the day were to arrange for the chairs to be removed from Room G08 during the event. Inform the Uni of the Media event, which was sent out by email (so now everyone with a Bath Spa email account knows my mobile number).

One thing that did cross my mind was that if we had taken this approach to the event from the beginning then it would have probably gone a lot smoother, hopefully people doing this course in the following years might read this and decide to REALLY organise their events and that way make it more successful.

EVENT: Green Screen Demo

I arranged a Green Screen demo upstairs in the Gatehouse so that we could learn enough about the equipment to be able to teach to others (particularly the the Vision Mixer and Lighting set up). Just before the actual demo Richard informed me that I hadn't booked out a monitor for the vision mixer for the event which was a rookie mistake as I hoped the Vision Mixer would come with some sort of screen. Shows how much I know about modern technology!

Here's the Edirol V-4 Vision Mixer:-


As the team set up the equipment I took notes and made a floor plan so that we could easily replicate the set-up for the event.

Naomi, our technical demonstrator, was very helpful with setting up the green screen explaining things like the importance of making sure the green material was as flat and stretched as possible and that we set up the lighting in a way that eliminated shadows completely. At this point it became clear that we would need to use two lighting kits, one to light the green screen and one to light the subject.

One of the only problems that was encountered was connecting up the vision mixer to the widescreen tv in the gatehouse. at first we didn't have the correct cable but once we realised which cable was needed (S-Video to Component) we were able to get the imagery shown on screen. This caused a bigger problem: The image coming from the laptop was extremely pixelated and no matter how much we manipulated the laptops resolution the images still looked extremely blocky.

The results looked like this:
There is still an obvious green outline around me!

I spoke to Richard who assured me that because the widescreen television was HD the imagery wouldn't be able to match a suitable quality and he expects that the monitor we use for the rehearsal will provide a sharper image output.

I thought that the demo went well apart from the problems with image quality which seemed to get the team down a bit. Hopefully the monitor we use gives a better image.

I will have to type up my notes about lighting for Will and get some photocopies of my (extremely bad) floor plan:

WORK: Bath FM - Day 1

When I first got to Bath FM and met Paul Roberts it’s striking how energetic he is, which I think is vital for a 28yr old who is busy running 5 different radio stations; Bath FM, Brunel FM, 3TR FM and 2 other stations both called Quaywest FM.

Paul worked with the previous owners of the stations, Laser, and when the company dissolved this gave him the oppurtunity to make bids for the companies. Since October 2008 he has been managing these stations and attempting to improve on how they were run previously and from what I can tell he’s doing a good job of it.

He gave me a tour of Bath FM, which is a smallish building, but bigger than the previous stations I’ve visited (BBC Bristol and Bath University Radio). The staff consisted of a small Sales team and a few presenters. One of the big changes that Paul pointed out was having more shows throughout the day. Bath FM had previously been mainly automated music with a maximum of two shows per day.

Since Paul was raving to Prodigy live at Cardiff the previous night he was off for his usual morning show from 6:30-10:00, which was filled in by Oliver Head who usually works at Brunel FM in Swindon. After a brief chat with Paul we decided the best thing for me to do was to work shadow him as he does his job, as I have no experience or knowledge of management or business, let alone the management side of Radio. I feel like I’m lucky that Paul’s belief is that business is business. I was glad he wasn’t offended that I’m not primarily interested in radio station management, just management as a whole. I imagine other people being quite sensitive about this and thinkning that taking me on for work experience would be a waste of time.

We spent the day touring two of the five radio stations, Brunel FM and 3TR FM which gave me an oppurtunity to shoot some material for the video profile we need to make.

We arrived at Brunel FM where the front of the building is under construction. The studios were a lot nicer than Bath FM and once again I met a team of great people. The general work atmosphere throughout is great and everyone I met seemed very easy going and positive, it seems like a great environment to work in apart from the construction going on at the front. Paul spent some time sorting out the upcoming Bank Holiday, making sure there were staff and presenters on hand since it seemed to take him by surprise.

We visited 3TR FM next which has the biggest office space out of all three of the stations, the team once again were nice to talk to, one of the things that seemed to crop up at both Brunel and 3TR was the stations’ use of Twitter to post news updates.

A lot of Paul’s day seems to be dealing with problems that crop up, which range from things like dealing with BT after being sent a bill for a phone they don’t use to dealing with the press about a court case that had previously ended. He seems like a compassionate manager who places great importance in his staff and seems to get along with all of them well.

I feel like I’m learning a lot from him about how to effectively run radio stations, as he seems to be saving money, bringing in advertisers, and producing great radio all by keeping a local community-friendly image which the surrounding areas lack from radio.

WORK: "I'm Mr Manager"

I have arranged a 5 day work shadowing oppurtunity with Bath FM's Paul Roberts. Lesley did quite a lot in setting it up and when I gave him a call he seemed very enthusiastic about it.

I am quite nervous about it as I'm not too sure what to expect but since I've had some sort of experience with managing the event, I'm definitely looking forward to seeing how someone can manage not one but several different companies. I talked with him about filming a short piece about his job and he sounded absolutely fine with it.

So, watch this space as I keep up-to-date with this work experience and I assume this blog will take on more of a reflective diary format now.

WORK: An update

In the last lesson we did a really cool task to get us prepared for group interviews. A group interview usually happens when there is a large amount of applicants for a job, the applicants are given group tasks to do and if you perform well you advance to the next stage and the others get voted off the island. It all seems a bit like reality TV but instead of winning a cash prize and 15 minutes of infamy you get a job instead. The exercise involved us trying to pitch our project in groups to a group of investors, it was basically us doing Dragon's Den and getting a chance to be the dragons as well the people pitching.

I have emailed Paul Roberts of Southwest Radio and am anxiously awaiting a reply regarding doing job shadowing focusing on the management side of Radio. I am yet to get into contact with Future Publishing or Jamie Woorsford but should have done so by the end of this week and will get posting on the outcomes of these.

EVENT: It's happening so fast...

In the last lesson we had, it was the first time in a few weeks that we all spoke about the event. I came to the lesson with some points we really needed to discuss and by the end of the session I think we covered almost everything.

The list included:-

- T-shirts/Bags/Pens (The previous week there was an open day with some students giving tours all wearing blue Bath Spa Uni t-shirts and a lot of the guests had bags so I'm interested in trying to get some of these things for our event)
- Getting imagery for the Green Screen
- Questionnaire
- Get bus times to Mr Hammond and arrange a proper time of arrival.
- Risk assessment
- Informing Security
- Making sure the plan works… consider all the problems that we might face.
- Start sorting out information for work experience room.
- Getting tables and chairs out of green screen room.

After a lot of discussion we managed to divide responsibilities up like this:-

Rob/Reuben - Book equipment (it's between the two of to decide who is the main spokesperson for the green screen room, this means doing an introduction into the mechanics of green screen videos.)
Mike - Find Green Screen images
Balve - Prepare Questionnaire (I'll be helping with it)
Jake - 2 Green Screen scripts, Creating a poster, Contacting marketing for any free uni stuff we can get and maybe t-shirts.
Will - 1 Green Screen script
Lance - Wasn't in the lesson so didn't get any jobs assigned.
Chris - Floor plan and sorting out about getting chairs and tables moved out of the room and moved back in after the event.
Ved - Risk assessment and informing security about the event, contacting Tim Hammond about the bus times and what equipment the students have used so we are not teaching them thinks they already know and as a result being patronising.

WORK

For this semester we need to get 15 days worth of work experience. From the beginning I had some ideas of what I wanted to do for work experience and the options available to me.

I have a friend who digitises tapes and approached him about shadowing him. At first he was a bit reluctant mainly because he thought I would get bored with the work, however I assured him that any work I could do would be helpful, at such short notice I think we’ll all experience difficulty finding work experience before the end of May.

I remember speaking with Mike Johnston about doing colour correction with a friend of his who graded the first year films within a day with some great results. I’ve always been interested in colour correction, since I’m interested in editing I think having skills linked to the editing process like grading and creating graphics and captions are important skills to learn. I was given the contact information but have yet to phone him…

We have been offered a number of supplementary projects and one-offs to make up the 15 days. Mike, Lance and myself have volunteered to do a short feature on Bath Film Office. I will be acting as producer with Lance as Cameraman and Mike as Journalist. Since being on this course I feel most comfortable doing producer roles since I think I’m well organised and mostly good in delegating tasks and overseeing the production process. I’m also pretty bad with technical equipment and feel that other people are better suited to these roles.

The other opportunities we have are working with Bath FM doing shadowing in three different areas; Presenting, Management and Sales. (Balve wanted to do all three). And there are two work opportunities with Future Publishing who are well known in the class for making a lot of Computer Game and Biking magazines.

EVENT: Ved's Media Angels?

I’ve been put in charge of organising an event for some Media students from City of Bath College. Rob Miles is deputy organiser, Jacob Martin is in charge of publicity and Reuben Bakker-Dyos is in charge of Technical… stuff.

We’ve had two formal meetings in class to brainstorm on the event and have successfully come up with a plan for the 2-hour event:

The 30 students will be split up into two groups, one group will be given an hour demonstration on how to successfully make a green screen video while the other group will be given talks on our own experiences with working in the media.

In the second meeting we had a more in depth breakdown of the event. We made a decision on which of us would be in the two different rooms and what roles we would be playing:

The Green Screen Room (Newton G.08)
(The college students will be split up into smaller groups and be given short demos on different bits of equipment and get the chance to be filmed in front of a green screen background.)

The following is a list of people doing a demo on a specific piece of equipment:

Rob Miles - Floor Manager
Reuben Bakker-Dyos - Camera
Lance Turton - Vision Mixer
William Wynn - Lighting Engineer
Chris Johnson - Sound Engineer

The Work Experience Room (Gatehouse)
(The college students will be given an introductory talk on work experience, followed by a viewing of our work experience diaries followed by talks by three students on their videos)

3 presentations of 3 different roles
Mike - Shaddowing floor manager/gallery
Balve - Talking Issues
Jacob - Shaddowing literacy agent

I will be present in this room and it’s possible that my video diary will be shown.

The tone of the presentations is to be informal and conversational to keep the students engaged and we will provide them supplementary information like websites and pamphlets.

Our first schedule (which was drawn up by Jake) looks like this:
10:45 - 11:00 - Collection & Ice Breaker
11:00 - 11:55 - First Hour
11:55 - 12:05 - Break
12:05 - 13:00 - Second Hour & Evaluation
13:00 - 14:00 - University Tour

I have quite a lot on my plate now with this event – The risk assessment, arranging an equipment demo with the technicians and arranging for CRB ambassadors (which Balve is dealing with).

I was a bit indifferent when I was put in charge of organising the event but I’m looking forward to the challenge now. We have a lot to do this semester but I’m positive that if we work as a team we can make this a successful event for the visiting college students.

You can visit City of Bath College's website here