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

One Minute Video Exercise

In the first week of our second year on the course we were given a week to produce a video. I wanted to stick to the theme of independance that is running for the mini masterpieces contest.

Loosely based on a true story, this drama piece followed Chris Johnson at university, he just wants to be alone but this is made increasingly difficult by Ved (played by himself, me) and Will.

I was pleased with the filming process, it was a lot of fun and everyone worked really hard. I was pleased with Reubens camera work also, especially the opening shot.

The finished film suffers slightly because it starts off following Chris, however half way through the camera starts to follow me which is a confusing way of telling the story, the style of the piece also changes when we start to follow Chris and myself using the camera handheld which gave it more of a documentary feel when it was originally meant to be a drama. I'm glad I've learnt from this as it's the first time in the course I've done a drama video and that is the area I'm most interested in working in.