Evaluation - Representation

As part of my research and planning I thought carefully about representation when listening to existing radio shows. Having listened to presenters on contrasting radio stations (Kiss and Radio 4) I made notes about the way the presenter spoke, the language they used, and their tone of voice and thought about how this might relate to the radio stations target audience.

Analysis of Representation on Kiss and Radio 4

When I scripted my preliminary task I didn't give much thought to the ways that the characters in my script might sound and I certainly didn't think about representation when choosing my actors. After completing a number of listening tasks where I listened to news presenters, show presenters, voxpops and adverts, I realised that I had to carefully choose my actors for each role, and that I may have to coach them, telling them exactly what tone to use so that the representation was accurate.

Once I had completed my script, I set about choosing the actors for each role. I had over twenty different characters in my script ranging from the news presenter to voxpops accompanying my news stories and I made sure that I gave careful consideration to who I chose for each character. Below are the links to my posts on choosing actors.

Choosing Voices for my Show 1

For my news presenter I wanted a female (as I had heard on Kiss) but I wanted her to sound slightly more serious than my show presenters, my correspondents and the members of the public in the voxpops. I chose Jade, the English teacher at school, as I felt that she had an authoritative yet calming voice.



When researching, I noticed that the show presenters on stations such as Kiss and Capital (rather than Radio 4) sounded young, and often spoke in an excited manner when discussing what they had coming up on the show or when they introduced songs. I decided on two show presenters, one male and one female, as this is what was most common on the stations that I felt mine was most similar to. I also thought that a male and female presenter would help my show appeal to a wider audience. I played the female presenter Alicia and I asked a student (Niall) to play the male presenter, Will.





I chose Jon, one of the Media teachers, as the voice for my jingles. I wanted to use the same voice for all of my jingles so that my station had a consistent identity. I felt that Jon had the right tone of voice for a jingle - bright and cheerful, but informative and with a degree of authority. The clip below contains all of the jingles using Jon's voice, after I had edited out any pauses and mistakes but before I had mixed the jingles with sound effects and music.



For my voxpops I wanted people to sound less formal and more natural, as they were supposed to represent members of the public rather than professional broadcasters. I still chose my actors carefully but I let them ad-lib my script if they wanted and didn't edit out pauses and mistakes in the same way that I had with my presenters and other characters.





For one of my voxpops, I wanted the character to sound like an old lady who had lived through the Blitz in the Second World War. I chose Louise, the Drama teacher, and asked her to put on a cockney accent and pretend that she was much older. I think that this is one of the most successful and realistic representations on the show.



The two sound clips below highlight the way that I thought about differing representations in my adverts. The first clip is of Alex as the voiceover in my Dog's Trust advert - I wanted the voiceover to sound serious but also compassionate and caring, as the intention of the advert is to encourage listeners to donate money to help animals in need. The first time Alex recorded it, it was far too serious and I thought that it might be too tragic and ominous for listeners, so I asked Alex to re-record and to soften his tone. The second voiceover is Chris in the Ocado advert. I wanted him to sound cheerful and helpful, acting as a contrast to the stressed mother in the advert. The point of the advert is that Ocado can take the stress out of a busy working mum's day by being flexible enough to deliver whenever suits the consumer. His tone of voice needed to suggest how helpful this service is.