Portfolio From Heartland Media Hub Work Experience
During my work experience at Heartland Media Hub I had various tasks and duties to accomplish. Some of these task would entail audio editing interviews for broadcast, uploading interviews and other audio clips to Soundcloud, uploading previous radio shows to the listen again feature, recording audio for live broadcast, creating videos of events, uploading videos to YouTube, edited radio promos, creating advertisement and social media post for the station, and mentoring pupils. Whilst doing all of these jobs I had to make sure that I followed the broadcasting standard such as the audio levels needing to be around -6dB for live broadcast. Here is a look at what they were in detail to better showcase evidence of my work based placement:
Primary School Christmas Songs
One of the first main task I had to do was record all the Primary Schools in the Highland Perthshire area. Every Christmas Heartland Media Hub invites the primary school to perform a song of their choice that I had to record, for Heartland to play out on air and then uploaded on social media and Soundcloud for the pupils family and friends to access wherever they live. This is one of Heartlands popular events that they do however it comes with some difficulties that involves problem solving. Having to follow a strict time schedule meaning that there was little time to spend with each school due to timetabling issues. There was also the issues of the distance being challenging, the premises are not built for acoustic quality and the space and time frames do not allow for a lot of equipment set up. Despite these issues I managed to produce 5 school performances with 2 videos of the schools that gave consent. This was done by using a Tascam recorder and then mixed on Logic Pro X. The videos were recorded using a phone camera and then edited on Final Cut Pro. These are the final recordings and videos of the school performances that I worked on:
Breadalbane Primary - Xmas Medley
Kinloch Rinnoch - Rat A Tat Tat
Kenmore Primary - Hallelujah
Pitlochry Primary - Do You Want To Build A Snowman
Glenlyon Primary - We Wish You A Merry Christmas
Pitlochry Primary - Do You Want To Build A Snowman
Glenlyon Primary - We Wish You A Merry Christmas
Santa Day in Dunkeld
Santa Day in Dunkeld is one of the longest running events like this in Scotland. It is a community non profit event that takes place every December in the square of Dunkeld. Heartland Media Hub was live broadcasting at the celebrations for four hours. It was a challenging production day with interview timings and personnel availability can vary enormously. With the issues of large crowds, the weather and limited space for editing, recording and broadcasting it was a challenging day but with planning, preparing for working with tight production times and problem solving it was a rewarding day for Heartland Media Hub. For this day I was tasked with mainly focusing on recording and editing interviews. Using the same equipment that was used for the Primary School Christmas songs, 6 interviews was prerecorded for the air and a number of live unedited interviews was produced. These are the 6 interviews that I had too edited for air:
Brian Knight Football Interview (For Heartland FM)
Live Outside Broadcast
Credits
Alistair Smith - Station Manager (Interviewer)
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Mia Eames (Audio Editor)
Elsa and Anna Stilt Walkers (For Heartland FM)
Live Outside Broadcast
Credits
Alistair Smith - Station Manager (Interviewer)
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Mia Eames (Audio Editor)
Father Christmas Interview (For Heartland FM)
Live Outside Broadcast
Credits
Alistair Smith - Station Manager (Interviewer)
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Mia Eames (Audio Editor)
Lachlan McEwan Interview (For Heartland FM)
Live Outside Broadcast
Credits
Alistair Smith - Station Manager (Interviewer)
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Mia Eames (Audio Editor)
Naughty Tree (For Heartland FM)
Live Outside Broadcast
Credits
Alistair Smith - Station Manager (Interviewer)
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Mia Eames (Audio Editor)
Gingerbread House Interview (For Heartland FM)
Live Outside Broadcast
Credits
Alistair Smith - Station Manager (Interviewer)
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Mia Eames (Audio Editor)
At the Santa Day in Dunkeld I did not film or edited any video as someone else was responsibly for that job. However I was responsibly of putting the videos up onto Heartland Media Hubs Facebook page. Here is screenshots of the posts:
Breadalbane Academy Careers Event 2020
The Heartland Media Hub broadcasted live from Breadalbane Academy careers day for three hours during the afternoon. The programme was hosted remotely from the school through a laptop. The programme was made up of a series of interviews that was conducted by the production team. The production team was made up of S3 pupils that we were mentoring, additional support from Media Hub personnel and myself. This event involved a lot of pressure for the team to process the recorded material throughout the day. Even though we had a schedule and interview rota there for all the interviewees with the event being live, there wasn't much room for editing if the interviewees didn't follow the prepared plan. Therefore with the process and editing time reduced might that instead of having around an hour too edited we had to do it much quicker with only around 30 minutes as we couldn't change the scheduled broadcast times.
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Below is the interviews that I worked on. All the interviews were filmed, edited for social media and Youtube with the audio stripped out to then be used during the afternoon live radio broadcast. With the timing between the recording and broadcast being short this is what was produced.
John Devine - Headteacher of Bleadalbane Academy (For Heartland FM)
Live Broadcast Video for Social Media
Keith Barbour - University of Edinburgh (For Heartland FM)
Live Broadcast Video for Social Media
Bruce Patterson Interview (For Heartland FM)
Live Broadcast Video for Social Media
Lee Mair - Robert Gordon University (For Heartland FM)
Live Broadcast Video for Social Media
Below is the audio mp3 files of the interviews that I worked on. These interviews timescale to edited to the audio is shorter that the videos because they need to be ready to broadcast quickly after recording. The interviews were all scripted and voiced by the S3 pupils that we were mentoring for the day. The interviews audio were all taken from the video recording where they were edited using Logic Pro X and produced to the required length, volume and DB requirements as needed by the radio station output settings.
John Devine Breadlbane Academy Headteacher (For Heartland FM)
Live Broadcast
S3 Mentored Pupils Interview (For Heartland FM)
Live Broadcast
Bruce Patterson Interview (For Heartland FM)
Live Broadcast
John Duncan (Aviva) Interview (For Heartland FM)
Live Broadcast
Lee Mair (Robert Gordon University) Interview (For Heartland FM)
Live Broadcast
Additional Tasks
For Heartland Media Hub I was asked to do additional projects that didn't require my skills in sound engineering. One of these projects was creating static jpg stand alone adverts for local businesses. This was to be part of the Christmas Advent calendar promotion. Clients were asked to submit their own artwork however as the deadline approached the clients did not have the time to do this. Therefore I was given the artistic role to create good quality pictures that would be put on the Heartlands website, the online magazine and other platforms using the information that I was able to find online or was given to the Heartland Media Hub team. The adverts had to be half of an A4 page and design simple nothing too fancy. Below is the adverts that I created.
For Heartland Media Hub I was asked also to create some video and audio advertisement. The video advert was for a local florist which was to be shown on the Heartland Media Hub online magazine. It was filmed in real time and I had to reduced it down to 30 seconds so I increased the time to create a time lapse. Then a photo of the florist shop logo and Heartlands logo was added. Using Logic Pro X I composed backing music for the video.
The audio advertisement I had to create using Logic Pro X was a 30 second on air radio promotion for Heartlands listen again feature.
Heartland Media Hub Listen Again
Radio Promotion
Flur Flower Shop Advert
Heartland Media Hub Employee Feedback
Here is my employer feedback to show how I worked with Heartland Media Hub and the impression that I left. It would also be used to prove that I have in fact done work experience within Heartland Media Hub. Bruce Patterson (Development Manager) from the Heartland Team is responsible for creating Heartlands online magazine and made an online magazine detailing my time with them.