Radio Feature - Pokémon!

This video is an assignment that I have been set for my Journalism course, basically we were told to write a short feature for Radio, and it could be based on any topic that we like, so naturally I chose Pokemon... Below is the audio track that i have recorded and script.
Just Be T Dubs, the audio's not really that great, I got a few words wrong but I just strode through, enjoy.

After being asked to write about something for people to actually listen to me talking about and not just read it, I jumped at the opportunity to talk about one of the things I’m fairly certain I know a lot about – this happens to be Pokémon, shocking right?

When I mention Pokémon, I assume all of you listening will instantly think about making the toughest decision of your life as a child, in the old game boy games at least – do you pick Charmander, Bulbasaur or Squirtle? It does take a long time to figure out which Pokémon you want because it’ll be with you for the whole game. For me however, this always ends the same way – picking Charmander. Then you’re enthralled with starting off your very own Pokémon adventure, ranging from beating up your rival, doing chores for Professor Oak and then eventually getting down to catching all the Pokémon and on the road to be a Pokémon master.

So the idea is to catch them all, this has been drilled into the heads of children who had what I like to call, a “complete” childhood as it is the theme song to the season one of Pokémon. Sounds simple enough right? Just go round beating up wild Pokémon and throwing balls at them to catch them. You’d think this would be an easy job when there are only 151 Pokémon, right? Wrong. The producers thought it would be great to add a million more Pokémon to the equation, making it pretty much impossible to keep track of the number of Pokémon, I personally get confused after 151. I mean, why change it? My best memories of playing the Pokémon games and watching the TV series were of starting out in Pallet town, seeing our hero who we all know and love, Ash Ketchum getting his first ever Pokémon, his famous Pikachu. 

So yeah, from this there are many adventures – everyone has to remember the emotional rollercoaster episode of Ash first obtaining his Charmander. There Charmander is, abandoned out in a storm with his tail, once proud and aflame, slowly dimming because of the treacherous storm. That is until Ash hears of an abandoned Charmander in the rain and instantly takes it upon himself to save this lost and afraid Pokémon, people around the world will remember this episode and it really embodies the love that our hero has for Pokémon and what they mean to him, in turn this Charmander wholeheartedly trusts Ash and agrees to go with him – rejecting his old trainer who left him in the storm. It’s episodes like these that I recall when I talk about Pokémon, not the newest episodes that have all kinds of different Pokémon involved in them - they just tend to sound silly to me.

As the years have progressed, Pokémon progressed with them leaving behind the old and, in my opinion, favourable “generation I” Pokémon and replaced them, essentially, with new kinds of Pokémon which I feel don’t measure up to the original. This process has been going on for many years now – the new Pokémon that are brought in are known as different generations, so it goes from Generation I to Generation V so far. I tried to watch one of the new Pokémon seasons and after seeing the starter Pokémon are called things like “Oshawatt”, I don’t even know what this is, but it’s blue and like the size of a small rock, I was disgusted that it was not the amazing Pokémon that we all know and love such as Charmander, Squirtle and Bulbasaur, im fairly certain that the producers must be running out of ideas of new Pokémon until they eventually bring it all back to the amazing days of generation I. 

One thing that hasn’t changed through the years is, of course, the endeavours of the evil Team Rocket and their constant ingenious, but ultimately futile, attempts to try and steal Pokémon to appease their malevolent boss and leader of Team Rocket. Team Rocket is in every single episode as far as I know and they managed to sing their official theme tune to, foolishly, alert our heroes of their presence and even their intent in every single episode! These guys are a classic signature of Pokémon that I hope will never change, I mean who doesn't want to see Jessie, James and Meowth blast off again? Anyway, I believe that I’ve rambled sufficiently to bore you all, sorry about that! Anyway I hope you’ve enjoyed today’s broadcast.

Radio Journalism - Lecture 2

Here are my notes on our second radio journalism lecture; we have found out that different government bodies for TV and Radio show the different ratings and figures that radio / TV stations have and these are:

TV – BARB (figures for TV)

Radio – RAJAR (figures for radio)

When it comes to target audiences and demographics, I mentioned in my last radio post that the target audiences are divided up into different frameworks, when it comes to social class it is done like so:

A – Upper middle class, professional

B – Middle class, management / well paid jobs

C1 – Lower middle class, junior management, desk worker

C2 – Skilled working class, skilled manual workers

D – Working class semi, unskilled manual work

E – State pensions / depending on welfare to live

How to carry out a good interview

Generally, a good interview will sound like a unscripted conversation, but to get to that stage you will need to have a good knowledge of the equipment that is being used, for example knowing how to work thee recording devices properly and not messing it up (certainly not like what I did once when recording someone a on our task last week...) and also it doesn't hurt to have sensible questions, obvs. When it comes to the recording devices you must make sure that before you set off to record you know the device is actually working / has enough battery power but if not then just buy / have some spare batteries with you, oh and I mentioned earlier make sure you’re recording...

You must be careful when working with the microphones and this is because they can be very sensitive so make sure you don’t rustle and paper or plastic bags near them and make sure to not move around too much otherwise the microphone will pick it up and it will ruin the quality of the recording. You must also make sure that you plug the microphone in to the correct port, otherwise, well you know, it won’t pick up sound...

When it comes to recording you must make sure that if you balls up what you’re saying like when asking a question or replying, don’t turn off the machine or stop recording, just try again because after all you can edit it out when you upload it on to your computer later, so don’t worry! You will want to have some ambience when recording, because it just adds some nice background noise to your recording, essentially giving it more authenticity.

Choosing a place to record is also important; you shouldn’t always go for a silent room, consider what sounds are around you because they will add to the recording, eg the sound of a heater or various other machines will then be in your recording and possibly drown out someone speaking. Try to avoid rooms with echoes (unless of course you want that in there) but if necessary try standing next to curtains or furniture because that will help the recording.

Your questions are very important when conducting an interview, a good interview will essentially sound like an unscripted conversation, so following this you mustn’t write out a huge list of questions that you want to get in there, it’s better to make a few notes / ideas or have a few questions that you can build on. Make sure that you listen to the answers, so if something interesting is said then help develop it by asking supplementary questions, but remember that in general questions should be straightforward and simple, plus pretty simple but one question at a time. 

Finally, the last few things to remember are no closed or leading questions, make sure you do your research beforehand and when a participant is answering make sure you don’t talk over them, just nod silently until they finish talking. Well, this concludes my blitzing of blog posts, I think this has been a productive start to a Sunday, hope you enjoyed oh and I’ll try and keep on top of it now, im slowly getting back into the University routine of just blogging not because I have to but because I want to, im getting there but yeah, hope you’ve enjoyed avid readers.

Stay classy x

The Paradigm of Change, Hegel, Kant and Schopenhaur - HCJ

Since there is a hell of a lot to go over and understand in this blog post im going to try and keep it as brief as possible so bare with me. Just a little reminder for myself – chronologically is goes Kant, Hegel and then Schopenhauer. Cool.

Paradigm: This is a connected way of thinking across all knowledge, think of it as a framework, this concept was introduced by Thomas Kuhn and according to him people are always thinking in certain paradigms and throughout history many paradigm shifts have occurred, for example people used to collectively think that the world was flat but it was discovered that the world is in fact a globe, this changed everyone’s way of thinking and is what we call a paradigm shift.

Hegel: Hegel was a historicist, this means that he believed history was always destined to follow a set course and that all things in the past and things that are still to pass all happen for one reason or another and this is linked to the idea of “God’s plan”. He calls this the Zeit Geist; this is a German term that literally translates to time ghost or spirit of time and this idea states that although something my change altogether, it is still the same thing at the heart of it, for example if you were to change the bricks of a house one by one every day the house will remain a house but will look different, the same can be said about human cells that die out and re-grow constantly.

Immanuel Kant: Kant is sometimes considered the first of the German idealists. German idealism was a philosophical movement that emerged in Germany in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. It developed out of the work of Kant, and went hand in hand with romanticism and the revolutionary politics of the Enlightenment. Hegel was hugely influential throughout the nineteenth century; by its end, according to my boy Russell, "the leading academic philosophers, both in America and Britain, were largely Hegelian"

Kant has the words “My life has been guided by two great mysteries – the starry heavens above and the moral law within” etched on his gravestone. Kant was a self-made pro and took it upon himself to directly oppose Hume and bring back metaphysics as Hume pretty much destroyed it with his logic. Kant was against Hume’s Fork idea:

Hume’s Fork = Matter of fact (can be investigated) A Posteriori, Vs.

                        Relation of ideas (things are true by definition) A Priori

Hume’s A Priori = a proposition that can’t be denied without contradiction – eg a circle is not round.

Kant’s A Priori = this is more pessimistic – if it can be figured out without experience of it but at the same time is not true by definition.

Synthetic A Priori is also scientific A Priori and so therefore we can know that arithmetic fits into this as 2+4 = 6, because we can figure it out and it relates to other things / aspects that we know to be true.

Analytic A Priori is more like geometry – eg all triangles have 3 sides. While Synthetic A Posteriori is more like oranges don’t taste like acid or whatever.

Still with me? Cause im sure not... Just two more things that I need to clarify and then we’re done! Yayyy J anyway, just two key words:

Phenomena = creation of the mind

Noumena = this is the real thing in itself, which apparently we can never know.

Hegel and the Zeit Geist: The idea of the Zeit Geist is that is must always know itself in order to avoid its ‘fall’, this fall comes about when the Geist struggles to know itself and in turn becomes alienated and this means it is no longer the same thing and has changed with time.

Hegel’s Dialectical Reasoning:
First there is a thesis (the beginning) and this comes to change through an antithesis and this in turn creates a synthesis, in Hegel’s view of history he saw:

·         Thesis = rise / fall of Greece

·         Antithesis = middle ages

·         Synthesis = reform / renaissance

Following this, the German state was in his eyes the equivalent to Ancient Greece and this cycle will continue until a utopia is reached in the end.

However, Schopenhauer and Nietzsche both disagree with Hegel saying that his view on history is far too linear; and with that the famous quote, “The Owl of Minerva does not fully spread her wings until the parting of the day” which means that we cannot fully know something without it happening first and looking back on it and studying it – as Chris hilariously said it’s like having a blacked out windshield in a car while driving and only having the rear view mirror and seeing all the bodies you’re hitting means that you should probably slow down, or stop driving altogether.

Schopenhauer: Not really much to say about this guy but he introduced the idea of existentialism which is an insane idea (pretty much). Ontology - this is what something is when it isn't being perceived: eg if a tree falls in the forest, and no-one is around to hear is, does it still make a sound... The sound should be there but it's not being perceived so can we really be sure? (is what Schopenhauer says at least). He also mentions Phenomenology and this is what something is when it is being.

Video Killed The Radio Star - Radio Lecture 1

I realise that I have been out of the blogging for a while now but im here to change this! Im slowly getting back into my old routines of blogging small amounts and it’s not good! So here I am, catching up, I have a few posts to do today so enjoy :)

Radio broadcasting is far more immediate, intimate and person than broadcasts you will see on TV; this has always been the case and is why radio is usually preferred to some people. Additionally, radio journalism has many different formats:

Headlines: These, as you probably guessed, summarise the story and precede a bulletin.

Bulletins: Bulletins are usually 2 – 5 minutes, having two-way voices, snippets from interviews and press conferences; it is usually read by a journalist or a news reader.

News Programmes: These programmes have a headline / short story and they explore stories in much greater depth and include more related stories, furthermore they also feature debate and live broadcasts.

Magazine Programmes: These programmes can be narrow / wide ranging, they are less likely to include headlines / bulletins but they will bring up topical or timeless issues, focusing in more of the gossipy stuff in the news.

Documentaries: Documentaries are pretty much extended packages / features that explore a particular subject / issue in much greater depth than any magazine though it will draw on the same conventions and types of content.

Target Audiences: As per usual, this is defined by defined by age or demographic (A, B, C1, C2, D). Age is categorised into groups of 10 or 20 years, 16-24, 25 - 44 for example, the style and format will be dictated by the target audience to which the station aims its output.

That’s all for my brief introduction to Radio, hope it’s been insightful. Oh and you stay classy, Planet Earth.