Thuuursdayyy :)

Jenny:

I've always been a visual person. But today, we got a glimpse into what it might take to be more of an audio person. We took a tour of the radio department within SCETV's TCC building. We got to see the master control panel which basically transfers all the audio out to the different transmitter stations. We met with David Kiser who was preparing for his new program which will include classical piano. We met with Cathy Bradberry who showed us around the whole place and gave us the basic run down of what they do and how it works. It's all so interesting and the more things I'm exposed to the harder it is to narrow down what I want to do. On top of all that we learned that the radio version of Final Cut Pro is a software called Audition. Also, since radio and television function from reaching to the right demographic, there are networks that are made specifically to find out who the programs are reaching. For radio, they use Arbitron, and for television they use Neilson. It's the little terms like this that I keep picking up from day to day that expands my knowledge in this field.


Other than our Radio tour, we edited some of the Shorts, E-mailed chambers, and attempted to contact the places for our shoots.

Meagan:

You know the song, “Video Killed the Radio Star”? Whether that be the case or not… … I have to say I’m kind of digging the radio scene now. Today, Tabitha scheduled a meeting for us over in SCETV radio with Cathy Bradberry. When we got there, Cathy took us for a little tour and explained all of the operations, equipment, etc. Everything is so up to date and just an awesome work environment. Cathy demonstrated how to record promos and radio segments on audio software called Adobe Audition. Although I hate the sound of my voice, I really want to get in and try it one day myself. Maybe I’ll even give Ryan Seacrest a run for his money. In the meantime I’ll just stick to asking tons of questions.

Cathy had no trouble answering everything! We learned the difference in public v. commercially owned radio stations, how ETV’s radio is transmitted out to other satellite stations in SC, how she programs each day’s segments and so much more. Also, just in case you didn’t know (because I didn’t), ETV’s radio stations stream online too. I think I’ll give Pandora a break and take a listen! … Another cool tid bit of information we learned is about HD radio. HD radio just gives a radio station the opportunity to broadcast more stations on their frequency. The only real issue is the cost of converting to HD and the fact that HD radio hasn’t caught on like HD – TV has.  The conversion may be in the works for ETV but not anytime soon.

While there we met with radio intern, David Kiser. David has a pretty awesome job! He is producing his own radio program featuring classical piano music. Tomorrow he is hosting about 5 classical pianists tomorrow to come and record live audio for his show. Lucky for us (and David of course), we’re dropping by! His program fits in perfectly with the classical music station ETV runs. I was really curious why ETV plays only classic music and news feeds from NPR and other news outlets. I didn’t know if they were under some kind of contract or if they had a grant for classical music. Turns out those are both wrong and ETV chooses to broadcast what they do based on audience demographics and other aspects of the business. What the audience wants is what the audience gets! And speaking of “wants,” just when I thought I could narrow down what avenue I want to take in this wide world of media… radio rocked my world. I love the feeling of being in the studio behind the mic. It seems so secluded and so personal, yet hundreds of thousands of people are listening. After talking to Cathy about it I’m going to volunteer at UGA’s student radio station this year and try to gain experience at the Georgia Public Radio station too! I’ve definitely got my plate full but I’m hungry for more!

After our radio adventure, it was back to editing the Dorchestor County/Summerville “shorts”. Jenny and I divvied up the work. She edited the Coach McKissick piece, I did the “Birthplace of Sweet Tea” story, and we are both working on the Coastal Coffee Roasters project together.  We both finished our individual “shorts”. After laying down music, adding in the ETV intro/outro, perfecting the b-roll to the audio, and cutting out some “ums” and “ahhs”… the “Birthplace of Sweet Tea” is finito! We did run into 2 minor glitches today. First, it turns out we were saving our video sequences to the external hard drive but not our wav forms and render files. This is actually a big deal because of how much space it was using on Jenny’s Mac and because we kept running out of memory space. Once we figured out this issue, we realized another one. The format we were editing our stories as was not correct. After fixing them and rendering all of the projects we were able to finally get back on track. The only thing is every time we edit a sequence now we have to render every tiny change. Because of this we’re just going to start the coffee roaster story over from scratch.  I’m not complaining though. It’s really good to learn this all now, even if we learn it the hard way. I’m a firm believer in learning from your mistakes. Looking on the bright side, now I know all of this editing information for the future! Jenny and I will complete the third story tomorrow and I’m hoping we can take all of the editing lessons we learned from the first projects and create nothing short of a masterpiece.