Aki's Placement Blog

 Today we had our final evaluation session for the Who Holds The Torch project. It was very successful pulling in hundreds of listeners every day, and a growing number every day too. Today though, it was great to talk to some of the people in the community who helped make the pieces with Skimstone Arts. I was speaking to Loretta in particular, with Kema and Magpie, and it was great to be able to extract a personal reflection of what this meant to her. Skimstone is at heart a company dedicated to helping those at risk of social isolation, and it was nice to feel like a goal had been achieved. I helped coordinate some of the listener evaluation session too. At the same time, we also evaluated internally on the process of working throughout the last few months on this project, looking ahead at the next on in March! Even from last Tuesday, while the last project was ongoing, I met with the RO team to start prepping for the final festival of Skimstone's 3 year Reaching Out programme. An...

 We had a final rehearsal run of the radio programme, and I provided feedback. My main technical notes were regarding the sound quality, and I recorded what I heard my end and sent it in. These technical notes aside though, we seemed set to go. I also suggested signposting to the website if the show ran over the 30 minute billed time. Once the first of the three days of radio programming started, I was part of a select group to feedback on the sessions, half an hour after they finished. This was a great way for me to apply my active listening skills, and my suggestions were taken on board. I think it is very easy for people within an organisation to struggle to make criticisms, even if it is constructive, and I was pleased I could tacitly improve the programme through my ideas. I suggested a further focus on allowing the audience to process music for themselves, particularly when presenters didn't have anything especially insightful to say (and were just being appreciative). This r...

 Alongside working on the trailer, I have been trying to develop ideas to improve traffic to the website through social media channels. I am pleased that, after consulting an experienced social media manager (with accounts of over 25 000 followers), some of my recommendations have started being put into practice. Most importantly (I think) is the usage of the story feature on Facebook and Instagram. This is the single clearest way to demonstrate an account is active, and therefore bumps traffic; couple this with strategic calls to action, and engagement driving trends, and we should be landing more traffic to the webpage. I have learnt a lot from working with Claire Cockroft as well. Together we are trying to build a contact database, and I am contributing some contacts I know in student websites like The Tab and The Courier, as well as contacts from my time running charities, like Fukushima Friends UK, and the Inter-Faith Network. These were apparently particularly useful, in Clai...

 The trailer has now been completed. It's on Twitter here:  https://twitter.com/i/status/1351867271132667904 I must admit though, there were many problems in the final stages of its creation. Sheryl had problems accessing all the files that I clipped, and didn't let me know until two in the morning on Sunday. This led to delays, and ultimately the final trailer is just my rough storyboarded trailer that I sent her, with animations on either side. It is a little bit disappointing as were I to know that my storyboard would be so integral, I would have used the final audio of the songs (not the zoom clip of Kema and Claire singing), and more of a call to action. These were among the list of pointers I sent to Sheryl alongside all of the files, so it is a shame that there has been an oversight at some point here. It has been tricky communicating across zoom like this, particularly with Sheryl's very busy schedule too. On the plus side, at least the rest of the team seemed very ...

 It has been absolutely sapping, having to edit down the videos to the important parts, and clipping them. I want to give Sheryl the absolute maximum to work with, so I have clipped every usable phrase or fragment that each speaker gave, and labelled them before uploading them to a shared folder. Particularly with my slow computer, low on memory, it has been very hard and long! Aside from the grunt work though, perhaps the skill I've developed most here is in editing. Not in the technical aspects of video editing (though I am certainly applying everything I know there!), but in the directorial editing decisions. Where to cut, what to clip, what to discard... It is very similar to streamlining an essay plan within my English Literature degree, picking what's really important, and what can be left out. However, from nearly 5 hours of content to narrow down from, it really is requiring all my patience and concentration! I have also storyboarded my own rough interpretation of how t...

 These last few days have been hectic! I did similar interview sessions with Annalisa, Magpie, Nii and Peter, which has generated literally hours of content I'll need to traipse through! I had to apply a range of different skills for each person. Annalisa was less confident speaking organically, but still keen to get involved, so I drafted her some sample lines, and gave her time to think of what she wanted to say in response to different questions. This contrasted with Magpie, who if anything I had to slow down to make sure I could clip all the different anecdotes he had! Nii, on the other hand, was more subdued but expanded at great length on his points, so it was about making sure that there was enough energy and enthusiasm in highlights of his very earnest points. With Peter too it was very easy to get distracted, so we had to take care to stay on track! My main thinking, particularly with the artists, has been to craft much more individual responses that can be clipped down fo...