03-05-16

 

Weeks of preparation finally came to fruition on our edition of Room With A View. Presented as a collective effort by everyone in Group 4, we went live to air in week 9 (Monday 2-5-16). Having locked down our songs, interviewees and script for the session, we went into the weekend prior to our edition with a somewhat confident outlook.

 

This confidence was soon shattered as we faced a late minute crisis – the contact for The Lupus Foundation (Aisha Stevens organised interview) pulled out the day before we were due to present. Aisha managed to organise a replacement interviewee, however due to her location, the interview would have to take place over the phone.

 

This last minute change prompted us to head into the RRR studios 2 hours prior to our allocated time slot in an attempt to generate new questions for the replacement interviewee as well as practicing the flow of the new running sheet. Throughout the practice we were constantly addressing problems that arose and building back the confidence we lost. A test of the phone lines confirmed our ability to conduct the phone interview and enabled us to have a quick chat with the new interviewee.

 

This practice was conducted in a different studio to the one we were due to present in and it managed to run overtime, this resulted in a slightly rushed beginning to the program and further resulted in a few mistakes straight away.

 

Having been somewhat flustered at the beginning, we accidentally let the previous song from the ‘The Grapevine’ run into our session as well as managing to accidentally reset the ‘Room With A View’ theme. These two mistakes were apparent when listening back to the program, however they weren’t too major and didn’t affect the intro and first interview.

 

The ‘Grandparents Playgroup’ interview ran relatively smoothly, with Bek conducting the majority of questions and interplay with our guest. Although Lyn (the interviewee) didn’t get to touch on any majorly poignant points, we still managed to generate a relatively engaging interview that ran for 10 minutes.

 

Being cautious of time, our producer Amalina and our online producer Laura signalled to wrap-up the interview and move on to the next segment of the edition.

 

The second segment/interview was a pre-recorded interview conducted approx. a month prior to the live to air. Having already conducted the interview prior to presenting, it enabled us to know exactly what was happening and how long the piece would run for. This prior knowledge enabled us to settle back into a rhythm and regain focus before we conducted our phone interview with the new interviewee.

 

Coming out of the Helping Hoops pre-record and the subsequent music tracks, we launched into the final interview with Keren at approx. the 33-minute mark of the program. Hoping to have a 10+ minute interview, we were confident that we had structured our segments well and would finish perfectly around the 1:00pm finish time.

 

The interview was introduced by Bek and ran relatively smoothly, however its running time ran shorter than expected and landed us with a greater amount of time to fill than we initially had planned for. This was coupled with the premature play of the next song, which forced Bek and Myself to abandon the outro of the Lupus Foundation interview and loose 2 minutes worth of material.

 

This resulted in a slightly disjointed and somewhat awkward last quarter of the program due to improvised narration and having to generate new listening material for the audience too. Although we managed to adlib quite well and select songs that stuck to our theme, the panic in the broadcasting suite was somewhat evident when listening back to the program.

 

Although we faced a lot of challenges prior, during and after the segment, I feel that we managed to present a relatively smooth program that covered a broad range of topics. I feel that everyone put their best efforts in and although we all could definitely improve on certain things, we still managed to generate a show with only a few mistakes.

 

On a personal level, I feel as though my presenter skills and ability to engage an audience could do with some work. Upon listening back to the program, it is somewhat evident that I was reading some sections from a script, which resulted in a more robotic and programed tone.