Taylar W.Smith...

At first we wanted there to be surfing-style music (Beach Boys comes to mind) bedded in the advert, but finding a suitable sound file in our resources proved difficult...

...When editing my version of the advert I decided to use a sound file titled “jazz” music – just a quiet guitar playing jazz – in the background. Although not very ‘surfy’, I combined it with

the sound of waves crashing against a beach, to give the advert a mellower, beach-like feel.

I worked on my own to edit the radio advert, essentially creating my version of it. There were a few challenges to face...

...One example of this was that the radio advert had to be 30 seconds long – no shorter, no longer. My edited version of the advert (on Audacity) was about 35 seconds long,

so I decided to alter the tempo of the entire project (using the program’s own tools) to make it exactly 30 seconds long.

Another challenge was to apply the conventions found in other, successful radio advertisements...

...Working with my partner, we managed to create a script quite quickly, bringing to mind things we’d find humorous on a radio advert. We

thought humorous narrative would play an important part in creating a successful radio script. Other required conventions

(i.e. repetition of the product/shop, a motto/jingle) came quite quickly and easily. We also managed to record the whole radio script in about

3 takes, so I’d would say we worked fairly well!

We both decided that a humorous narrative story would appeal to a wide range of people, and as there was not really a specific target age for the shop we were advertising, we focused on this a lot.

To record the spoken script, a standard portable audio recorder was used. At first, there was difficulty getting the device to play back previous recordings, but after overcoming this, it was very easy to use.

For the editing part, I used a sound-editing software called Audacity. Because I had used Audacity before, I had no problems using it to edit the radio advert.

A skill I learnt in this was how to use an audio recording device; I previously had virtually no experience in using one!

We used the following...

• Bedding music

• Sound effects

• Jingle/Motto

• Repetition of products & shop

• Clear speech

• Clear narrative

...These were used because we felt they would make the advert sound more professional, helping the shop to appear trust-worthy and appeal to more

people.

One thing we didn’t want was the use of stereotypes (i.e. The typical ‘surfer dude’) as they are known to make audiences feel patronised, which is never good!

We tried to represent people who take pride in purchasing merchandise (clothes, bags, trainers etc.), and in general, people who take some kind of interest in surfing or the surfing scene. We were trying to represent the audience. The one thing we didn’t want to do was to stereotype these people, for instance, the ‘surfer-dude’ character, or the ‘Baywatch babe’, because this would patronise and upset the audience we were trying to sell to.

In writing the script to represent the audience, we didn’t include any over-the-top use of stereotypical vocabulary – most of our dialogue was for humour purposes only. We had one use of supposed ‘surfer’ jargon; “...tat's for my board...”. I agree that this is slightly stereotypical, but it was used entirely to create humour.

Feedback from other students was overall quite good, and feedback from my teacher was also quite good. The teacher’s feedback pointed out a few things in the advert which made me realise that we could improve.

For one, the use of the surfer jargon could have been edited out, as the audience may not have understood the term, or may have found it naive of us and slightly

patronising.

Another improvement I could have made is to the bedded music. It would have had more of an effect on people if perhaps the music livened up around about the part where the website and motto is mentioned – it seemed a bit dull and as if it could have developed into something further.