Creative iMedia R093 Paper C: Creative iMedia in the Media Industry

A podcast is audio only.

The producer runs the whole project: budget, schedule, hiring and delivery.

Secondary research was collected by someone else for their own purposes, like a published report.

Psychographics are interests, values and lifestyle. Age, income and location are demographics.

A mood board.

WAV stores audio uncompressed. MP3 and AAC are lossy, and MP4 is a video container.

The Advertising Standards Authority regulates adverts in every medium.

A vector graphic is made of paths and shapes, so it is redrawn sharply at any size.

The Data Protection Act 2018 controls how personal data is collected, stored and used.

A trade mark.

Everything must be ready eight weeks before the festival, and the products must use the festival's logo and its navy and gold colours.

The advert should be built around short clips of upbeat tracks by the headline bands, because the audience will recognise them and want to see those bands live. The voiceover should be young, fast and informal, over the sound of a cheering crowd and the sea, so listeners picture themselves at a night-time seaside festival.

Run a poll on the festival's social media accounts, which the 16 to 25 year olds already follow, asking them to vote for the acts they most want to see. The votes can be counted quickly to show the most popular acts.

A formal brief records exactly what the client asked for. If the client later disagrees with the finished products, the company can show that it met the agreed requirements, so disputes are avoided.

The script sets out every word of the voiceover and marks when each music clip and sound effect comes in, with timings, so the voice artist and the editor produce an advert that fits exactly 30 seconds.

An audio script needs the words, the sound cues and the timings. Camera angles, fonts and colours do not apply to audio.

A visualisation diagram shows where the logo, text and images will go and the exact navy and gold to be used, so the client can approve the design, or ask for changes, before the designer spends time creating it.

For each asset: what it is, where it came from, and the licence or permission that allows it to be used.

Planning and booking happen in pre-production, recording in production, and mixing in post-production.

The songs are protected by copyright, usually owned by the songwriters and the record label. The company must get a licence from the rights holders to use them in an advert, pay any fee or royalties, and use the clips only in the ways the licence allows. The bands may agree readily, because the advert promotes them.

First, the photographer owns the copyright in the photographs, so the company must get permission and a licence, probably for a fee; using them without one is copyright infringement and could lead to legal action. Second, festival-goers can be recognised in the photographs. Using their images to advertise without their consent affects their privacy, so the company would need model releases or should choose photographs in which no one can be identified.

A false, damaging claim is defamation, personal data is data protection, a logo is a trade mark, and a song is copyright.

MP3 is compressed and plays everywhere. WAV and AIFF are uncompressed and FLAC is a large lossless format.

Each platform uses its own dimensions, such as square feed posts and vertical 9:16 stories. A graphic made for one would be cropped or distorted on another, cutting off the acts' names or the ticket website.

The sample rate is the number of times the sound is measured each second, such as 44.1 kHz: a higher rate records the sound more accurately but makes the file larger. The bit depth is the number of bits used to store each sample: more bits capture the volume more precisely, giving better quality, but again increase the file size.

SVG scales without loss, JPG keeps photographs small, PNG keeps transparency, and WAV keeps the master at full quality.

Streaming starts playing almost at once and uses no storage on the listener's phone. But it needs a constant connection, so on a weak signal it may buffer or stop.

Social media is where most 16 to 25 year olds spend their time, so it is the most direct way to reach them. Adverts can be targeted at people of the right age who like the headline bands and live within travelling distance, so little money is wasted on the wrong audience. Posts can be shared and tagged among friends, which spreads the advert for free and suits a festival that people go to in groups. Every post can carry a link straight to the ticket website, and the analytics show how many people saw the advert and how many went on to buy. Local radio reaches everyone in the area around the festival, including people driving or working, and it is the natural home for the audio advert the client has asked for. However, far fewer 16 to 25 year olds listen to local radio than use social media, listeners cannot click through to buy a ticket, and airtime is more expensive while its effect is harder to measure. Overall social media should be the main platform, because it reaches, targets and converts this audience best. The audio advert can still be used there and on streaming services, with a smaller amount of local radio to reach people in the town itself.

The company should start by working back from the deadline, eight weeks before the festival, to build a work plan or Gantt chart listing every task, how long it takes and which tasks depend on others, with contingency time in case something is delayed. Milestones should include the client approving the script and approving the final mix. In pre-production the scriptwriter writes the 30 second script, setting out the voiceover and the cues for the music and sound effects. Because some of the music must be by the festival's bands, licences should be requested at the very start, as permission can take weeks, and every clip should be recorded in an asset log with its source and licence. The voiceover artist and the studio must be booked for the recording day. After recording, the editor mixes the voiceover with the music and effects, cutting it to exactly 30 seconds, and the client reviews it. Finally it is exported in the formats the radio station and streaming services require, and tested on phone speakers and car radios, before the deadline.