The 4 Guest Reports that are written for MCPodcast (for the assignment):
Overall Report:
This is all 4 500word reports as an overall report of 2000words report.
PDF Version:
Guest Report for Our Podcast.pdf
Guest Report for Our Podcast:
Introduction:
Within this report we delve into four of the MCP’s guest and what I have learnt about each of their industries and my own experience in learning about creating and producing this podcast. This report will reflect on the professional experiences of each of these guests as well as my own goals and ambitions throughout this. This Report also will go over aspects that I did for the production of this and how each of these guests impacted me as well as how I think knowing about the advice that these guests could help someone when preparing to go into the industry.
Fahima Mohamed
Fahima Mohamed is a TV host and has her own live shows and actively works as a mental health advocate and life coach whilst doing her (MA)Master’s degree. She also had several interviews at the BBC and talks about women and Muslim experiences.
I had the pleasure of being the main producer of her podcast and learning a lot about both the radio production industry and the tv industry. Within this interview she highlights the importance of creating content that she is passionate about, and I think this is such an important message especially when it comes to the production industry, this is an industry that I am interested in exploring and developing my knowledge on.
Whilst I was doing the production of this, I learnt that through her experiences, and challenges she has used these to enhance her career and using her BA in Business Management, her range of networking skills and her ability to adapt under pressure she has managed to get this vast and big career in British Muslim TV, Live shows, and appearances on BBC radio.
Although I personally am unsure what type of career I would like to go into in the future learning about her experience within the field of TV and how she has sometimes had to make quick and bold decisions to move the production along and I found this aspect I could relate too as this is a task I had to face when in my production role.
As Mohamed hosts and presents shows I gained an understanding of situations that often go on within the environment of the production industry. Mohamed talks about how situations such as a guest cancelling would be sorted and how she uses her vast network to help find a new quest quickly to replace them and to prepare them. This was important as I found that quick solutions were vital for the production industry, and I found that whilst creating the podcast situations can take place and things do go wrong. When this occurred during the actual interview the presenters discussed with the guest the situation and she understood, and we came up with a solution to fix the issues that had occurred.
During the interview she talked a lot about how she takes advantage of social media and networking as part of her job, and it brings her opportunities and chances to work with a range of different people. This is great advice for people, like me, going into the media industry and building a social media presence could allow me further opportunities when trying to go in the industry in my future career.
She kept mentioning the importance of experience and taking it step by step when it comes to going into the industry and that it is important to try and take that leap at the opportunities you are passionate about. When listening to her advice she mentions that when you go into being of your career you there are going to be struggles and when you start your career you will have to take on challenges. So, when going to investigate this part of the industry of media I would look at building these experiences and networks, which are definitely aspects that I personally have to build on and improve as I continue on throughout my time learning about the industry.
Fausta Dambrauskaite
In this interview we met our guest Fausta Dambrauskaite who is a self-taught photographer talked to us about how they are working towards their degree in Phycology whilst using their photography skills to work as a professional photographer and editor at events and weddings and their work has even appeared in some local papers. Even though photography is not their main career they still have many opportunities within the photography field.
Dambrauskaite started off capturing the beauty of nature and developing the skills that were needed to go into the field of photography. This interview was really fascinating in the fact that Dambrauskaite acknowledges that people have to start somewhere to develop your skills and that it takes a lot of practice and dedication to start getting into the field. I found this aspect of the interview to be really impactful as I don’t think that a lot of people acknowledge the challenges or the struggle of getting into a particular part of an industry.
Within this interview they talk about how photography is a vast industry with a range of styles such as portrait photography to nature photography and how different photographers capture images in their own way as well as how they go about editing their images, which can take hours to create and finalize depending on how big of a project the artist is creating. This is part of the interview I thought hit some really interesting points as I have done a lot of photography outside of the industry both in an educational setting and outside of my education and I think capturing photos and moments would absolutely vary depending on the artist and what they are going for.
When it came down to the production of this podcast I was heavily involved, along with my teammates Kristof Poloskei and Yujin Lee, within creating this episode and this led to us learning some really valuable skills alongside learning about the photography industry. This includes working with other crew members to make sure the camera was at the right angle and that the sound was at the right levels.
I found it interesting that they highlight the importance of how much goes on behind the scenes of doing photography. Which in our case we could heavily relate too as there is so much that went into this project and as I have done some of my education with photography and it was something I had found myself passionate about, I found it fascinating to hear other people’s perspectives that have actually worked in the field and have experienced a lot of the struggles and the positives that come with working within the industry. I learned a lot about how it is necessary to have a contract between the photographer and the client so that both parties are fully aware of what they should expect and need out of one another throughout the shoot/after the shoot. So, within a range of different media fields I learnt that contracts are a necessity when it came down to working with guests, clients or other individuals.
Dambrauskaite talks about many important aspects that I thought stood out as both impactful to me but to others that are striving to be within the industry, and not just the photography industry, which would be to practice and build our confidence within your skills. This is an area that I would always have to be improving on and dedicating time to so that my skills get ore defined using different equipment, techniques, software’s and just generally my skills in general.
Daniel Ball
Daniel Ball was a different interview than what we had done previously as they are a Media and Production BA student at Coventry University on their way to graduating. Daniel is pursuing going into the field of being a director or producer assistant.
Throughout this interview Daniel Ball talks about their current projects and how they are creating a series of 3 videos to represent queer experiences through a fantasy lens as their final project at university. They talked about how their hobbies such as playing DnD has contributed towards their skills on the course and how they believe that having consent (positive) representation for minorities like the lgbt+ community is a vital need in media. Along with this Daniel has talked about gaining experiences with his course and how vital teamwork can be to create these projects. They have helped build sets for a classmate’s game show and create an audio drama whilst doing their own project of recording a narrative audio with poetry and filming. They are also using their skills that they have learnt and developed to make these projects happen such as they are certified on Adobe Premiere Pro which would defiantly help when it came down to editing their projects.
Daniel was one of the interviewers that I could honestly identify with as they make talk about parts of production, they are passionate about, but they also demonstrate their struggles and using their own experiences as a way to want to represent communities that are vastly underrepresented. I, myself, have wanted been passionate about creating projects to represent for the queer communities for similar reasons. A lot of these reasons being similar to theirs of wanting more of a vast representation of lgbt+ experiences as well as for our younger generation, as I think that if I had more queer and transgender representation growing up, I think it would feel slightly less isolating and if queer and other minority kids could feel more represented it could do a lot of good for those communities.
During the interview I was an assistant producer working alongside several producers (mainly Kristof Poloskei, Yujin Lee and Charlotte Grauby). I made sure that everything went smoothly and overlooked the production process and helped out where I could. So, when talking to our guest I found that their experience was probably the most relatable to me out of all the guests due to the fact that they are doing a similar field to what I am, is a similar age to me and has some similar type of experiences.
One of the aspects that I could really identify with was the fact that they touched on mental health and how it can affect your experiences. They mention how moral support is important when creating and that when ‘you get to that low point, and you don’t find joy in creating take a step back’ which is good advice so that when you get back into creating you can ‘engage in opportunities that you would want to do’. One of the main aspects of the interview that I think helped me would be the fact that they talk so openly about the fact that there can be a struggle within the career field but what a lot of people are after is for you to be yourself.
Within this I learned a lot about how creating these projects are done, both through the interviewing and looking through their network to see some of the behind the scenes of their projects. During this interview they stated that they need to work more on growing their network and I think that is a aspect that I definitely need to work on as well due to the fact that I do not really take advantage of social media and use it in a way that would be affective to be building my networks.
Dale Moon
Dale Moon is a media and content manager for Birmingham City Football Club, he deals with a lot of the communications within the club. He works heavily with managing the social media, conducting interviews, and creating preview videos for the club.
Moon discussed how he went from originally playing football to going into his career in his BA in Broadcast Journalism to finding a job within the football field within the media industry. Due to his knowledge in football and his experiences he was able to gain a career in working in the foot ball industry as a PR and Advertising working with nationally.
Listening to this interview I was fascinated by how much goes into the media industry for football. As I personally don’t have an interest in the world of football, I found it fascinating to see how much time and effort goes into the production of promoting, interviewing and creating the social media sides of football and as someone who is interested in the way that production takes place in different fields, I find it fascinating the different aspects that go into the football media field.
One of the aspects that Moon talked about that I found helpful would be the fact that he talked about the fact that university set the fundamentals and foundation of the career he does now, which as a university student is useful to hear when going into the media industry. He also talked a lot about growing networks and how it is a necessity for his job to create these connections and building networks for creating new content for the football industry, this involves being active on his social medias.
When recording this I was once again one of the people in charge of production, where I worked alongside a range of crewmembers, this was our last recording and we wanted to make this one the best that we possibly could. So, when we met with the guest, we made sure that we had both cameras at angles that showed off the guest professionally and Kristof in particular set up the cameras with the exceptional lighting behind them so that the entire podcast was shot professionally.
This interview was inspiring as Moon shows that he worked towards a particular career and even left what others would consider the better career to do the career he wanted to originally do. This is inspiring with the fact that you might not immediately get the career that you are after, and you could get experiences within a different career that could lead you to what you want to do with your career. This particular aspect struck me as something that would be useful to know when going into the media field, as there are potentially going to be careers that I could do that I like but not love that I could eventually go down another path within the industry once I had gained more experiences.
Conclusion
To conclude this report a lot of these guests that have come from completely separate fields, industries and experiences all have their own impactful messages and experiences when creating content and becoming a part of the media industry. The most common message and advice seemed to be within the aspects of build your networks, create content that you are passionate about and build your skills with practice. This experience within creating MCP has been unique and somewhat stressful but has given me a range of experiences that I can take within me into future projects.
