Commercial Production Process

Production Facilities There are many kinds of production facilities that you can use for making a radio commercial, some methods include using a vocal booth. An advantage of using a vocal booth to record your commercial is that there will be no background noise and no distractions so you can get a clear delivery for your advert. They also use a lot of pre recorded sound effects from people like Foley artists making their own sounds in the studio (i.e rustling) or they can have someone making effects on programs like Logic or Garageband. Another method of recording an advert for your radio station is using a large room with good acoustics, like a warehouse so that you can get a different kind of sound, or if you are using musicians it will completely change the dynamics of their instruments,You can even use your own bedroom if you wanted to and had the right equipment for it and even this could effect the style of advert you are creating. An example of a production facility for radio is the BBC recording studio that they use to record most of their bumpers and commercials for their various radio shows like radio 2. In radio 2 in particular they will use there own studio to record voices for there jingles, but BBC radio shows have a lot more funding than other radio shows so they can hire full orchestras to do there jingles for them. A lot of radio studios use production houses. Production houses are basically places where big radio studios, like Capital FM, will get approached by a big company, like Coca Cola, to make a national advert so the company will ask a production house to make the advert. You can record in many different ways in these facilities like the use of a vocal booth is a very popular for recording voices because there is no background noise and the quality is a lot higher.

Different Production Roles There are many different production roles when you come to recording a radio commercial, one of these roles is the producer. The producer basically responsible for the audio content coming from the advert, they also manage the other people in other production roles and oversee the whole production process. Another key production role whilst making a radio commercial is a voice actor. Voice actors are the people who act out all of the script for the advert and provide roles for the advert, they are usually used in all adverts and the number of people voice acting can vary to what kind of advert you want to create. A lot of radio stations use celebrities to endorse their product to greater appeal to the listeners, they can also pay session vocalists to sing a jingle for their commercial to make it sound better. An editor is one of the most important production roles in radio production, the editor pieces the commercial together after it has all been recorded and makes the final advert. The editor is so important to the production process because they basically make the final form of the advert how it will be heard on radio. Another role that is used is the recording engineer, they are the people who sort out the levels of sound and make sure that the sound quality is up to standard for their radio show. The copywriter is the person who basically writes the script for the radio show, a good copywriter will also act as a producer and oversee the voice actors and actual production and distribution of the advert.

Music You are able to record the music for your radio commercial in many different ways, one of these methods is using a live band. You can take a live band into a recording studio to make the backing track to your advert, they can also preform a jingle for your show as well. You can also hire a a full orchestra for your music but you would need a lot of time and money to make this happen and only the really top end radio shows will use recourses like this. You would choose a different styles of music for different styles of advert , for example, if you had a dogs trust advert you would make the music happy and cheerful but if you made a water aid advert you would choose sad emotional music. Another point you could raise is that if you had the right technology you could make a backing track in your bedroom, either using a computer using Garageband or even recording the instruments yourself on Logic or a similar program. An example of a production company that creates music for radio is Wisebuddha, they are an independent music production company that create radio jingles for various radio companies. Music is important for a radio advert because it sets the mood of the whole advert, for example if you have happy uplifting music you will have a cheerful advert, but if you have sad music the advert will usually more serious. Music is also important for keeping the listeners attention during the advert and it can help the listener remember the product if it has a catchy hook. Creators of the adverts also look into music library's for royalty free music which would work for the advert.

Financial Considerations When you come to thinking about the financial considerations of making your radio commercial you have to think about the scale of your advert, because you could try to pay and orchestra to appear and that is going to cost a lot to do, and the same applies with the voice actor, and the more high profile the voice actor is the more money it will cost to get him to do your advert. Another financial consideration you would have to take into account is the money you have to pay if you choose to use music that is copyrighted, you would need to pay the band or artist royalty payments to use there song, and the same rule applies like the previous point, the higher profile the artist the more money it will cost. Another financial responsibility you would have to consider is the trafficking costs. The trafficking costs are also worth considering because you will have to pay for scheduling and billing costs. Financial considerations vary with how rich the company is in general, for example the BBC don’t have as much financial concern as Heart radio. The radio stations also negotiate their production budgets by using their local, national and regional agency's and these sales teams help the radio stations a great deal.