Unit 5: Investigating Audio Production and Technology - Task 1: Production File and Analysis - Podcast

Comparison and Analysis of Two Podcasts

The podcasts that I have compared and analysed are "Black Girl Film Club" and "The Bechdel Cast"

I thought it would be a good idea to look at these two podcasts in particular as they include female hosts discussing their opinions and perspectives of films, as well as discussing about female representation, if it is realistic enough and if they represent female minorities. The episodes from both podcasts I have listened to are:

• "Black Girl Film Club" - Episode 34: Booksmart (2019)
• "The Bechdel Cast" - Booksmart with Vanessa Chester

I decided to pick to episodes from each podcast about the same film to see if they both have the same opinions and thoughts on the 2019 film "Booksmart" (directed by Olivia Wilde), as well as how the hosts perceive the film and if they believe this is an accurate representation of women. "Booksmart" is a film about overachieving best friends Molly (Beanie Feldstein) and Amy (Kaitlyn Dever) who have both sacrificed their social life throughout school to only study and get the grades they deserve to get into great universities. On their last day of school, and their last day of college, the two finally realise they have both missed out on what being a teenager truly is, having fun and partying. They both are now determined to make up for lost time by trying to pack everything they have missed into one night before they have to graduate and start living in the real world. Though this night doesn't go to plan as they try to get to the most talked about party in school and have a nightmare trying to get there. 



Here is a brief introduction of what these two podcasts are and what they are about, for those who don't know. Starting with "Black Girl Film Club" (2018-present) hosted by Britney Brinson and Ashley Ayer (I was unable to find any images of the two) who are both black women and give their perspective and thoughts on certain films and how they can relate to characters or how films could have benefitted them. I think this is a very important podcast as it discusses how female minorities have a lack of representation, especially in the film industry, so to hear and understand their views on films is very interesting and beneficial, especially for someone like me who wants to go into the film industry in the future. 

The other podcast I have listened to is "The Bechdel Cast" (2016-present) from iHeartRadio. Hosted by L.A.-based comedians Caitlin Durante and Jamie Loftus who both look at different movies and discuss how women are being represented and portrayed, and it usually doesn't have great results. The name "Bechdel" is derived from the cartoonist Alison Bechdel, who created the Bechdel Test, which is discussed heavily throughout each episode of the podcast. The Bechdel Test is a test that was created and first scene in a comic strip in 1985 called "Dykes to Watch Out For". In a particular strip titled "The Rule", two women discuss watching a film and one of the women explains she only watches a film if it has:

1. Two or more women in the film.
2. If those two or more women speak to each other.
3. If those two or more women are having a conversation that is about something other than a man.

Though a lot of the outcomes from this show aren't great, the Bechdel Test failing to be brought up in many films, even to this day, the discussions still manage to be hilarious and entertaining to listeners whilst also speaking about serious issues of female representation in film.

Though the two podcasts talk about the same film and the theme of female representation, they are both also very different to each other, which makes them separately unique podcasts. As I said before, "Black Girl Film Club" discusses films from a black woman's perspective and how they either do or don't relate to the film, as "The Bechdel Cast" speaks about how women are represented in film in general and how well the Bechdel Test represents women in that film. 

"Black Girl Film Club" and "The Bechdel Cast" first start well with having intro music, this is to introduce what is to come in the podcast, as well as understanding the theme and topic. 

At the beginning on "Black Girl Film Club", the first sound that is heard is someone on a megaphone saying "Quiet on set!... Places everybody!... And... Action!". After "Action!" is heard, soft, hip-hop or an r&b and soul style of music starts to fade in. This intro music lets a listener understand that this podcast is about the topic of film, as an unknown person, probably a Director on a film set, shouts for everyone to get ready and start filming. Listeners can also understand that the theme and topic of the podcast doesn't just stop at film, as the music that starts to play is also known as "Urban" sounding music that originates from African-American culture. So, the podcast shows that both film and the representation for black people, mostly black women, in film will be highlighted throughout the episode, as well as the podcast series. 

As for "The Bechdel Cast", in this episode, it first starts with an advert for another podcast called "This Time Tomorrow". This is because "The Bechdel Cast" podcast is distributed by iHeartRadio, and as it is on the iHeartRadio platform, the podcast is advertising another podcast from the platform that listeners may want to listen to. After the advert is finished, the podcast then starts straightaway with the intro music. The theme song starts with both a guitar and a woman singing, which then leads into two women. The song's lyrics discuss what "The Bechdel Test" is actually about and what they usually discuss on the podcast. The lyrics (written by Myq Kaplan) go:

"On "The Bechdel Cast",
the questions asked,
if movies have women in them.
Are all their discussions,
just boyfriends and husbands?
And do they have individualism?
The patriarchy's effing vast,
so, start changing it with "The Bechdel Cast""

Listeners can understand, whilst listening to the song, that the podcast is definitely going to be very topical, discussing whether women a represented enough in the certain film the hosts will converse about in the episode. The theme song is also very interesting as the guitar, accompanying the lyrics, is quite an uplifting and upbeat melody as the lyrics create a very serious tone as the topic and issue is very important to the hosts, as well as trying to make listeners become aware of how serious female representation is in film. 

Both podcasts have intro music to introduce their hosts personalities, as well as the themes and topics that their podcasts touch upon. After the intro music has finished, on both podcasts, the hosts then introduce themselves and tell the listener what they will be speaking about in that episode. For "The Bechdel Cast", Durante and Loftus introduce their guest on the show, who is actress, Vanessa Chester ("The Lost World: Jurassic Park", "A Little Princess", "Harriet the Spy" and "She's All That"). 

In "Black Girl Film Club", after Brinson and Ayer have introduced themselves, they dive straight into the film they are going to be discussing and reviewing throughout the episode, as well as giving a little insight to the listener about the certain themes from the film. As for "The Bechdel Cast", Durante and Loftus, first start by explaining what the Bechdel Test is, where it originates from and why people use the test and then they introduce the film they will be discussing and reviewing, along with their guest. 

I also mentioned before, I have looked at an episode from both podcasts, where the hosts (and guest) talk about the 2019 film "Booksmart" (directed by Olivia Wilde). This is a film I have only watched very recently and I really enjoyed it, so I thought it would be interesting to hear it from other people's perspectives. 

I first listened to "Black Girl Film Club", just to hear Brinson and Ayer's opinions on the film before listening to Durante, Loftus and Chester's own opinions. It was really interesting to listen to and understand Brinson and Ayer's opinions on the film, as they stated throughout the podcast, as they are both black women that they felt like they couldn't relate to the story, they felt there was a lack of representation for black women. Both women also found that the story was too similar to another film called "Superbad" that came out in 2007, saying they felt that it was the same movie but replaced two leading men (Jonah Hill and Michael Cera) with two leading women (Beanie Feldstein and Kaitlyn Dever). They also stated the massive link between the two as Jonah Hill and Beanie Feldstein are actually brother and sister in real life. But I can definitely understand the lack of representation for female minorities throughout the film as there is only one black woman who is featured in the film, who is Molly and Amy's favourite teacher Miss. Fine (Jessica Williams). The character of Miss. Fine is very underused and when she does appear onscreen, she isn't exactly seen in a great way, making Williams portrayal and involvement in the film feel like a wasted opportunity. I found it very useful and helpful to understand both women's problems with the film, feeling like they were represented as they are both black and also don't understand school life in the modern age, with mobile phones and the new formation of stereotypical cliques. All of their opinions they brought forward were very interesting and also taught me how much women who aren't white lack massive amounts of screen time, as well as not being involved enough in stories onscreen. Both hosts did say that they related more to the personalities of the leading characters yet felt underrepresented as they couldn't physically see themselves within the film. 

I think this topic makes for a very unique listen, especially for me as I never actually looked further into the representations of peoples ethnicities onscreen and only focused on how I felt represented by the two leads, as well as only seeing how women were being put forward  more and being seen as natural and as a person. I also really enjoyed how the podcast was just a natural conversation between two women, whilst being personal about their own experiences that may have been similar to the characters in the film. 

My only problems with the podcast was that sometimes the Brinson and Ayer would go off track and start discussing other films that had nothing to do with "Booksmart", as well as referring back to "Superbad" constantly and not focusing on "Booksmart" itself. I also found certain parts of the podcast quite boring, as sometimes there would be a lot of silence between the hosts and nothing filled that dead space. I felt like they missed an opportunity to be able to place sounds and music from "Booksmart" in between, just so audience members can remind themselves of what happened in the film as well as understand certain scenes, lines, characters, etc., that both hosts are speaking about. I also found there wasn't something right about the sound quality of the audio, I think they must have been doing the podcast over a video chat platform, as one of the women sounded very clear and the other sounded almost robotic. 

Although there are a few negatives, I found the ending of the podcast great as well as they gave listeners recommendations to watch films that they think are quite similar to "Booksmart", as well as telling listeners, who may of not watched "Booksmart" to watch it too and see what their own opinion is on the film. I thought this was great as they weren't trying to tell people to not watch the film or said that they hated it, they were only saying how they didn't particularly like it yet let their listeners give the film a chance. They then also made sure listeners tune in for their next episode and find out when it will come out through their social media platforms, then saying goodbye and leading into their outro. The outro music is the same as the intro music, fading in as they say their last goodbyes, then fading put again after a few seconds and finishing the podcast.

After listening to "Black Girl Film Club", I then started to listen to "The Bechdel Cast" to see if they had similar opinions to Brinson and Ayer, as well as what were their overall thoughts and feelings and how it possibly represents women. It was surprising to hear how positive the hosts and Chester's opinions were about the film after listening to "Black Girl Film Club". They all stated how they felt they could relate to the characters on a very personal level, as well as finding the representation for women, especially teenage/young women, to be quite accurate to how they were when they were younger and in secondary school. They then also discussed the whole plot of the film, giving the viewer a quick insight to what the overall plot is and the journey the characters go through the film. They also all explained how they felt the treatment of Feldstein's character, Molly, in the film was a great representation of women who are plus-size as no one in the film brought up this fact and just treated her like a normal person, which she is. They also discussed how great Dever portrayed the character, Amy, a queer girl who is still able to be comfortable in her body and comfortable with her sexuality, even after coming out about her sexuality only a few years prior to the film. They did also state how at some points that Amy's sexuality felt quite forced and didn't relate back to her personality and character. They did then discuss many negatives that were very much the same as the negatives from Brinson and Ayer in "Black Girl Film Club". They stated how great it was that there was so much diversity for the men of the film, being very well represented, yet the film only showed white women. They also explained how women from minorities lacked any representation throughout the film, this being an issue from the writers of the film (Sarah Haskins, Susanna Fogel, Katie Silberman and Emily Halpbern) who are all white women, as well as having a white Director (Olivia Wilde). They also said the exact same thing as Brinson and Ayer about how Jessica Williams and that her comedic talents wasted in the film, as well as not giving her character much depth and realism. On a good note, Durante and Loftus, as well as Chester, said that the film passed the Bechdel Test, explaining everything it did right and what could have been improved in the film. 

I think this is also a very unique podcast as it puts forward everything about female representation and how films should include diversity for women. I also enjoyed the way they would refer back to the Bechdel Test, seeing if the film followed the rules. They also stepped away from the Bechdel Test a lot of the time and just discussed how well women were represented and felt natural in the film, rather than a one-dimensional side character.

I also preferred this podcast to "Black Girl Film Club" as they equally discussed what they liked and didn't like about the film, as well as referring the film back to their personal lives and how they related to the characters. I also liked how it felt like a conversation between friends, even if they hadn't met their guest before, and kept the conversation rolling. There was never really a silent moment throughout and there definitely wasn't any silence at any point. The sound quality was also great, sometimes I think the hosts would go slightly quiet but you could also hear how passionate they were about the film and their views on it. 

They then ended the podcast by asking Chester about her opinions on the film again, as well as Chester plugging projects of hers that are being released or events she is doing and her social media platforms. They all then say goodbye and to make sure to listen to next week's episode. This then leads into more adverts from iHeartRadio for other podcasts that listeners may want to check out. I felt the ending of their podcast felt quite rushed and didn't fully finish their conversation about "Booksmart", but overall the podcast is great to learn more about female representation in films, as well as problems the film industry is still facing with the lack of women, female voices and female minorities. 

I think it was great to take a look at these two podcasts as they both raised awareness to serious issues that films face with a lack of representation, not just for women but also for women of a certain ethnicity. I also think they are great film review podcasts for anyone who is a fan of films and wants to understand the issue the film industry has to include women, as well as normalising women and making them real people. I also found this great research for mine and Amiliyah's podcast, as we looked into women in the film industry and how they are represented, recognised and praised, as well as how they are very underrated and have a lack of acknowledgement in the industry. 

Pre-Production Diary

Thursday 9th January 2020

Today we were introduced to our new project which is podcasting. Our teacher, James, presented a PowerPoint explaining the origin of podcasts and how they have rapidly become part of many people's consumption of entertainment. 

I already had the knowledge of what a podcast is as I have listened to many now, from "Total Film Inside" and "The Empire Film Podcast" to "David Tennant Does a Podcast With..." and "WTF with Marc Maron Podcast". My particular favourites are discussions about film and TV shows, as I am a huge film and TV buff, as well as interviews with cast and crew members and listening to their time working on a certain film or about their personal life and career. I have also listened to another podcast that is much more different to the ones I mentioned before called "DKMH". This is a podcast by Dacre Montgomery ("Stranger Things" and "Power Rangers" (2017)). Montgomery has stated that it is "beat poetry" that is "set to music". Each episode varies in length as they are usually between three to six minutes long. Montgomery created this podcast as he believes it is meditative, as he talks about personal experiences and stories that have shaped him throughout his life, and hopes he is able to be able to relate to others, universally. This is very different to any podcast that I've listened to before, which makes it very unique and, especially in a time where people are now more aware of their own mental health, it is great for people to listen to when they feel anxious or have troubled relaxing or sleeping. 

But, for those who don't know what a podcast is, a podcast is a series, ranging from any topic, of a person, or people, speaking which audiences/listeners are then able to download those audio files onto their personal device and listen to. I found it really interesting to learn the context of podcasts as I never knew the term "podcast" was only coined in 2004 by Guardian journalist, Ben Hammersley, linking the words "iPod" and "broadcast" together to create the name "Podcast". 

We then learnt that podcasts are consumed by many people, especially in the UK where 24% of the population listen to podcasts. I never actually realised how popular podcasts were until I saw this figure as that is 7.1 million people, in the UK alone, that listen to podcasts, of any topic. It was quite shocking to find out that podcast consumers listen to podcasts for over six hours per day. It is only till now that I realise how much entertainment has spanned that many people either listen to music whilst doing work or driving in the car or to relax, or they listen to someone having a conversation with another person for two hours. 

It was also very interesting to learn that the largest age group that consume podcasts weekly, as well as how much it has grown since the popularity and success of podcasting, are 15-24-year-olds. So, when it came to thinking about what ideas to come up with for our podcasts, we had to take into consideration that young adults (from ages 15-24) consume the most podcasts. As well as being a young adult, it was quite easy to think of certain ideas to be able to talk about and give information to listeners, understanding what people would want to listen to, especially with being on a Film and TV course, and also looking at what are the most popular podcasts on a variety of apps, for example Apple Podcasts.

I think something that was great to know and understand about podcasts is that they range from absolutely any topic. For example, this picture below, from Apple Podcasts, shows all the categories of podcasts people can choose to listen to. There is almost every topic that a person can think of that probably already has a podcast made about it. This shows that podcasts fulfil almost everyone interests as there are so many out there, allowing people to choose the topics they would like to listen to and, hopefully, feel a sense of escapism as they listen to them. 

We then learnt that it is actually pretty simple to be able to make a podcast, what we needed was:

• An idea - any topic we think is interesting and will be interesting to a listener, as we as being as entertaining as possible.
• The right equipment - the main equipment we would need is microphones, headphones (both whilst recording our podcast and for editing our podcast) and an audio editing software (for example, Adobe Audition).
• The right setup - we would need a room that is soundproof, or a room that won't have much noise within it or around it in the building, as well as having comfortable seating.
• Host - a podcast can only be heard if it is distributed on a platform like Apple Podcasts, iTunes, SoundCloud, or even YouTube. 

We then also understand that all podcasts don't always become successful or get listened to, as there are so many podcasts now trying to compete with one another to draw in more listeners. So, when it comes to letting people know that your podcast exists, creating social media accounts is useful, so anyone who is intrigued by your podcast can go to any podcast/sound platform and then listen to it. Podcasts also need to keep being updated with weekly episodes to keep audiences coming back to listen to more, as well as attracting more listeners each week, causing it to gain popularity and success.

After learning all of this, we then needed to get into pairs and start discussing potential ideas for our podcasts. Me and Amiliyah decided to partner up as we have worked together a lot now and knowing we would have to have a conversation about a certain topic, we felt the most comfortable with each other to be able to do that.

So, we started with listing down some ideas.

We both knew that we mainly wanted to do a podcast around Film and TV, as that is the course we study and learning that we weren't going to record these we wanted to include Film and TV. First, we did think about maybe doing a podcast on true crime, as true crime podcasts are very popular with shows like "Serial", "My Favourite Murder", "Criminal" and many more. We both also thought about the Buzzfeed show "Unsolved", where two men have to try and figure out how a certain crime or murder happened. Me and Amiliyah were both speaking about certain unsolved cases we could speak about, or even try to find some that people had never really heard of, as well as ones we hadn't head of. It was until we started speaking to our teacher that he said it was a good idea as we can make it more entertaining and it's a topic that many people listen to and enjoy, but our only issue is that we couldn't speak about how a murder had happened, try and leave out the gory language. 

Me and Amiliyah started to think again about ideas as we felt like we couldn't really speak about certain crimes and murders if we weren't really able to go into detail, especially if there were important pieces of evidence in the crime as to how a person was murdered and who could have possibly done it. We then also thought it might be quite controversial as we didn't want to try and glorify these crimes as real people were sadly killed and we wanted to respect them and their loved ones. We started to think of many other ideas, trying to bring them back to Film and TV. We started to think of entertainment that we had both watched, such as:

• Harry Potter or The Wizarding World - mostly controversies that surround it (especially a lot that has been going on with J.K.Rowling).
• Marvel - what will happen to it in the future, with all of the announcements from ComicCon the previous year, as well as the future for its characters after the events of "Avengers: Endgame" and "Spider-man: Far From Home".
• Film Conspiracy Theories - Is Kevin McCallister from "Home Alone" Jigsaw from the "Saw" franchise? Did Sandy actually drown at the beginning of Grease? Is the "Toy Story" franchise just "The Walking Dead" series?
• "Badflix" - where me and Amiliyah would talk about the worst Films and TV shows on Netflix.

There are so many ideas we came up with but just didn't know what exactly to do. So, we definitely needed to think more for our next lesson so we could get started on elaborating our idea and making it span over three episodes. 

Thursday 16th January 2020

Todays lesson, we learnt how you can earn money by making podcasts, as this might be something that one of us in the class would like to do in the future. Learning about this would then help us more about what ideas we should look into and be able to make a podcast out of, whether they are topics that are already for popular or something entirely unique. 

We learnt there are two ways to be able to make a career out of podcasting and that is:

• Ad-sense - Where another website or company will place adverts into your podcast.
• Commissioning - Big companies will put out commission requests of a podcast that they would like to get made for them, as well as listen to the persons ideas about a podcast. So, if you have a great idea or they want you for the job, you will then be able to create the podcast and get paid for it. 

A way to be able to distribute and put your podcast out is by using 3rd Party Platforms. This is very similar to certain platforms the have ad-sense on their entertainment (for example, YouTube). They allow your podcast to be hosted on their platform, then distribute it and then they are able to find appropriate and suitable advertisements to be placed within an episode of your podcast. The only thing is you have to get a certain number of downloads, a large amount, to then start getting paid for creating your podcast. So, if you don't get in the number of downloads that you usually get, you can stop getting paid for your podcast. So, podcasts need to keep uploading weekly and updating what they speak about to make each episode more entertaining than the last one. To also still be able to make money from the podcast, you must advertise and promote your podcast well, for example, social media is a great way to promote your podcast so people are able to see what it is about and also find where they can listen to it. 

After this, me and Amiliyah then needed to try and think what we wanted our podcast to be, we looked over the list of ideas again where we then highlighted the ideas, we were most interested in:

• Film and TV
• True Crime (unsolved)
• "Picks for Flix" - Films and TV shows on Netflix that we wanted to discuss and recommend to listeners.
• Marvel
• Actors - we were thinking about episodes possibly being about best performances, worst performances, ranking our favourite actors, etc.
• Films we want made - sequels, prequels, reboots, etc.
• Movies that shouldn't have happened or shouldn't have been made - talking about terrible films that weren't good and missed the mark.
• Movies that haven't aged well - many from the 20th Century.
• Film Conspiracy Theories.
• "Badflix"

We still couldn't decide on an idea, so we were hoping for our next lesson we could try and talk through our ideas more and find what we actually were passionate about and wanted to touch on.

Thursday 30th January 2020

In this lesson, we started to learn more about recording and putting together our podcast episodes. We first started with looking at microphones, how they work and how we use them. It was good for us to learn the basics of how we should project our voice into a microphone, as well as the understanding the equipment that goes along with picking up the sound and recording our episodes. 



We learnt that the type of microphone we would be working with, for our podcast, is a condenser microphone. These microphones are great for picking up sound as they are very sensitive, as well as creating great sound quality. We learnt that we did need to be careful with them as they are pretty expensive and much more fragile than an average, dynamic microphone. For all of us doing our podcasts, these are the best microphones to use as they are powerful and able to pick up everything we say.

They are also built to pick up more sound than an average microphone, which can also be a downside as peoples breathing and certain sounds when saying words can be heard clearly. As we are using a room in our college, the microphone can also pick loud noises from outside of the room, so we would need to be careful with people walking past or hear chairs scraping or the noise of a door opening and closing. To try and prevent this we would just need to put signs outside saying we are filming and be able to try and play around with these noise complications in post-production. 

To also try and not make our voices so loud on the microphone, we need to be a small distance away from the microphone as we speak. We can measure this by placing our thumb on our chin and our pinky finger at the front, of where we will be speaking on, the microphone. Mainly to test if the sound is too loud or too quiet, we will need to be wearing headphones throughout the podcast to hear both yourself and the other person speaking. 

We did then have a look at the equipment we had set up in one of the classrooms, with the microphones, headphones and recording system all setup. We each then tried it out, seeing how we sounded, as well as using everything we learnt to try and have the best sound on the microphone. 

After seeing the equipment for the first time, we then headed back to our classroom and were introduced to Adobe Audition. Our teacher told us to just start playing around with the software and see what we could create. We found some copyright free sounds and music online and started to add that onto the software, as well as downloading music off of YouTube and playing around with that. The software is actually not so hard to use, it is very similar to Adobe Premiere Pro, just without footage. So, we quickly got the hang of it and learnt how to cut audio out and then piece it together with other audio, as well as placing sound effects in and working with many pieces of audio at once. 


Thursday 6th February 2020

Me and Amiliyah finally decided the topic we wanted to do our podcast about. We both decided that we wanted to talk about women in the film industry, how they are represented in film, as well as the work they do behind the camera and how they are recognised for their talents. This idea came when we were doing our Oscars Rundown shows. I did a segment on sexism at the Oscars, how men always get more nominations for women, causing women to lack any achievements and recognition for their work and talents, especially for large awards like Best Cinematographer (only one woman has ever been nominated for this award, Rachel Morrison in 2018 for "Mudbound") and Best Director (only five women have ever been nominated for this award and only one of those women has won, Kathryn Bigelow in 2010 for "The Hurt Locker").

This is all the research I had done for the Oscars Rundown segment, which me and Amiliyah took into account for our podcast.

Both me and Amiliyah are very passionate about this topic as we are both aspiring filmmakers, who are also feel, and want equal chances for us to be able to make it into the film industry. As one day I would love to become a Director and Writer and Amiliyah would love to one day become a Cinematographer, hopefully the both of us working together in the future. We both started to put down ideas we wanted to talk about women in film, as we didn't want to just keep it on the topic of their misrepresentation at awards shows like the Oscars as we had already done that. 

After this we then started to have a look at podcasts that are already out there that speak about the same topic as us, as well as discussing the same issues and how they present them throughout their episodes. We ended finding a top ten list of podcasts about women in film:

1. "Girls on Film" - Anna Smith
2. "Overinvested" - Gavia Baker-Whitelaw and Morgan Leigh Davies
3. "Black Girl Film Club" - Britney Brinson and Ashley Ayer
4. "Who Shot Ya?" - Ricky Carmona, April Wolfe and Alonso Duralde
5. "Switchblade Sisters" - April Wolfe
6. "Bad Feminist Film Club" - Kelly Kauffman and Sarah Barson
7. "Citizen Dame" - Kristen Lopez, Karen Peterson, Lauren Humphries-Brooks and Kimberley Pierce
8. "The Other 50%" - Julie Walker Harris 
9. "Bad Romance" - Bronwyn Isaac and Jordan Searles
10. "The Bechdel Cast" - Caitlin Durante and Jamie Loftus

(I did my comparison on "Black Girl Film Club" and "The Bechdel Cast")

After having a look at these, we then started to think about what we wanted to discuss in each episode, as well as how we were going to structure and layout each episode. So, we first started by brainstorming some ideas down. 

We decided we wanted Episode #1 to be about Gender Inequality in the Film Industry:

For Episode #2 we would talk about and use The Bechdel Test:

As for Episode #3, we were both quite indecisive. So, we decided for this episode we would get a guest on our show who has worked or is still working in the film industry. We thought it would be best to ask our teacher, Kelly, if she would like to be in the podcast or if she knew of anyone who has also worked or is still working in the film industry. As part of our contingency plan, we decided if we weren't able to get a guest that we would speak about the Representation of Women in Film:

Thursday 13th February 2020

As we now had our idea finalised, we then needed to try and find a name for our podcast. We looked back at the names of the podcasts that also discuss women in film, trying to see what makes their names unique. We both liked how the name "Citizen Dame" was derived from the film "Citizen Kane" (1941). 

Me and Amiliyah then both decided that we wanted to try and create our podcast name out of a film title. But we wanted to pick a film that was either created by a woman or has a female lead, or many female leads, in the film. As well as having natural and accurate representations for women in the film. We also thought of female directors last names that we could use as the name for the podcast.

We started a small list of names whilst looking at many films directed by women and starring women. We finally decided on the name "The Fault in Our Films" based off of the film and novel "The Fault in Our Stars". We found the name fit really well as "The Fault" means the lack of representation and recognition for women in the film industry, both on and off screen. The film also has a strong female lead character named Hazel Grace Lancaster (Shailene Woodley) who suffers and lives with terminal thyroid cancer.

After we finally figured out our name, we then decided to create a Pinterest board, placing ideas for each episode onto separate boards, as well as finding inspiration for the thumbnail/artwork of our podcast. Here is a link to our Pinterest board: https://pin.it/7ckWrU0

After creating the Pinterest board, we then made a start on our pitch which we then had to finish off soon for our pitch the following week.


Wednesday 25th February 2020

Amiliyah created the logo for our podcast. She said that she had a look on our Pinterest account at some of the ideas. I think it's a great logo as the pinks and purples are feminine colours and show audiences that this is a podcast mainly aimed towards women, doesn't mean men can't also listen to it either. The microphone and headphones also show to audiences that it is definitely a podcast. 

Thursday 27th February 2020

Me and Amiliyah came into college early to finish off our pitch for the podcast, as well as do our proposal. It's only now that I realised, we forgot to put a 90-character description of out podcast onto the proposal, so I wrote one here:

Two aspiring filmmakers talk about women and their representation in the film industry 

After finishing everything, just before one o'clock, we headed upstairs to start and get ourselves ready for our pitch. We made sure to go through who was going to say which slide. 

Luckily, everyone in the class really liked and were intrigued by the idea, as well as me and Amiliyah being the only girls in our class and the other six members being boys. We received really good feedback from everyone, both students and teachers. Me and Amiliyah we really happy about this as this is a topic that is very personal for us and is something that we are very passionate about and want to bring awareness to. 


Sunday 8th March 2020 (International Women's Day)


As it was National Women's Day, I decided to watch a documentary that came on the TV called "This Changes Everything". 

The documentary features many women working in the film industry, whether their jobs are on or off screen, speaking about the mistreatment of female filmmakers and actors. They touch on very single surface of the massive gender inequality issue in the industry, from female recognition at awards shows and to be able to work on other projects, as well as how they are misrepresented onscreen. It is a brilliant documentary that many people need to see, as this is a huge problem. As well this is very personal to me as, I've stated before, I am a woman who is young and aspiring to one day make it big in the industry and to see that there are so many issues for women and a massive lack of respect is so devastating. Hopefully in the future this will change for the better and give women the opportunity to create amazing films and have their voices heard.

As this has a lot to do with mine and Amiliyah's podcast, as well as featuring all the topics that we will highlight in each episode, I decided to take note of the documentary. This was so we would have more research, along with the research from my research for the Oscars Rundown, to be able to discuss more and bring froward in our conversation on the podcast. 

Wednesday 18th March 2020

We now have a change of plans for recording our podcasts because of the coronavirus, we can now only record one episode, instead of three, of our podcast and we have to record it tomorrow, as the following week we will not allowed to come to college for a while. Me and Amiliyah still hadn't written a script, though we did remember a lot of our research and now had the notes from the "This Changes Everything". This was actually pretty good as we still wanted our conversation to be natural and also have a brief set of notes. So, our idea of three episodes just morphed into one episode (mostly Episodes #1 and #2).