… collecting material. (part 4 of the e-book)
The moment you start recording your raw material is a great one. At least I like it a lot. It is when the ideas and concepts you have been working on and thinking about become real and also get tested. It is possible that the realities as reflected in the interviews you’ve done make your whole concept a bit redundant, but even that is ok. It’s just evidence that we don’t really know what the documentary is about, or at least what is it saying until at the very end. It’s good to keep an open mind and allow the changes to take place rather than to try to force the initial view.
If we take the process to its very basic level you’ve got two ways to get things started: an ease-your-way-in interview or the deep-end-option.
Especially if you feel that you could use some more information and confidence before facing the hard questions then start off with someone who is either an easier person to talk to (should you have access to that knowledge) or someone who is less central to your story. This kind of interview gives you confidence and ensures that you have some audio secured. The value of getting started should never be underestimated.
The deep-end-option is when you decide to tackle the most difficult thing first and then build the rest around it. It is a good way to do things if you feel that you understand the subject well or otherwise feel particularly strong and confident. Quite often, after this it becomes easier to find and record the rest of the material as you have the main substance of the story already collected. Although, of course there can be more big interviews lined up, but you are at a good start.
You never know exactly what kind of material you will end up with, but it is good to consider the order in which you intend to talk to people. Sometimes, you can kick yourself for realising, during your very last interview, an interesting angle or a question you should have asked everybody. These are the things that you can never know so there is no point in worrying about them. Just imagine if this could happen and then start based on your best, and at least a bit informed guess.
It is good to have at least a rough wish list of who you would like to interview. Be prepared to think on your feet and react quickly; at times a chance for a great interview will present itself without warning. Sometimes your interviewees will recommend other people that you could find interesting and other times they may cancel or just not show up, although most often, they do the interview as agreed.
Before going to record an interview it’s good to think of good questions, and if possible have more of them than what you think you’ll need. Some interviewees answer your first five questions when you’ve only asked one. And you only had prepared six. Not that it’s that much of a problem necessarily, if you get your material, but I always try to add a few questions in the end that sort of invite the interviewee to expand the story and identify other aspects that I haven’t known or just thought of. After all, they probably are specialist in the field and I am only covering the story.
Your questions should be rather open than closed ones. That means that they should not be answered by yes or no. Sometimes you can prepare a great question that covers all the facts and reflects on them appropriately and then your interviewee says “yes, that’s correct”. Now that is what you got recorded. Make sure that your interviewees give you all the good stuff even if you yourself would know the answers already. It is their voice you are after because your own you can record whenever.
When you think of the style of your piece you might have an idea of its treatment. Are you going to edit the answers and mix them with your studio recorded voice-overs, or are you going to use them as an interview with your questions in the mix as it happened? Regardless of how you will use them, a good interview is generally more of a recorded conversation than a questionnaire. React to the answers you are given and follow them up, ask for more clarification and further questions even if they are not on your list. There’s an old anecdote, which can actually be an urban legend, where a radio DJ asked a caller “So how has your day been?”, the caller responds “It hasn’t been good. I was horseback riding, fell and broke my leg”. The DJ responds “Ok, what song would you like to hear?”.
As conversational as your style may be, you as an interviewer should try to keep quiet as much as you can when you are not saying anything. In a normal conversation we make all kinds of small noises of agreeing or being surprised (yeah, oh, umm, mmm, aha), but whether you use your own voice in your documentary or not, those sounds can be rather annoying, yet difficult to edit away. You don’t want to have your “yeah, I see” on top of a very interesting answer. As an interviewer you must come up with ways of encouraging the interviewee by nodding, facial expressions or anything you can come up with. Keep eye contact as much as you can. You don’t have to say anything out loud to be part of a conversation. At least not all the time.
Depending on your story and approach you can have an interview with many different kinds of people. Many politicians and public servants are infamous for giving you official statements which tend to be rather dry accounts. It is something we are quite used to and we don’t think too much about it, but it is also something that many people find boring. Think twice before using long interviews like that if it doesn’t fit your target audience. Some academics know so much about their specialisation that their answer seems to last forever and you know you’d need a quick 30 second summary of 25 minute monologue. I have found that a good way to achieve that, is trying to summarise vaguely by saying something like “so if I have understood correctly it is about A and B”. After that I often get a nice half a minute summary that explains how it is about A, B, C, D and F. It doesn’t work every time, but it surprises me still, how often it does.
It may happen quite naturally when you are working on a story that you end up with a set of questions that you could ask almost from anybody. That kind of general list of question is good and works well especially if you are at an event, such as a conference, fair or festival where you may get interviews from people who are interesting, but you didn’t prepare questions for. If you end up in a situation like that and you don’t immediately have anything particularly insightful to ask, start of with very general questions to buy yourself time to think on your feet and hopefully come up with better questions towards the end of the interview.
It is important to know how long your final piece will be when you collect the audio or even work on the interview questions. Sometimes it is easier to say something in a longer time than in a short one, but however long your documentary is, make sure you have enough material.
When I was doing my first work placement in the late nineties, one of my friends had been sent to a press conference to interview a Swedish pop rock group the Cardigans. The band was busy and being a trainee, he hardly got first turn. He eventually came back with four minutes of audio. His assignment had been a seven minute feature. Now remember those four minutes were not edited audio but raw material that had all of his questions amongst other things. He hadn’t thought of doing an emergency voxpop to meet the required time so he had to rely on his own recollection. He then wrote a script which he read to fill the time.
I can’t even remember how it sounded, did it make any sense and how was it received by his supervisors, but this is an alarming story, not one of triumph. Even if he would have managed to get away with it, you must always remember to get enough material because it is not about getting away with things anyway.
There are no rules really how much is enough raw material for a story of any length. You must have enough. That is the most definite answer I can give you. Some old school documentary makers demand hours and hours of raw material, but I wouldn’t worry about that. In the modern media production environment we don’t have the luxury of time like some previously have had. We must produce stories much faster than before so having those hours and hours of audio is not only a massive task to record, but also to listen to and edit later on.
I have been talking a lot about recording interviews and they are often the substance of your story. They are not, however, all that matters. Earlier I had mentioned how you can learn about documentary making from TV and film. If a TV documentary would only have talking heads, the footage of people talking, and occasionally footage of the narrator talking, they would have to have pretty amazing content for us not to change the channel. But that is still how we often without questioning, produce for radio. There is very little sound environment there. We pause our recorder when interesting things are happening. By interesting I don’t mean only very exciting, but just sounds that signify moments, places or just human beings on their job. If you interview someone in their office, then a phone call or someone at the door is what signifies that. If it happens in the middle of your interview you can edit it for the beginning as something that takes us into a new space. If you are going to interview someone start the recording before you’ve met them. Get the audio of that meeting when they introduce themselves to you. It can be nice way to get into the actual answers. This way you also avoid the often awkward moment of setting up your recorder. That is the time when the interviewees get nervous so skip that if you can.
The supporting audio material; atmospheric sounds, more specific signifiers or observed interactions can be almost anything that is sound. When you are collecting it, keep your eye on the recording levels and look for the best place to record from. To collect this audio it really helps you to ask what are the producers of film documentaries doing right and how will I translate that into audio?
Collecting the audio tape, as this type of material is sometimes called, is a different practice from the rest of the recording as you don’t have to worry about asking the questions and from a participant you have become more of an observer. Your TV equivalent would be a cameraman instead of the journalist or a reporter that you are when you are recording the interviews.
In radio production we often have more roles than in other media as the production teams are small. The chances are you are the production team. It’s good to be comfortable with all the different roles. At the end, the content must be relevant and interesting and it must be packaged in a way that it deserves.
Collecting material; interviews and otherwise, is what really ensures that you are able to say what you want to say about the topic you are covering.
…making sure you are ready for the job. (part 3 of the e-book)
Technology doesn’t make the media, although media production needs it. A lot. For some reason many of the radio students seem to think that understanding recording levels and audio quality is like understanding the relativity theory. The very basic technology that gets you far in radio is not very complicated and most of all, once you master it on a decent level, you don’t really have to think too much about it anymore. Sounds like a reasonable deal to me. Then you can focus on your great ideas.
Besides adverts, the main reason for people to change the radio station is a bad signal, and I’d imagine that would apply to any kind of sonic irritation including inaudible interviews, cacophony and general chaos created by bad recording.
It really doesn’t matter how good your idea is and how much you worked for it if you cut corners with this. This is the point that not doing it right can make all of the material useless. And if it is useless, don’t use it.
As a radio student you should go out with a recorder and record for no other reason than to learn how to do it properly. Try it out and while at it, maybe you will end up with a small sound effects library and some cool atmospheric backgrounds you can use later on.
Is it better to record from far and turn the recording levels up or to be quite close with levels turned down? Find that out.
Take also into consideration that microphones can differ so it is important to get to know how the one that you are using works.
Have a good read through of the manual of the equipment you are using and become familiar with using it in practice. Recording is something that should become an act of muscle memory like driving a car. If you are a driver you know that initially you had to focus on which pedal is which, how to change gears and even not to forget to indicate when you are turning. After driving for some time, and I doubt it happens in any other way, you stop thinking about most of these things. They just happen. You can drive a distance without thinking once about changing gears yet surely you have done it.
When you gain confidence and get the recording and other production to a comfortable level you are really in a position to focus on your content and expression. If you don’t, you might find yourself ruining the interviews by either bad audio quality or losing your focus to questions and interaction as you stare at the recorder and try to ensure that everything is fine with it. Neither one of the options give you any good results; what they do is make either you or the interviewee look and sound bad. In all likelihood, it actually does it to both of you.
Also, always wear headphones. You wouldn’t write an essay without a screen on your computer, just hoping that what you are typing reads well, so don’t record without headphones either. The example may sound a bit extreme, but that is how it is; a kind of guessing game with a hope that things will be okay. When you monitor the recording you know what kind of material you go home with and you can fix the levels while it still matters. With interviews you can also end up having very disturbing background noises that you don’t necessarily pay attention to without the headphones; air conditioning, computers, ambulances, dogs, playground… you get the idea.
Unless those additional sounds are an integral part of the story and something that you want to have as describing the situation or space, try to avoid them. Even if you want them, you are usually better off recording them separately and mixing in when you are compiling your work. If something is making a sound you’d rather not have, don’t be afraid to ask if it possible to go and record the interview elsewhere. People generally understand when you explain your reasons and most of the time, especially at events or in public spaces, just going around the corner will be enough.
These things are more common sense than pure technological know-how, but without paying attention to the recording as a practice you may just not realise them in time.
It is always good to aim for the best possible quality and never use bad quality audio, but even after all the hard work there can still be some annoying noises on the background, or keeping the levels was tricky as the interviewee was moving too much. When you listen to a lot of the talking content in radio, you hear that many interviews are telephonic which makes their quality, realistically speaking often quite horrid and always a bit compromised. It seems that there is an unspoken agreement that this is acceptable in radio and without it a lot of content would not exist. So use your own judgement with the quality of audio you have recorded, but set the standard a little bit higher than where you instinctively would have it.
Learning the technology, like many things in general, is first about learning the basics and creating a routine. The creativity follows usually afterwards when you try things out, but even that has got more to do with what type of raw material you collect than how you record that audio. I will later on write more about your material, but for now, as we are still talking about the equipment and how to use it, consider making yourself a checklist.
The good thing about checklist is that once you’ve written everything down, you might not even need to consult it, as you remember these things already. That is not to say that it’s not good to confirm; it generally is good to confirm.
On your checklist you should have ideas like…
- Checking the equipment before going out to collect audio
- All the necessary cables (check your microphone cable by recording a bit – broken ones can add horrible cracks to your material)
- Enough batteries with enough power (have some spare ones)
- Recorder and microphone
- Depending on your recorder, are all the recording settings as you want and need them to be?
- Headphones
- Enough space on your memory card or MiniDisc depending what you are using. I recommend to have a lot more space than what you estimate you’ll need. Sometimes we get surprised with what is available and it’s good to be prepared.
- When on the location, whether inside or outside, listen to the sounds of the space and identify potentially problematic ones. On top of alarms, sirens and air-conditionings take wind specifically into consideration as for microphone it is not just sound, but rather something blowing in it which compromises the quality of recording even making it unusable.
- Record atmosphere, because it can be very useful later on when in edit.
- Before recording an interview or collecting any audio, make sure that you are happy with the recording levels.
- Make sure that the recording starts and runs. People have made the mistake of having the recorder on pause which feels like recording as you hear the sounds from the headphones and the levels are showing, but the numbers on the display of your recorder are not changing.
- When you record, depending on the equipment, be sure that you don’t record over previous tracks and lose other interviews.
- When you transfer the material to a computer name the files appropriately and save them in a folder that you can easily find.
These are just some examples that will help you to create a workflow. A routine. All of this, after some practise, is like remembering which pedal in the car is the brake and which is the accelerator.
… getting creative and critical at the same time. (part 2 of the e-book)
When I was an undergraduate student one of my lecturers told us: if you want to have a good idea, come up with ten and pick the one that is good. That, he said, was based on the general rule of 90% of everything being rubbish. No matter how many times I was turning this idea in my head, I had to agree with it.
Initially it sounds like hard work, but it is not like someone is going to come and ask for evidence or an industry standard business plan for every idea. The whole concept needs a bit of demystifying because we come up with ideas all the time and out of those ten you may end up having five ridiculous, few that kind of make sense, one that is okay, and one good one. Some of them are just half ideas and some build on the bad ones. Maybe your final one is a combination of few, or that crazy thought that you stripped down into a doable one. This bit is not the science; it is just for you to think about in order to avoid too much unjustified satisfaction with the first thought that enters your head.
When you hear someone saying trust your first idea, be careful. Of course it might be an amazing concept, but at the same time it might be something that everyone else has also thought first and then gone with it. When I was a presenter on a hit station I used to spend quite a bit of time writing my scripts. My goal was to write some jokes about current affairs and such; basically just punchlines to amuse the listeners (and possible more than them, my peers and myself). A friend of mine said that if in my evening show I go with the first punchline that comes into my mind, listeners may have heard that same joke in a slightly different versions many times during that day. News stories after all, are same for everyone. You may not write jokes, like I don’t much either anymore, but we still benefit from considering our angle.
Having said this, and I hope I am not stating too much of the obvious, it is not about never going with your first idea. Just as long as it isn’t your only idea and therefore win by default.
Another thing that is good to keep in mind is that you are not supposed to prove your already existing opinion. That would be just a self-congratulating exercise and it has very little journalistic, or any other kind of value. Make mind maps, think about the different sides, but at least give the material a chance to differ from what you thought. If you find out, for instance in one of your interviews something that changes the nature of your piece, then that’s okay. Follow that. You have just found something out and it does not ruin your idea, but your idea has developed into something else; something better probably, and even if not, it’s better that you found out it now rather than when already finished the last edits.
Coming up with an idea involves thinking about an angle that would be interesting; maybe something that is not overdone by every media outlet, and knowing your target audience and where you would like to have, at least theoretically, your work to be broadcasted. Remember that while it is important to be realistic about the industry you aim to work in, your studying times may be the last times for years when you get to experiment and it would be a shame not to do that. Try things out and think creatively.
Besides having to know who you are targeting, you should also think about how are you going to reach them. Is your story going to be a human interest one, a hard news story or something else. Thinking about these things will help you when you think who would you like to talk to and what kind of other material you would ideally like to have included in your final piece.
There isn’t one set way for a creative process. Even if there was, wouldn’t that be against the whole idea of creativity? There are different methods and they work for different people. I find mind maps very useful. I started off drawing them into my note book. I still do that but I also have one of those boards on the wall in my working space so I can actually conveniently see the idea when I am writing. I also use free software called FreeMind which allows me to have the ideas archived on the computer. I am not convinced it is the best one, but it is decent. I recommend you to go and explore the options from this list if you feel that it could be useful.
There is nothing wrong with doing mind maps by hand and most of the time it is faster and you get to record the idea as it comes without having to, for instance, wait for your computer to turn on.
If you are only starting to experiment with mind maps you might need to ‘let go’ a bit. It is possible that it is you, who is standing in the way of good ideas. Don’t be shy with a mind map; it isn’t your final product and it doesn’t have to cover absolutely everything before you start. It only has to make sense to you.
Mind map: this is just an example of how I thought this segment to be like.
After my initial mind map I usually go either for a long walk or a run (depends on your exercise preferences, but if you don’t run, try walking). For me it is a very good time to think. Philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche said “only thoughts which come from walking have any value”. Whether you agree with him on this one or generally; or rather even if you would disagree with him generally, a moderate version of the statements makes sense to me. Lets just say, walking may be good for developing ideas.
I already introduced the idea of letting go. To stop worrying about what people think about you if they see you and even if they don’t. This can be very difficult thing to do for many people, but there’s a way that works at least for me. Not accessible to everyone (and by no means reduced to a tool of work) children are great assistants, because they don’t care and therefore you can lose yourself as well. If you’ve got siblings or cousins or even own children then give it a go; volunteer to baby-sit (mentioning your ulterior motive is optional, but don’t forget your actual responsibilities for the young human being and his/her parents). No one is looking at you weirdly if you go and play in the park with a child and therefore no one thinks you’ve gone mad. Maybe these things don’t concern you, but in case you feel self-conscious then try to find ways to overcome it.
Also, using drawing and colours is said to be good for creativity.
Getting in touch with your creativity is not about being silly as such. I personally find it easier to think outside of the box when I am not on the computer trying to force ideas. I talk about letting go, but don’t forget to also critically engage with your ideas; are they actually as great as you thought, and most of all, are the realistic.
On top of creativity, the ideas need a more pragmatic approach. This is where the journalistic side comes in. I have covered some of the ideas already in the previous segment, but knowing what others do, and have done, is important so that you are not doing the same story with the exact same angle, because there is a chance that the others had more resources and found better interviewees. Remember that you don’t produce these things in a vacuum, but in the context of some kind of industry or community. Unless, of course, it’s only for you and maybe your mum to enjoy, but realistically, that is an honest goal to very few of us.
You must also understand the significance of what you are doing and familiarise yourself with some background of the story. How much of that is necessary depends on the style and approach of your piece. You should also consider is your documentary going to be outdated before it is finished. News stories age quickly. If you have the luxury to decide yourself and don’t want to hurry, think about more timeless stories or at least something, that still makes sense to listen to a week from now.
At this point I’d like to repeat my disclaimer: I am only offering ideas; tools for your tool box and you must decide which ones are appropriate. This isn’t a list where you must tick boxes and it definitely isn’t a gospel. These are ideas that have helped me and therefore I offer them to you to think about. There isn’t an order for these things so when you deal with ideas, however they come is good.
The thoughts I’ve described and ideas I have introduced are as they have been taught to me after my own interpretation, preferences and experiments with them. Since it is your process, don’t be afraid to be creative to get creative as well.
It’s also good to have the confidence to change your focus when you realise a better idea, for example from an interview you have recorded.
Sometimes you can have a very rough idea, go and get material and start building on that. That method has also worked for me well. The only thing that I can think of to be a sort of an unbreakable rule is to keep an open mind.
While I am finishing the second segment of the forthcoming e-book to be posted here on the blog, I wanted to add some interesting audio from an interview I did with SWEAT.
SWEAT (Sex Workers Education and Advocacy Taskforce) is an organisation that looks after the rights of the sex workers in South Africa. It is all part of my documentary series. I had a very good talk there and got some interesting pointers. I am at the moment facing the biggest challenge of this episode as I try to find a buyer. Someone who uses these services to talk to me about it. On top the fact that the whole thing is stigmatised and cynical, it also is illegal for both parties so we’ll see how it goes.
But here is a clip where SWEAT’s Vivienne Lalu explains some attitude problems towards sex workers and other results of the study the organisation had done.
… it’s not copying, but observing and learning from others. (first part of the e-book)
If you are a radio student, I hope you listen to radio. Just to know what you are dealing with. Ideally you listen to more than just one station that plays hit music with a tight rotation. Although it is also good to listen to those since a lot of radio students end up working for such stations. Or maybe you do not listen to conventional radio, but rather subscribe to podcasts, listen to audio books or some other kind of audio content besides music. If not, but you still somehow feel determined that you’re doing the right degree, you might need to fit these things into your routines.
If you want to produce audio documentaries then listening to audio documentaries is a good start. Not that many students have done so before coming to the university. The fact, that there seems to be such a few of them easily available might also be an indication of something about the industry that you need to consider, but for now you can find some examples from the Internet. Here’s a few options to start with:
- PRX (Public Radio Exchange) – after free login you can listen to other’s work and add your own.
- BBC Radio 4’s selected documentaries
- BBC World Service documentaries
- BBC 1Xtra documentaries
Sure, there’s a bit of a BBC bias there with the links and also, since the content online tends to undergo changes, I do hope that the links work when you click them. These are only examples and I’d recommend you to spend some time and Google (or Blackle) a few more. It really is just to see what has been done and how. If we let nature to take its course, we would hear very few documentaries ever.
To understand the craft of making documentaries make sure you also watch them from TV , online or get some on DVD:s. The great thing about these is that they are done with much more resources, time and money and there are generally so many more of them. Learn what they do right and think about how you could do that in radio in general and with whichever topic you are interested to cover in specific.
That really is the key idea with everything. What do others do right and how can you do the same? Not to copy the result of whatever they did, but to understand the train of thought behind it and then apply it in your circumstances, with your personality, the subject matter, target audience, format of the station you work for or wherever else your piece will end up. To use an example of stand-up comedy, you shouldn’t copy the jokes and punchlines from someone else, but you can think what makes the jokes funny in their timing, subject matters, angles and how they are generally constructed and then use those ideas as they fit to your own material.
You can, and probably should, pick and mix the best ways and ideas that you see and hear out there. Analyse what makes a conversation on the commercial station entertaining, how is the content dealt with in talk radio, how does the advertising industry come up with a unique selling points and how does a community station make you feel like you part of something? Are those methods effective and is there anything there that could help you? Maybe what you don’t like will help you to realise what you do like and will want to use instead. You don’t need to have all of these elements applied, certainly not at the same time, but it helps to understand them. Writing and producing a radio advert is a very different craft to a documentary, but how do they, when they are done right, communicate a message in thirty seconds?
Things that appear to be far from each other come closer when we take a step back and lose our focus on the details and replace it with analysis of their effectiveness. And since radio documentaries are a small pool to fish from, you must find the inspiration wherever it may be.
As a student you are the future of radio and media and as a university student, you may be part of the future of managing the media and radio. Use your time well as a student and learn to understand the radio industry and also its shortcomings; it has got many. But it has got many strengths as well. It is not necessarily a get rich quick scheme; or even get rich in your lifetime scheme for that matter, but it is an efficient way to communicate. Audio is the only format of media people can really consume safely while driving and hence the morning and afternoon traffic hours are important for radio. It is relatively cheap to produce, receivers are cheap to purchase and therefore are much more common than TV:s. It doesn’t require literacy or a lot of electricity, and it also has a certain intimacy that at least for me makes interviews and conversations more enjoyable than with some visuals, although you are free to disagree with me on that one (or with anything else for that matter).
I always make a distinction between audio and radio. It is true that radio content is audio content, but you can also use audio in an online environment, on CD:s or even files you copy on computer or exchange with your bluetooth device. As a file, audio (such as MP3) is much lighter to upload, download or stream online than video. What the Internet does and has done is erasing many of the geographical limitations. Of course the digital divide is a reality and the Internet has created new kinds of groups not determined by their geographical locations, but by their interests and unfortunately also access to technology (which at times is tied to geography as well). But the same content can be broadcasted on-air as much as it can be uploaded online. Podcasts are a convenient form of audio as they can be subscribed to, and after that the subscriber doesn’t have to search for them but receives every episode as soon as it is uploaded. I will later on talk more about placing your audio content online, but for now the point is that the Internet adds up to opportunities rather than takes a way from them. When you are producing content you should start thinking about both platforms.
Regardless of radio’s role in our music consumption, there will probably always be some need for content. Change is constant. It isn’t something that has happened, but something that is happening right now as it always does. And change is fine. As practitioners we just need to understand how it impacts on our work. For content based audio this change looks positive anyway, since the Internet opens more global potential for even very focused content.
Next section of the forthcoming e-book focuses on how to work with ideas. It’s on its way.
My second piece of Walk With Me street documentary series introduces us to the realities of a casual labourer with few or no rights, no contracts and no certainty of income. It’s a harsh job with tough competition and hours of waiting in hope. I doubt I’d be any good at it. But I wanted to learn more about it. These men are called ‘the men on the side of the road’.
Yestreday started with a heavy rain and I thought I might have to postpone my planned day of production. I thought that in a way, the rain could create an atmosphere on my audio that would have been quite priceless, but on the other hand, it could have been tempering with the content if there was a sense of hurry there. So I was undecided until the rain stopped and I was good to go. Again, there was some nerves at play; how will I introduce myself to a group of men and find a person who could communicate the experience on a microphone. I had played the scenario many times in my head from walking up to them and introducing myself to actually doing the interview and all else that could take place. When I got to central Cape Town somewhere on the corner of Buitengracht Street and Strand Street I approached the group with all my confidence. The thing with me is that under no circumstances do I want to be disrespectful or that I think I can just assume people wanting to talk to me. It’s a personal value without which I would have easier time collecting audio, but I am not out for an easy experience anyway. I created an eye contact with the men and as soon as that all of them, maybe twenty to thirty jumped up and started running towards me. I was only standing a few meters away from them. I greeted them and asked are you guys what they call ‘men on the side of the road’? Still, I didn’t want to assume anything, just like I had asked the woman who was in all probability a prostitute whether she was one. But the whole group of men told me that yes, they are those men and all of them wanted to talk to me. There was a one guy who had been one of the first to greet me and was very eager, his name was Vusi and I walked with him for some time and just listened his stories.
I thought about the conflicting ideas of people calling these guys and other unemployed people lazy when every single one of them was dying for a job. They were ready to do anything. They had been waiting there for too long. Not just today but for years. Vusi himself had been on the side of the road for two years every morning coming from the township of Langa. This interview was a deep one; we talked about many things and he was very open with me. I learned a lot. We talked about subjects like freedom, xenophobia, 2010 World Cup and his children. It was just two guys of similar age from the different worlds with different experiences.
In this audio clip Vusi explains how many of the South African men who are offering their work without contracts and benefits are not enough of a good deal for the “boss”, as they, as citizens have a right to take the employers to the court unlike the ones illegally in the country. That creates resentment and is one of the main reasons behind what in South Africa has been referred to as xenophobia.
Last night when the sun was about to set I started the production of my series of documentaries. The series is called Walk With Me and it involves audio profiles of people who work or live in a way that might be foreign to many of us. Or maybe there is stigmatisation and even demonising these people. Basically, we don’t know much, we assume a lot and not very often do we bother to find out. It’s not necessarily ideal, but I am not here to judge. Rather I want to talk to people like that and share it. People like prostitutes, street kids and some of the most casually hired labour with least rights or people to look after them.
My first mission was to talk to a prostitute. It had been the topic I was, as a man and just as a human being, the most nervous about. How will it look? What will happen? What can I ask? I don’t want her to think I am being rude or invade her space when she’s on the job. I was, in all honesty all around uneasy about it. I felt that I was about to speak about the unspoken, but then again, that was my exact reason for doing this. That is my goal to some extent with these documentary profiles.
I drove near the Claremont in Cape Town and walked towards Wynberg. This stretch, sometimes referred to as Lovers’ Lane is famous for the women who work there trying to get customers for the night by the Main Street. Still early in the evening I met Nancy and asked to talk to her. We had a long chat about the industry, her life and hopes and dreams of the future. It was interesting. Very cynical but interesting. My idea of prostitution is based more on films and TV than anything real, so I was curious to learn about the life behind the industry. The real people and their realities. Nancy made it all sound very normal; changing few words and the description would have been suitable for an office job. It really is quite obvious when you think about it, but financial crisis has had a dire impact on her work and she’s hoping that 2010 World Cup will help her business. Who in South Africa wouldn’t think that way?
I sensed a deep disappointment in her. She looked like she could be in her mid-thirties and was dressed in a relatively conservative manner. Her qualifications suggest that she should work on a managerial level, but due to illness, she found herself to work as a prostitute. It’s a sad story, but it’s the story of a person you might drive past every night without ever hearing it.
Here’s a clip where she describes her line of work. It’s only a small taster of the full interview and I should mention here that while this was her opinion it came with a lot more analysis.
Nancy speaks about prostitution
This interview was an eye opener and actually, after a long stretch of typing research papers and presentations I was happy to get on the field. My initial nervousness was lost during the first minutes of this conversation. It was one of those chats that taught me a lot about realities around me. It made me think and feel. I am very excited about this project and I am glad I am doing it.
It’s good to be busy. While I am putting together my ideas and mind maps for the content based audio production e-book, I am also doing another project that relates to it. I am currently collecting audio and conceptualising a series of human interest documentaries focusing on people many of us overlook or feel satisfied by trivialising their existence because we can’t really understand it.
I have decided to understand how does prostitution work on the streets and who are the people behind it, how is the life for a street kid and what are the conditions for farm workers.
This is just a tentative list which may go through some changes. I want to do something that communicates something real and not just statements. I am hoping to walk this journey and come up with more understanding and be able to share it. Before I get too much into the idealistic nonsense that means very little, I must say that this is the kind of stuff that in my view should be done more, but it isn’t. Why? Maybe the lack of resources in radio production, maybe something else. I think learning about these things would add value to all of our lives on some level. I am sure I will elaborate more about the motives and considerations of these documentaries later. I am using this blog as a work space for the ideas and also to share the practices of the production.
Last night I went to record the first interview. It was pretty amazing and I am not the one to use words like amazing for nothing. I will post an audio taster soon. For now I just wanted to introduce the idea. I wanted to introduce the concept that I call Walk With Me documentaries.
Having just been part of both teaching and giving feedback to the radio students on feature and documentary making class I though I could write down a few points. A sort of list of things to consider when preparing the idea, collecting the material, putting it together and whatever happens after that. To look into the challenges that seem to repeat themselves with most students. It is not a criticism, because everyone starts from somewhere, but a bag of ideas to carry around when on the job.
Radio is an interesting, but at times very overlooked industry and a field of study. Many of the stations tend to sound much the same all over the world and – I say this without judging or supporting – the content generally loses out to the image and celebrities beat the insight. This of course is much the same as with other media, but in radio the content based audio – hard pre-recorded content, if I could call it like that, is not valued like in TV. SABC radio pays less for a half an hour radio documentary than generally gets budgeted for a voice over artist in a TV one. As these are the realities, we as producers are forced to think cleverly about what we are dealing with. We need to find different ways of creating an income for ourselves and getting our stories out there. In South Africa specifically radio is very efficient and people listen to it. A lot.
These things are worth thinking about and that is what one can learn in university; thinking. Of course, while the list is written for the university students, that does not mean that it doesn’t apply to others. These are ideas that in my opinion are crucial to think about. Some of them are also worth actually doing. I don’t wish to present them as truths, because I don’t believe in such. These ideas are something to think about and involve more questions than answers.
Later on I will post more detailed account of each of the ideas on the way to better pre-recorded audio content, but the list looks a like this:
- Listen, watch, learn and adapt – it’s not copying, but observing and learning from others.
- Coming up with ideas – getting creative and critical at the same time.
- Learn the technology – making sure you are ready for the job.
- Don’t cut corners with material – collecting material.
- Know your material and then trust in it – dealing with your material.
- This is not advertising or promotion (unless it is) – what does your material say and what do with it?
- Working with the script – writing and recording a script that brings everything together.
- Do it with style – hook the listeners and take them to places.
- Know your placement – finding home for you baby.
One by one, I will post about these topics finally collecting them up to an e-book that can be downloaded from here, but there will be lot of things happening before we get there. I am actually excited to see how this works out.
Welcome to the new blog. I call it the Radio Student because that is what I am. I am also a radio lecturer, but deep down inside I am its student. I find it to be the most exciting medium on its own, although I am interested in how the traditional ways can be used online. The reason why I am starting another blog is because I wanted to write about some ideas specific to the radio students and those didn’t fit well in my personal blog, even less into my running blog, the blog of an identity project I co-run, they certainly wouldn’t fit into Twitter and since they are not photographs, also Flickr would have been a wrong place for them.
So here it is, a new blog just for radio thoughts. I will see what form this blog will take with time, but in the beginning, I am working on some ideas based on a lecture I gave about radio / audio documentary and feature making, and the feedback session I was part of earlier this week. There seemed to be certain things that almost everyone in the class needed to think about more, so I thought I’d write down a list of things to think about. The ten of these things will appear here bit by bit in a near future.
In the meantime you can subscribe to the RSS feed of this blog from here.
Radio Student by 
