'Making It' with the Roundhouse

Here’s the project that took up most of April 2012 – a documentary for Roundhouse Radio on how to get a career in the radio industry.

We got advice from Mike Anthony (the owner of Bang FM and one part of BBC 1xtra’s ‘Rampage’), Amy Redmond (BBC Radio 1 Producer), Ruth Barnes (BBC 6music contributor, Amazing Radio presenter and creator of the Other Woman podcast -  http://theotherwomanpodcast.podbean.com/ ),  Julie Adenuga (Rinse FM drive-time presenter) and Sacha Brooks (Capital FM Birmingham). In the end I think we made a great show, which is genuinely informative (there was loads of great advice, plus there was loads of good stuff that didn't make the final cut).

We actually had a whole range of ideas for our radio show. In the end we had two show ideas, a documentary on cassettes (‘The last Cassette Generation”) and a show about breaking into creative industries with a primary focus on radio.

After much deliberation we decided to go for the Radio documentary, since our mentor, Ray Paul, said that it would be more straightforward to make, given the contacts we had through the Roundhouse, and suggested that it would be more suited to the young creative types that listen to Roundhouse Radio. Also, later on in the month I heard a FANTASTIC series on Resonance FM by Naomi Christie http://cassetteradio.wordpress.com/ (I intend to write a more detailed ‘Radio in Review’ in the coming weeks) - so a part of me is glad we didn't make something that was too similar to another project.

We quickly realised the sheer amount of work that goes into making a documentary! It was originally going to be recorded as live, with us trying to book guests to come into the studio, but we figured that it would be too difficult to get loads of people find the time to come in. The ten point structure idea was given to us by our mentor, since it would be more straightforward and easier for the audience to follow it the show was broken up into segments that were under 3 minutes.

The topics we chose to do were:

Be a Pain

Be Ambitious

Make Your Mark

Be Wise

Make Mistakes

If in Doubt… Blag

Go Viral

Get Stuck In

Do It Yourself

Take Action

Me with Emma

It was pretty difficult to get interviewees at first, though eventually we were able to get quite a few contributors on board by simply asking them to record their questions from home and email them to us. After a disastrous attempt to edit it together on Protools (more because we were completely incapable of using a Mac), I did a rough cut of the show on Audacity, which I emailed to Ally (our team’s tech person) to put all the music and effects under the interviews. The girl doing the topic idents is Emma, the producer.

We all got loads of experience, plus we realised that making radio was easy to do by ourselves. We hardly used any of the professional Roundhouse Radio software or equipment (however I did borrow an Olympus Dictaphone to do the Amy Redmond interview). We used Audacity on our laptops and I recorded the script at home with a Tascam dictaphone in my room. Plus, big tip for anyone working in a team making DIY shows, wetransfer.com is a godsend – since it lets you transfer massive files online, meaning that you can transfer Audacity project wholesale to others. Producing this proved that, technology wise, everyone has access to the tools they need. It certainly helped that the contributors we used were technology savvy, but anyone who has access to a smart phone could easily record answers to questions using a voice recorder app (as I suspect Julie from Rinse did) and send it to you via the web.

Hackney Marshes, Football and Adventures with BBC Radio 1

Over the last few months I’ve been putting together a radio documentary for the Roundhouse about breaking into the radio industry. Making the documentary involved hassling lots of radio professionals to do interviews with us. After emailing Amy Redmond (the Radio 1 producer who tutored me in the ‘Penniless Podcaster’ class) about helping us out, she emailed back saying:

  

Amy Redmond!

“Hey Shaun,

Nice one, totally, and you're bbc too yay!

Well, can I set you a lil fun challenge in return?!  I am making lots of short video/audio clips about east London in the run up to radio 1's hackney weekend. I want to get down to hackney marshes either this or next Sunday to do some voxes with some local footballers about 'their hackney' to clip together and make a short podcast. Maybe to take a few pics too.

It will be going on the radio 1 academy page, so it’s a good thing to have done in terms of experience and it'll be fun too!”

Well, I thought it sounded like a fun day out… and it was!

Here’s a recording of Amy talking about the podcast and why we are making it about the marshes. It was recorded whilst walking along a canal in Hackney on a beautifully scenic day, so you can hear the sound of Amy’s bike rolling along as well as the sound of other cyclists who are out for a ride.



 For those of you who are curious about the process behind preparing for interviews, this is a recording of us discussing how we are going to go about getting the material we need for the podcast:

 

Here’s the podcast me and Amy put together:

For those of you who don’t know, the Hackney Weekend is a this huge daylong music festival organised by the BBC that is descending down on the Hackney Marshes. There’re some big names, like Rihanna and Jay Z – and the tickets are more or less given away for free to kids in and around London, with a substantial bulk of them being set aside for the young people of Hackney. Amy is the 'social media content producer' for the Hackney Weekend, hence why she was making the podcast. She's also a Hackney resident, so she was really keen to make something that celebrated her area.

The Hackney Marshes are massive. You'll find it laden with football pitches and hundreds of footballers. There are probably over a dozen matches going on simultaneously on a Sunday morning. It’s loud and lively – so you can pick up some great sounds for radio. Plus, it didn’t make it into the final piece, but there’s always lots of foul language coming from the sides of the pitches.

However, all the footballers were really friendly and willing to go on the record about how much they loved the marshes. A recurring theme was how it’s like one big family at the marshes and there’s a deep sense of community.

After we recorded the voxes, I interviewed Amy and asked her a few questions about getting a job in the industry for my radio documentary. You'll be able to hear her responses, along with advice from 4 other radio professionals in 'Making It' - a 30 minute guide to a career in radio - coming soon to this blog! Actually Amy Redmond has already posted up on her blog! See it at: http://amyredmond.blogspot.co.uk/2012/05/making-it-in-radio-industry.html

You can find out more about the Hackney Weekend at: 
http://www.bbc.co.uk/music/events/e9wmxj