I’ve been up to quite a lot in the intervening months – I’ve done work placements at Whistledown and BBC WM, as well as doing some freelance work helping produce some amateur podcasts.

One of the coolest things about my week at Whistledown was that I got to go through a whole bunch of magnetic tapes found in Ernie Wise’s garage, in order to transfer them into a digital format using a Revox machine. These tapes included some unique recordings from live shows in the early fifties and some of the only surviving copies of their earliest radio performances. Perhaps the most special find I made was that of an early recording for an unreleased Christmas single made by the two. Shame I can’t have a copy to share with you here, really. Still, I daresay it’s going to be used at some point in the future…I’ll keep you posted.

I was with the news department at WM. Everyone was incredibly nice and helpful, and even though I had to rely on my own initiative to find stories and offer help with editing work, I was given a supply of tasks to be getting on with, including the dreaded Vox Pop. The experience was slightly disheartening, though. Although, as the Mailbox is the second largest BBC operation in the country, it was quite a professional operation, I often found that my suggestions and ideas for bulls were deemed ‘un-newsworthy’ or too nuanced for the target audience (being regional BBC, we’re looking at 50 +).

To give one example: I’d done a some research into a series of lectures going on at Birmingham University to commemorate the 200th anniversary of Darwin’s death, something which culminated in a “literary rap battle” conducted by a famous American artist over the nature of Darwin’s legacy.  Now, rap isn’t generally popular outside a youth audience, but the organiser, Professor Mark Pallen, was a really interesting guy, who had lots to say about Darwin and his connection to the Midlands, and I got some quality material from him – and again, I know I’m an ‘academic’ by some people”s standards – but this was clear, accessible, and passionately delivered stuff. Anyway, the bull only made it once, as the “and finally” story at the end of the 6 am bulletin.  To compare, a (three week old) PR story about the opening of a Halal pizza shop (not the first by a long way, but the first chain of Domino’s to do so) made it to the second or third story at least three or four times during the day.

Other things: I wanted to run a counter-story to what was run on the national news suggesting charity shops were running out of stock because of a new ‘attitude’ created by the Credit Crunch, having phoned up most stores in the region and found that they were fully provided for. However, it was judged too derivative to refer to a previous story as it might make people think the news output of the station was behind the times. Fair enough. I was also asked to look into a story on the front page of the Birmingham Mail, which I couldn’t in all right and conscience begin to consider news. I sent it over to The Enemies of Reason, instead.

Now, I won’t go into a rant here (remember, reader, that one of the aims of this blog is to make me more employable, not to cast me as some sort of unhinged eccentric loony) but I think my experiences are pretty emblematic of some of the greatest problems blighting modern journalism. I’ll say this much: I don’t think we should ever be afraid to promote clever and engaging material for fear of disconnecting with an audience who will see it as too intellectual, and we should never shy away from the reponsibility to cover community campaigns, positive stories and individual endeavour as a counter to a false sense of negativity, gloom and fear brewed up by the circumstances of the times.

On a happier note, then – in the meantime I’ve also been trying my hand at something new; making “Let’s Play” videos and uploading them to YouTube. For those of you of a slightly less geeky disposition, the ideal “Let’s Play” is something between a video walkthough of a computer game and an episode of Mystery Science Theatre 3000.  It’s meant that I’ve had to get my head around some more video recording and editing software (namely CamStudio and VirtuaDub if you want to give it a try yourself) and the whole thing has been surprisingly fun. I’ve also bought myself a new mic (rather than relying on my headset) – a Sony ECM-PC50. It’s relatively cheap, as far as commerical omnidirectional mics go, except that it is TINY. Less than two cm long. Thankfully, it doubles as a clip-on mic, which means I can route it through my Edirol when I do some more documentaries.

Hopefully I’ll be able to fill up the blog with some hearty content in the coming weeks. At the very least, I don’t tend to leave it this long again.

Diamonds from Miss  Jackson:

The week’s work experience at BBC Hereford and Worcester was really enjoyable. Seeing how the bulletin readers and the production teams produce their work was both instructive and inspiring, although my favourite part was being taught how to use the software there (they use Radioman for editing, mostly) and then being tasked with using it to cut together pieces for broadcast, of which I managed to do quite a few.

Going out and doing vox pops was intimidating at first – quite a few people treated me as if I had a particularly visible and offensive disease (I thought the BBC brand anorak was rather tasteful myself) – and I’d never thought I’d see the day when a man walk away, disgusted, after I asked him  his opinion about life in general. Still, I got the hang of it, and I got that same buzz from taking a large amount of material (about 20-30 minutes of audio at a time) and whittling it down into something both brief, vivid, and representative of the bigger picture.

A geeky aside: whilst conducting the various vox pops I thought up how a “vox pop taking” simulation game would work. You’d be given a top-down view of the city. You’d have to approach people (arrow keys) and sound them out on an opinion (a button) before attempting to record them (holding the b  button).  There would be two bars in the top corner of the screen. The first would be a “faith in humanity” bar which would act as your health, becoming lower if you talked with rude or really depressing people and recovering when you talked with someone friendly or found someone with something meaningful to say. The other bar would be a timer, counting down how long you had left in the level. Your job would be to find ‘good’ people to interview, and, as soon as you felt you had the required amount of material (varying in length from level to level) you’d have to decide whether or not to exit back to the studio. You’d score bonus points for finishing quickly, but be heavily penalised if you didn’t have enough stuff.

I also had some time with the website team – not only did I see how the content management system works across the BBC regional websites but I got to write and research an article which was put up on the front page. You can still find it here, if you’re interested.

Speaking of which, I got my copy of the Old Edwardian’s Gazette in the post today. I was very pleased with the result (not just because my articles were in it!); the Editor has turned the whole thing from a bulky purple monstrosity into something very sleek and very interesting – and it’s been a great experience helping him to do it.

Finally, if you’re still looking for a present for someone over the holiday season, this fellow gives an intelligent, in-depth overview of  board games, most of which you’ve probably never heard of.

And so this was born.

I’ve been pretty busy over the past few weeks with a couple big projects and a week of work experience over at BBC Hereford and Worcester. I’ll write up a post with all about it soon enough, and hopefully you should be seeing the fruits of my labour before long, too.

Their building is compact but really pretty, sporting an awesome cast iron Victorianesque spiral staircase. They also have the largest custom-made tea mugs that I have ever seen at a production house, which serves as a neat corrective to anyone who says that radio production is a soft option.

More importantly, though, the staff there were all extremely pleasant and let me undertake some pretty useful work while I was there. For most of the morning and the early afternoon I got to run through the audio and the script for “The Dirty Dozens” with Kevin Dawson, to see what sort of changes might need to be made before the links were recorded and the material was selected for the final edit. “The Dirty Dozens” is a documentary about the transmission of a verbal sparring game played by African slaves onto the schoolyard and into the modern rap battle. The material they’ve assembled is fascinating. Benjamin Zephaniah is narrating the piece, too, and whatever you might think about his politics, his voice is genuine, informed and appropriate. I’m sure it’ll be a cracker once it’s finished, so I heartily recommend that you listen to it when it airs on 30th December at 11:30 am on BBC Radio 4.

In the afternoon I was given a practice editing task, my first time using SADiE 5 (and its accompanying wheelbox thingy). I had to unpick about 11 minutes of continuous material for a segment of an old “Questions, Questions” dealing with Spring-Heeled Jack. It took a while getting used to wheel + mouse interface and the way cuts and effects worked (i.e completely differently), but knowing how to use both Audacity and Audition still helped a lot. I like the way SADiE lets you choose from about 60 different ways of fading it or out (using different geometrical curves) and displays the ‘new’ levels as a darker colour with an outline, but leaves a paler imprint of the original behind, so you can easily compare how different methods work visually as well as aurally. I also liked the ‘scrub’ feature. This turns your wheel into a miniature, highly sensitive, turntable which lets you find with pinpoint accuracy the start and end of certain words or sounds (or just have fun rewinding and slowing down people’s voices, whatever takes your fancy).

Anyway, with a little help and encouragement, by the end of the day I felt as though I’d got to grips with a lot of SADiE’s features (enough to assemble the small feature pretty competently, at least). Unfortunately, it makes my cheap USB mouse / Audacity set-up at home seem a little lacking by comparison.

On the plus side, I’ve been invited back for a full week at some point in the future! Huzzah.

We discuss – among other things – the origins and evolutions of the lute and Renaissance music, the difficulties of playing and making lutes in the past and the present and even the best contemporary instrument to use when forced into a tavern brawl.

I mentioned last week that I was going to do an interview with Miles Benjamin, up-and-coming player for the Worcester Warriors. And, here it is. I was conducting the interview on behalf of the Old Edwardians’ Gazette – a publication for former members of King Edward’s School which I do some editorial work for. Miles and I were both at KES, so a number of the earlier questions focus on his memories of the school.

Because of the circumstances of the interview, trying to find a nice, quiet, warm location to record in was quite a difficult task. Still, the coffee was good – and despite the background noise and my persistant goofiness, I ummed and aaahed a lot less in this one. The original mp3 was a bit over twenty minutes long – here, I brought it down to around fifteen.

My thanks again to Miles for letting me interview him – he is as pleasant in person as he is formidable on the field.

This is the piece that I did with the second group at the UK Youth Parliament – a short advertisement for their website promoting the “Good Behind the Hood” campaign.

The first ad is more of an ‘infomercial’ – starting with a campy staged drama at a bus stop and moving onto a more straight-laced message about the difficulties young people face using public transport. I took a step back when it came to artistic direction, although I did suggest the format that we ended up using and excercised my editorial judgement to veto the use of a surreal horn sound (extracted from a failed take) which originally interrupted the first part of the piece.  Apologies, guys.

P.S. After listening through this a couple of times, I’ve noticed some popping, espcially around transitions. Whilst this probably won’t be noticeable to anybody on air, I’m slightly confused as to how this fault crept in. I’m now wondering if it’s something to do with the computer I did the editing on (a studio computer) which has been known to pick up some background interference because of dodgy headphones / mixing decks plugged into the back of it. Hmm.

…for the time being.

But, fret not! The blog may update less frequently, but I do have some interesting things in the works. Today, I helped the UK Youth Parliament record two short adverts for their latest campaign, the Good Behind the Hood. I still have to put the takes together and do some window dressing, but they should be finished by the end of this week. Tomorrow, I’m headed into town for an interview with this fine fellow – and I’ll post an edited version of the interview up here if I have his blessing. I’ve also turned foley artist, as I’ve agreed to make and sync the SFX for an ambitious dubbing project (more on that later). Finally, the Flash card is working in the Youthcomm production room, so I’m now going to be able to “delight” you each week with the condensed highlights of my shows.

At least I’ll have plenty to be getting on with, eh?