Month: August 2015

Producer (Radio’s New Wave project two)

aishastevens on

Producer: The Observer of the Second Home.

For the producer piece, I have taken much inspiration from the Dear Birth Mother radio feature. This segment begins with the producer reading a letter that she intends to give to her future adopted child’s birth mother. An separate recording then proceeds to overlap the original recording of the letter being read; the second recording directly explained her intentions of the letter and the reasons why she wrote it. This was an inspiration for my producer focused piece. The formality of the reading directly from the letter, followed by the more natural conversation that the producer was having with the listener, was a very interesting contrast. I feel that it provides a more personal insight to the story-telling, as well as providing a more intimate portrayal of the experiences of the producer, as she trials herself through the tough procedures of adoption. I took inspiration from this, not only because it relates to a woman’s experience with children, but because it successfully brings an innermost and emotional portrayal of challenging experience.  My idea of ‘place’ in this piece is the environment that the participant creates. I consider the participant to be an integral part of the household, despite the fact that she does not actually live there. My piece includes segments of the interview recordings, with some parts being natural conversation between the participant and myself. This is to symbolise our friendship, which I feel adds to the general feeling of the home environment and place. The narration then follows, bringing personal insight to the interview, as well as the idea of the location of a home.

 

For this piece, I am happy with my stream of consciousness narrative. To get the same effect that I appreciated in the Dear Birth Mother radio feature, I decided that stream of consciousness would be the most effective. I also wanted to create the element of having a ’conversation’ with the listener, as I explained the ideas of place and location in relation to the interview. If I pre-planned or scripted the words, I feel that I would not be able to get the effect that I wanted to for this feature. I feel that this contrasts well with the full recordings of the interview process underlying the feature.

 

The stream of consciousness narration overlaps the formality of the interview, with segments of the interview containing natural conversations with the participant and myself. I am happy with this effect, and am also pleased that I have shown improvement in terms of editing techniques since the first project brief.

 

I still think that I need to improve on the range of sounds that I should use in the background of the piece. For my next project, I would like to focus on the technique of using sounds other than conversation, and rely on these other sounds to help create the story, and imagery; as well as empower the words of conversation that would be used in the interview process. I also feel that I need to become more creative in my thinking, and not be afraid of trying new sounds for these projects. I think it was my greatest flaw in this project; I had recorded a range of different sounds, but was afraid of using them due to my fears of the general sound quality, or whether I was confident enough to make the different sounds “seam” through the narration and the segments of the interview. I hope to improve this in the next project brief.


I had the aim of making this piece a companion and easily relatable to the participant focused interview and vice versa. This is why I included segments from the original interview and the music box at the end.

Participant (project 2)

aishastevens on
My participant is a young woman named Tayla. I met her several years ago when she started to look after my younger siblings, and we have been friends ever since. I decided to focus on her in this project brief, as I see her on the occasions that I am at my father’s house. Her days are chaotic, due to the demands of a five year old and two year old child that she looks after. I decided to capture a day in the life of her working life, as many people are under the impression that her form of working field is an easier working life, which is a major oversight, as this young woman incredible hours. The beginning of the participant may not include discussion for a significant amount of time in the piece, however, I have attempted to capture the peculiar demands of the job, and the repetitiveness that the job often entails. I consider this an insight to her everyday environment, which suits the brief of “24 hours on location”.
I feel that in this project brief, I have vastly improved. I am happier with my original recordings, as well as the content that I made in mind for the projecting briefing. However, I feel that I still have a lot to improve on in terms of the next project. There are some parts of the recording where I would have liked to improve on, such as the recording of the music box. I would also like to become more creative in the next project brief, and find sounds that vastly improve the story telling of the interview. Although I am happy with my interviewing skills, there were some moments where I took the microphone off the participant too quickly to ask a question, and verbally responded to the participant, instead of only nodding and smiling. I aim to improve this in the next project brief. The sounds of the music box are there to represent the repetitiveness of the field of work. To bring context of the music box, it was a favourite of one of the children at the time of the interview, and I thought that it represented the, at times, dullness of the environment. However, if I were to do this again, I would use a range of different and repetitive sounds to create this effect.
A major inspiration for this subject brief related to Sibohán McHugh’s piece, ‘Marrying Out.’ The way that she presented her information, interviews and research to an audience about the discrimination of Catholics and Protestants, along with the controversies when those of different Christian religions married, was inspiring. She created drama and insight though different forms of sound, from whispering to content from her interviews of those who experienced this discrimination in the mid 20th century.
Overall, although I am happy with my improvements, I feel that I still have a lot to improve on. But I do believe that I have achieved my goals in the weeks since the previous project brief.