My role in the production of this piece was the structuring of the piece and the editing of the audio together.
Due to Caitlin having a personal connection to the family, we felt this was best to keep the recorded audio to feel natural and like a regular conversation instead of a formal interview piece.

From suggestions taken from Macadam’s “The journey from print to radio storytelling: A guide for navigating a new landscape” I attempted to “Narrow your story’s focus” and edit out anything that wasn’t relevant to the story we wanted to tell. I then grouped pieces of the audio together if they had a similar discussion theme.

The narrative is structured to take us through the business’ journey chronologically without sounding like an advertisement.
With both Jess and her mum having friendly voices and talking naturally like they were talking to a friend, we wanted to keep the story sounding light as the product itself, slime, is typically a toy designed for fun or to reduce stress.
We also utilised the concept of “Active Sound” taken from Macadam’s “Active sound: How to find it, record it and use it” and chose to record some sounds made from real slime and implement that within the piece.

I think the fact that both Jess and her mum went through the same experience but from different sides of the business really helped us to intertwine their audio grabs and tell the exact same story from differing views.
I feel that this kept the piece interesting as you were still only focusing on the one narrative, but were able to keep your interest with different voices and opinions.

From the overall production process, I have learned that better communication with team members will make the process much easier. Due to minimal easy communication, many decisions were made individually that may not have been run by other team members. This may have been done due to either not attempting to communicate with the team or due to not being able to communicate with the team in a timely fashion.

From the feedback received, a big thing that needed to be changed was the pacing of Jess’ dialogue. As she talks quite fast and with high energy, we have added some space between segments as well as changing between Jess and her mum if discussing the same topic when possible to keep the piece sounding interesting and refreshing.
Also, the introduction of a quick explanation to ensure that listeners understand what slime is to ensure they know what Jess’ business sold. This was done in a similar way discussed in Macadam’s “Writing through sound: A toolbox for getting into and out of your tape” when talking about “Getting into your tape” by offering a tease and then a backID.

I think to improve the standard of the work, there needs to be a focus on communication and being prepared in advance.
Much of the piece was discussed well in advance, however, due to the lack of communication, there was not much progress made on the piece unless directly discussed. However, as we were also putting much of our focus on our radio show, this may have also been why much of the progress was left to the last minute.