I had plenty of ideas for my RWAV individual interview, but had a lot of trouble finding someone who was available and willing to come in and have a chat with me. I have a feeling that I might have set my sights too high, and attempted to get people who were too prominent/busy to waste their time with a student interviewer, but in the end I was happy that RMIT music industry lecturer Catherine Strong agreed to talk to me about music heritage in Melbourne and the soon-to-be-built Contemporary Music Hall of Fame.

Catherine was a wonderfully generous guest. My subject matter was quite broad, but she gave me 25 minutes of conversation that I was able to narrow down through editing into something focused and succinct. I was also happy that my subject matter would suit RRR if I decided to use it for a future on-air show.

I made sure to make use of Terry Gross’s rules for interviewing, and told Catherine that since our conversation was not being broadcast live she was welcome to stop herself and begin an answer again if needed. She ended up taking advantage of this a few times when she misspoke or couldn’t remember the specific example she was reaching for. As a result I had a great selection of well rehearsed (but still natural sounding) snippets of audio that I was able to string together and cut down into the 10 minute final form.

One thing I made note of for next time is that recording in the RMIT edit suites adds a lot of unwanted hum to the audio, because the suites aren’t perfectly soundproofed. I had to run a noise reduction on the final audio, which ended up being OK but ideally I would record crisp audio to begin with and avoid the need to fix it up at all.

Learnings:

• Be liberal when contacting potential interviewees, as very few will actually be available and willing to speak to you
• Take advantage of being at RMIT, which is full of experts who could be interviewed
• If possible, record interviews either at RRR or in the RMIT on-air studio, as a Zoom recorder in the edit suites results in sub-par audio
• Use Terry Gross’s ground rules to make your interviewee more comfortable
• Do as much research as possible before the interview, but try not to use written questions and instead have an informed conversation with your interviewee