In order to truly reflect on my experience in the Room With A View course and as a presenter on 3RRR’s Room With A View program, I thought I would break my experience up into three different ‘compartments’, if you will. ‘Learnings’, ‘Wins’ and ‘Never-Agains’.
Learnings:
- Liveness isn’t as scary as you think.
I found that when you’re all cooped up in the cozy studio, miss and headphones on, you forget that there are a sea of listeners tuning into your conversation. When you become comfortable and realise this, the flow of conversation becomes really natural and personal, therefore coming across a lot more professionally and easy to listen to from the listener’s point of view. - Liveness is exhilarating.
There’s nothing quite like that buzz before, during and just after you go live! I thoroughly enjoyed the entire experience – there’s really nothing like going live! - Always have back up interviewees!
Having the 3RRR name providing validity in reaching out to potential interviewees definitely helped, but I most definitely learned how important it is to have back up interviewees – you never know if someone will back out at the last minute, or maybe their train doesn’t come or they just don’t show. As there is no monetary or contractual promise behind anything, it really does come down to a lot of trust and hopeful reliability. For our RWAV show we were lucky in that our interviewees responded to us positively and all got involved, but when it came down to scouting interviews for our feature, this definitely became more difficult. As people are less familiar with feature formats, potential interviewees were more hesitant to dedicate their time to us. We didn’t hear back from a few of the people we intended to interview, and some of the ones that we did were located quite far out, do to the nature of the topic. This subsequently resulted in us conducting phone interviews. - Remember that not everyone is a media practitioner. People are familiar with features for TV, but not for audio. “It’s.. um.. like a podcast?”
As I just mentioned, people external to the media environment are generally not familiar with the radio feature/documentary format, resulting in a bit of resistance prior to getting involved. I found that being accomodating to this really helps – at the end of the day they are doing us a favour.
Wins:
- The show went smoothly!
I’m really happy with how our live to air Room With A View show went – there were no major fumbles whatsoever, and it ran really professionally and perfect to time. It proved that preparation is key, and with the use of our run sheet and some pre-prepared questions, success was made possible. We are only amateurs and there’s always room for improvement and extended technique, but as a whole, I think we did a great job. - Our interviewees KNEW their topics.
At the start of the semester, Sam and Bruce stressed to us that we ensure we find people who have authority and validated knowledge in their field – not your poet/comedian of a cousin. My group kept this notion at the core in producing both our RWAV show and feature, and it really showed in the outcome. Our interviewees across both projects were able to provide us with an extended amount of content and industry insight. - I now know the workings of a radio station and would feel comfortable popping back into the studio and presenting a show.
I’ve done it before, and I could definitely do it again! I feel very comfortable in the studio going live to air a really valuable skill I’ve been able to pick up in this course. - I had real-life, reputable industry experience.
I can say I’ve broadcasted live on 3RRR and that’s pretty darn cool!
Never-Agains
- Get struck by lightning.
I’m hoping this was a once-off, and I’m pretty sure the team at 3RRR are too. Having Gold FM broadcasting on 3RRR amongst static is definitely not an ideal situation. - Leave things to the last minute.
As I mentioned earlier, preparation is key. I can’t say I’ll never leave things to the last minute again, but I’ve definitely gained a value for preparation. - Rely on computers/random CDs.
In recording our demo, we went ahead and just used random CDs to bulk out the program. Being unfamiliar with the disks and their tracks made it harder to keep on top of what was going on – you’d be surprised at how many songs have dips and moments of silence, and can fool you into thinking they’re finished instead of leading up to a crescendo. The same idea came into play in our demo when playing prerecorded content off a usb and the internet. In going live, you really can’t trust the speed of your computer or internet, as you just never know when something could stall or quit.
Ultimately, participating in the course was a completely positive experience (albeit moment or two of stress), and I genuinely feel as though I’ve gained active experience in the field. I look forward to hearing my classmates on air, and potentially revisiting my role as a presenter on Room With a View in the near future.
