Live show reflection
We improved from our demo by speaking less during periods between songs and interviews. We considered the reading Australian broadcast journalism: ‘Live radio’ by Phillips, Lindgren and Bishops and recognised that magazine shows are far less interactive than the stereotypical morning show. I am glad our group spoke a lot during our demo because it helped build rapport among our team but agree it didn’t suit a morning show. I did the panel for the show so I made sure to put all audio we used in one playlist which helped to streamline my job and make the show run smoother. There were long audio gaps in our demo because I was flicking between Spotify, Apple Music and websites. For our real show I knew what I needed to do to fix this.
I think our team collaborated well. We were able to build rapport and support each other. I was very sick throughout this semester and my group didn’t make me feel guilty for missing classes and not being as involved as I planned. We all tried to be kind to one another and as such we were able to make a successful radio show. A major production challenge for me was making sure I did my fair share of the work because of how unwell I was. My team overcame this by communicating with me and readjusting our plans for our show. I was disappointed I couldn’t conduct an interview because I had no other speaking roles but was relieved to be in a group who were committed to the class and to making a good show. I enjoyed listening to my teammates interviews and genuinely found them interesting.
Our show turned out great. We had a couple of false starts but once we were warmed up and fully comfortable in the studio it went off without a hitch. I am proud of what we were able to achieve and how we were able to collaborate to make a cohesive show. My team did well at ‘broadcast talk’ referenced in Key concepts in radio studies because they were talking to each other and me, although I could not respond. I think this sounded professional and great to listen to.
I hope our work engaged our audience by sharing perspectives not often heard on radio. Racist reporting still rife in Australian media by Christina Ho made me value Daniel’s contribution to the show even more because his voice is not one often heard on radio. His interview with Clarissa about being an international student during covid is not one many people hear−including university students. We spoke a lot about life in Australia and Indonesia in our demo, off-air, during class and I found it fascinating, so having the opportunity to share more of this on radio felt special. Amy’s interview with Thomas from the Youth Affairs Council also felt important in the lead up to the federal election. His interest in helping young people was genuine and valuable to anyone who thinks young people are apathetic about their lives.
Radio feature reflection
My role in the production was mainly to craft the story. After the first edit or rough cut, I went through and edited for narrative consistency, cutting what I felt didn’t fit perfectly with the story we were trying to tell. I also removed the popping plosives. I think our team collaborated quite well. Shaun was really the leader of the feature because he has a personal relationship with Chris and Laura. He was at the heart of our story. We all tried to support his initial vision for the feature because we recognised how interesting the story could be.
We wanted to paint a picture of who Loveboner are. We tried to enter their world as a band and a couple, and reveal how they have grown to understand themselves and each other better through their music. We wanted the aesthetic of our piece to have lots of interesting audio grabs while crafting a consistent narrative that feels personal. This was a difficult balance to strike. We also wanted to feature lots of their tracks to illustrate the short audio grabs.
Because of Shaun’s close relationship with the band, we were able to craft an authentic and emotional feature. He was very conscious of their boundaries and didn’t want to exploit his friends during the interview process. Shaun let Chris and Laura tell their own stories and did not tell them what to say, as suggested in Ethical guidelines for editing audio and because of this was able to do a great interview.
We made a European-style feature as mentioned in Radio is dead: long live radio documentaries because we flitted between interviews with Chris and Laura and songs that backed up their points. We were able to experiment more than we could on our radio show and produce a creative nonfiction piece. We all had our own ideas of exactly how to tell the story and I think, through our edits, we made something great because we didn’t just create the first idea we thought of, which was a piece that was more focused on the Melbourne punk scene. This was an example of us using ideas from Robert Smith on the art of radio packages. During our pitch and once we recorded the interview we realised our feature was really the love story of Chris and Laura, with Loveboner as the backdrop.
After receiving feedback on our rough cut we cut down our feature to make sure we were within our time limit and had a consistent narrative. We removed popping plosives and adjusted audio levels.
I would like to touch more on Chris and Laura’s experiences in the Melbourne punk scene more. We had to cut this because of time but I would have loved to include more of their experiences as a band. I would have also liked to learn more about Laura and her queer identity. The story focused mostly on Chris’ gender identity and sexuality because they have gone through a more obvious transformation. Diving into Laura’s experience with gender and sexuality would have been interesting because it would further explore the dynamic in their relationship.
Our OneDrive folder:
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