Quite a lot of the information you will need for recording factual programmes for radio has been covered in other chapters. If you haven’t read the chapter on interview techniques you will need to do so. You will also need to read the chapter on the technical aspects of recording sound and the chapter on story structure. This chapter will run through some of the different types of factual programme you get in radio and the different approaches they take.
Radio differs from television in that you have a direct line into the mind of the listener. It is an intimate and personal medium; it tends to be something people listen to by themselves rather than the more collective way they watch television or films. With a radio programme you are much closer to your listener and the listener will have a much stronger bond with a radio station. Audiences will endlessly flick through dozens of television channels looking for the content they want; they are often barely aware of what channel they are watching but with radio the loyalty can be as much to the station as to the programme. Even in this age of digital radio and hundreds of channels, listeners still tend to listen to a station as much as they listen to a particular programme. This puts radio producers in a relationship with their listeners that few television producers can ever approach.
The second important thing to remember is that a radio listener is a more active audience than the television viewer. The listener wants to create an image in their mind as they listen. It’s your job as the radio producer to help them create this image. You do this by your imaginative use of all types of sound. It could be the words people are using, it could be the actuality sound, and it could be music. However, you must always be thinking about how to combine sounds together to help the listener create a mental image. Once they can ‘see’ your programme in their head, they will engage with you and your piece. Unlike the TV viewer, the listener contributes to the programme by creating these mental images, and your job is to stimulate them.
The enormous advantage of radio is its flexibility. It is fast, cheap and can get to places that television can’t. When you are dealing with sensitive subjects contributors often feel more comfortable with radio, not least because they can preserve some measure of anonymity but also because there is less equipment to feel anxious about.
There are many different types of factual programmes on radio; here are some of the most common:
The last two definitions in particular are fairly loose, and many programmes will combine a number of elements in them: not every programme sits happily in any one particular category. However, the above list does cover the main styles of factual radio programmes.
If you log onto the website you will find some links through to different kinds of factual radio.
This chapter will assume that if you have chosen to make a factual piece, you are likely to be making one of the following:
Radio tends to use fewer people than television and much of the time all the tasks can be allocated to one person. However, it’s worth thinking about the different tasks that do exist, even if you end up doing all of them. There are of course many different tasks in radio; the ones I’ve listed below are those that are likely to be most relevant to your project.
Previous chapters talked about how to structure a factual piece. As a reminder there are three main points around which you build your narrative:
You will also have researched your contributors and locations and know what you are trying to achieve. When you actually get to the point of recording, there are a number of elements you need to think about.
Whatever type of programme you are making, you are trying to create an image in the mind of the listener. The degree to which you will do this will depend on the type of programme you are making. If it is a news piece you will only want to use the sound you have around you; at the other end of the scale a radio feature might use location sound but combine it with lots of other elements – they might even treat the sound somehow. However, creating a sound image is just as important as the interviews or script. If you ignore this element you will end up with something dry and bland which your listener will find difficult to connect with.
You will now have to start to think about who is going to tell the story. If you are thinking of this as an item in a magazine programme you will need a studio presenter to introduce the piece. You will also need a presenter/reporter to voice the actual package itself. You may or may not also decide to make their questions audible.
Most documentaries have some sort of presenter. On radio these tend to be presenters with an interest in the subject and the documentary has an authored feel to it. Radio doesn’t tend to use the kind of anonymous narrator you sometimes get in television documentaries. Features may have a presenter or there are some types of feature which don’t use a presenter at all. This is quite hard to achieve, and storytelling without a narrator is much more difficult, but it can end up as a very creative way to make radio.
By this stage you should have done your preparation and have already:
You are now ready to collect your material. In radio it’s all about building a picture with the sound. If you haven’t done so you should read the chapters on interview techniques and on recording location sound. However, for radio there are some more particular considerations.
Where you do the interview will be significant; you will need to balance the need to get clear sound with the need to build up a sound picture. Let’s say, for example, that you are doing a piece on migrant labour in the catering industry. You are doing a subjective piece following the different experiences of three young people coming to the UK in the hope of pursuing a career. They find themselves working in low-paid and difficult conditions. Your piece is looking at the contrast between their expectations and the reality of life in Britain. You have found your three contributors and are happy that they have a good story to tell. You have also decided to interview people from pressure groups, which support people in this position.
Where are you going to do the interviews?
There are two other options you can think about.
There is no right or wrong answer to this: you will have to make the judgement as to what will work best for your piece.
Radio is a very intimate medium. It also involves a lot less kit and is much less intimidating. You should therefore be able to get your interviewee relaxed enough to be able to talk quite freely. If you are dealing with a sensitive issue or you are hoping that your interviewee will talk in a personal way then you should allow enough time for them to feel relaxed and build up a rapport with you. Remember to keep eye contact with your interviewee so that they know you are interested in what you are saying. You can nod and smile, but remember not to talk or make any other sound while they are talking as you won’t be able to edit it.
In radio particularly, you will want the interviews to be as evocative as possible. Remember: it’s much more interesting for the listener to hear something which is drawn from the interviewee’s personal experience, some sort of story or anecdote rather than bland comments. Remember your follow-up questions: You mentioned. . ., Can you give me an example of that? will often help the interviewee to come up with an anecdote.
It cannot be emphasised enough how important actuality sound is going to be for you to make a creative and imaginative radio package or documentary. It is every bit as important as your interviews and you need to think about it. Getting good actuality sound is the way you are going to create a picture in the listener’s imagination.
As discussed earlier, you may be recording your interview at a location where there is already a lot of sound; even if you have done this already, you should record the sounds around you as a separate track as well. This will give you more to play with when you mix the two together.
Once you have done the interviews you should think about the actuality sound again. Was there anything in the interview which you feel might be complemented by some kind of actuality? For example, in your piece on people working in catering, it may be that you have recorded the sound of the kitchen at work, but in the interview the contributor talked a lot about the customers or her journey to work. You may want to think about doing some extra recordings when you know what they have said. The more personal your piece, the more important this is going to be.
Acquired material is something you have not written or recorded yourself. It might be a song, poem or a piece of archive. If you are looking to make a short feature rather than a documentary style of programme you may want to involve other elements. However, mixing factual interviews with other material can be one of the trickiest things to get right. If it’s not done correctly it can sound very clumsy. The key thing to remember is that the audience needs to be convinced that there is a good reason for using the material and that you have not just thrown it in. The material needs to help move the story along, not just interrupt it. If the material flows naturally out of interviews or commentary, or leads the listener into the next section then it’s helpful; if it only tangentially relates to the main flow then it is likely that the audience will start to become confused about what it is doing there and will start to switch off. You need to be consistent about how you are using the material; the audience needs to understand from the outset what type of programme they are listening to and what types of elements they are likely to hear. If you have a piece which is largely a straightforward documentary but just has a poem plonked somewhere in the middle, it will sound very odd. The listener is not expecting a poem in that style of programme and will become confused. If you are combining different elements, try to introduce them early on in the piece and use them a number of times rather than just the once.
Writing for the ear is different to writing for the page. You may have a very beautiful written style but, if so, you are likely to have to unlearn some of your techniques in order to write a successful radio script.
Why is it different? When you read something off the page or indeed off a computer screen, you are in charge of how quickly you absorb the information. You may choose to skim something or you may choose to read slowly. Sometimes we do both, skipping the bits that are less interesting and then reading some sections carefully. If there is a word or phrase you are puzzled about, you might pause to give it a little more thought; this is often done quite fleetingly without even being aware of it. However, the choice of how quickly you take in all the information in is entirely yours.
This is not the case with the spoken word. If someone is talking to you then you have much less control over how you receive the information, the speaker is the one who is deciding. When we speak to someone face to face there are a lot visual clues to help: hand gestures, expressions, etc. Indeed, it’s often said that when you are speaking to someone only 7 per cent of the information they receive is from the words; the rest is from body language, tone and expression. The speaker is also getting information from the listener. The listener’s body language and expression can signal that they are puzzled or have missed the point.
When you are listening to the radio two things have happened. As the listener you no longer have the ability to control the speed at which you receive the words and you have none of the visual clues you would get if you were speaking to someone face to face. You are therefore left with words, tone and intonation. In radio you have to make up for this and adopt a style of writing which will help the listener cope.
The most important thing to have in your mind is that you should write a script as if you were talking to one person. You are not writing a speech to be performed for a large audience and you are not writing a lengthy essay. You should try and get as close to a conversational style as possible.
If you start to listen to the way people speak, most of the time they don’t observe the rules of punctuation that you get in written language. Sometimes after you have done an interview you may want to transcribe (write out) what the interviewee has said. This is quite a time-consuming activity, but you might want to try it just once and it will become obvious very quickly how the spoken word differs from the written word. It’s almost impossible to know where to put the commas and full stops, let alone any kind of semicolon or other punctuation. This is because the spoken word relies on lots of other methods to convey meaning. When you come to write a script you can’t lose all the punctuation and sentence structure; you will end up with a rambling mess, but you should simplify it as much as possible. If your script starts to have a more conversational style it will be much easier for you to inject the other two important elements of tone and intonation.
Say these two sentences out loud but put the emphasis on the words in bold:
The first sentence implies that you are desperate for a piece of cake. The second implies that of all the things on offer it was the cake you wanted. The difference is subtle but important to a listener to help follow the sense of a piece.
This chapter cannot teach you to write; however, if you follow some of these tips your writing style will automatically become more conversational.
‘Alan, the garage mechanic, works on over 50 cars a week; as a result he has a very good knowledge of different engines.’
‘Alan is a garage mechanic. He works on over 50 cars every week. He has an amazing knowledge of any type of engine.’
The door was opened by a young girl. Passive.
A young girl opened the door. Active.
Of course good writing is about getting the tone and style right. This will depend on a number of factors:
This is the piece of script that comes at the top of the programme. It has to do several jobs: it has to hook the listener and help them to understand why they want to continue listening. It will set the tone and mood of the piece. If the introduction is bright and quirky then the rest of the piece will have to follow on along those lines. If the intro is sombre, then this will be the tone for the whole package. It is generally the longest piece of script.
Here’s an example:
Good morning and we’ve got a good news story for you as we head off to Stafford to see the graffiti artist who’s giving Banksy a lesson or two. We’ve got some old news; we’ll be catching up with a Hollyoaks star, as she tells us how she’s getting on a year after her dramatic exit from the programme. And we’ve got some bad news; we’ll be talking to 90s boy band, Ace, about why the tour dates have been put back yet again. That’s all coming up here on Essential Radio.
The cue into a magazine item or a news item is a bit like a headline: you need to grab the audience’s attention. It is similar to an introduction but it generally introduces a specific item or person. It shouldn’t be more than three or four sentences long. You can start with the reason why the listener might be interested in the subject matter and then introduce the piece. The last sentence should relate directly to the next thing the listener is going to hear. It should relate specifically to the top of the item. Imagine, for example, that you are doing an item on the teenagers imprisoned after the riots of 2011; the following could act as an intro, with a cue into the first report.
The summer of 2011 saw some of the worst riots in Britain for over 20 years. Across the country shops were looted and cars set on fire. The government was swift to punish offenders and over 300 young people under 18 were given prison sentences ranging from four weeks to 18 months. The sentencing was some of the harshest on record. The government said it wanted to send out a signal but what was the effect on the young people caught up in the government’s policy of zero tolerance? Were they criminals who got what they deserved or foolish teenagers in the wrong place? Emily Lawson has been to Whitney Young Offenders Institute for girls to talk to some of the youngsters imprisoned after the riots.
FX: Kitchen acoustic, sounds of pots and pans, people working in the kitchen.
EMILY: In the kitchens here at Whitney Young Offenders Institute, 16-year-old Lauren is peeling potatoes....
Depending on the type of piece you are making, the links can be done by a presenter as part of a package or, if the piece may have studio links, read afterwards. Links, like cues, generally have a structure. A link has three main elements. It should get the listener out of the last bit of interview, move the story forward, and introduce the next bit of interview. Thus, for example, let’s go back to the story about young offenders imprisoned after the riots. Imagine that the listener has just heard from a young offender, Lauren, recently released, who has been describing her experiences of being in a young offenders’ institute and her shock at being given a ten-month sentence for a very minor offence. She tells us that she has lost all self-confidence and feels worthless. Your next contributor is a campaigner from a group wanting prison reform. He will say that this kind of harsh sentencing is detrimental not just to the offender but to our notions of justice. Here is an example of how you might link the two interviews:
Lauren’s loss of self-worth is one of the most common psychological effects of prison on young women. Her experiences are typical. But for some teenagers this feeling of self-loathing can develop into something more extreme. Peter Morgan runs the charity Worth, which helps teenagers behind bars. He has made a study of the psychological effects of prison on young women in particular.
Peter: Well, this kind of loss of self-image can go one of two ways. . . .
In this example, the first part of the link picks up from the last piece of interview. This allows the listeners a bit of breathing space to catch up and consolidate what they have heard. It also helps the piece feel as if it has a natural flow. The second part introduces a new thought, in this case that loss of self-worth can lead to extreme behaviours. The last part of the link introduces the next speaker and why he is here. Again the last thing the listener hears from the link should lead directly into the next contributor.
This is the sign-off, the last piece of commentary before the end of the piece. How you write this will depend rather on what type of piece you have been doing. If the piece has had a discussion you may want to recap. It may be that you will want to leave the listener with a question. Some pieces don’t need an outro; quite often radio features don’t use them. If you have a strong interview section that might serve as your outro. The main point is that the listener should get a signal that the piece is coming to an end and feel a sense of closure. Pieces which end abruptly when the listener isn’t prepared tend to jar and confuse them. They may end up with a slightly dissatisfied feeling about the whole piece, not just the ending.
Making factual programmes for radio can be hugely rewarding. It’s technically much more flexible than television and involves a lot less cumbersome equipment. People can feel less intimidated by talking to a microphone rather than have the cameras looking at them. However, this is not to say that creatively making factual radio is easy. Getting a good piece for the ear is hugely challenging. You have the same structural issues and you need to have a very good written style. Your interview techniques need to be good as you have no pictures to help with any deficiencies in your speakers. You also need to have a good imagination in how you can use sound to tell your story. On the other hand, if well done, factual radio can be immensely powerful.