Radio Feature/Documetary Making Review

This article together with TV documentary making review are my learning report, which I learnt from the scratch.

Second semester’s radio learning leave us more spaces to create, we are producing much longer piece than first semester’s broadcasting news, I really enjoy making feature and documentaries, as well listening various radio programmes gives me the broader perspective of how to make a wealth story.

I normally keep listening radio 4’s programmes, from feature programme such as women’s hour to current affairs. Very recently, a handful of big events are happening around the globe, such as 10p income tax abolition; Zimbabwe’s presidential election debate; China’s ship was refused to upload in South Africa, which is supposed to send to Zimbabwe, and seems other African leaders are also very unsatisfied to see these weapons been used by Mugabe to attack its people. Olympic torch relay crisis related with just yesterday’s news that China is willing to open the official talk with Dalai Lama; last week Gordon Brown visited US and call for new cooperation between EU and US; US is suspecting North Korean which assists Syria to build up nuclear reactor, London mayoral election etc.

All of these news are repeatedly broadcasted in various current affairs programmes on BBC Radio 4, besides every hour’s news headlines, Robin Lustig’s World Tonight, Eddie’s PM, weekdays the News at One. Comparing with these three programmes, I found Eddie’s PM using more treatment than World Tonight, for instance, the same reporting on the news story 10p income tax abolition, PM reporting from the experts panel debates (three experts plus the presentor) to the real people’s voice, such as the representative of pensioners who are under 65 and the young people without children, seems PM utilise more feature traits, and have more analysis, whereas from Robin’s World Tonight, the programme is more limited within the individual expert interviewee to explain what is going on from the same story.

As well, I found PM is more focus on domestic news story rather than from the globe, whereas World Tonight is reporting from London Mayoral Election to UN urges US to end its trade embargo on Cuba, from Kenya’s new coalition government formed by the newly joint Prime Minister Raila Odinga to Gaza food aid crisis which caused by no fuel distribution, seems World Tonight is more focus on global issues.

Other programmes related with culture, religion, ethics, arts, drama are fascinating as well, last Tuesday I listened a religion programme “Could I Stop Being a Muslim”? The programme’s characters are so powerful that the producer found very typical Muslim family, how they treat their so-called apostate children, who are questioning could I stop being a Muslim? And the main campaign figure Shiraz Maher asks whether the death penalty (those people who dare to leave Islam behind will be executed death penalty) is really justified to punish these people?

The programme totally lasts 40 minutes, including a wide range of experts, Muslim families, dramatizing elements (typing keyboard sound), actuality, etc. the programme at some time, even fade out the expert’s voice at a very low level (fade out first then stop, keep the sound very low as the background) and put presentor’s vocice-over above it, just create an atmosphere that this is the expert’s opinion. I think this is very good because there must be a necessity to re-scripting the expert’s answer, either too long or difficult to edit, and replace by voice over should be a better way to avoid these problems, and better delivering the meaning.

Other programmes such as women’s hours are more relaxed, very feature character driven, however, if want to learn more about society, want to learn more about what happened in the world. Current affairs and religion and ethics programmes will help more.

During radio feature/documentary making, I learnt most is from my partners, we did two feature making, I learnt some technique skills from Kheira, such as recording sound using Cool Editing etc. I found myself benefit mostly from working with Kheira and Daria is their western mentality to make radio programme, more specifically is how to connect these ideas and how to script.

Their language tend to be very flourishing and the approach of connecting ideas are so flexible and various, could say the first feature I did with Kheira on children’s reading habits is an eye-opener for me, I like the way she suggested to script, though maybe still a lot of things need to be improved, it is natural and readable, just like the interesting conversation between people, I think to be natural is very important, and good connection between different ideas are essential for script writing.

For the final radio documentary making, I realised afterwards that maybe some sentences of the script I wrote is a little bit repeating what the interviewee is saying. Maybe this is a problem. I try to keep the script living and vivid, and try to connect the ideas in a flow, be natural and easily understandable.
For both TV/Radio programme making, we all need to bear in mind that what kind of audience the programme is to be broadcasted, otherwise the content might go into improper track.