We have now spent a considerable time pondering different aspects of documentary and feature production. Disproportionately lot really when you consider how few and far in between they are in many radios, you might think. And maybe you’d be right. Maybe.

I was reading a radio production book aimed at students much like what I have had in mind when I’ve been writing this. That book said – and its author was a very respectable academic with strong media industry qualifications – that documentaries are a bit like features, which had been explored to some extent earlier, but that they are basically so rare in radio that they were hardly worth getting into.

So what kicks do I get  from wasting your time talking about a dead craft?

I always tell my students that studying radio is really about two different things: what radio is in the real world industry and how it is produced, which I believe include where it comes from, but also, where it might be going. What is its potential?  Is it fundamental characteristics of radio that nearly everything but popular music and bad jokes are out of bounds? Is radio living up to its true potential?

Needless to say that since nothing is perfect, everything can be improved. Being a student, especially in a university, you may end up, I hope, working in a position where you can contribute to the positive change. Whatever you conceive the positive to be. I have said it before but it’s worth repeating; I am not judging music, or any other kind of radio here. I really like music radio especially when it is done well, and I have certainly worked a lot for stations like that. So when I say positive change, I don’t mean change the whole style of the station, even if you were in a position to do so; just improve it.

It’s of course also noteworthy that I have called these kind of documentaries and features by the name of content based audio. Not radio, but audio, because since the internet connections have become common and fast enough, the online environment is as good place as any for what was previously considered to be exclusively radio content. And when online, but also on-air, we can also reconsider the political economy of this kind of content. In other words who will pay you for doing these, will determine why you might find yourself producing them.

Let’s start from the traditional radio. Over the air FM, AM, Digital and so on.

I guess there can be many reasons why you don’t get that much pre-packaged content on popular radio. The stations may be understaffed and employees under constant deadlines, they may have realised that you can do without these by just playing music; they are not the most cost-effective way to fill the hour clock,  or maybe no one just came up with good enough way of using these methods for something suitable. We think of longish and arguably boring pieces about politics or so, but who says that they couldn’t be short few minute things about pop singers, festivals or films. And maybe it is exactly the occasional film reviews that might be one of the surviving ways of utilising the skills we’ve been talking about on many stations. Of course, there’s also many talk radios that use features as they are and even documentaries as part of their standard broadcast. Sometimes they sound great, but more often, you feel that a little bit more money invested could’ve afforded enough time and effort to have made it great. I’d venture a guess – some would say an educated guess, but who knows – that it’s exactly that money and resources that the lack of such content can be attributed to. Rather than, say, they are inherently useless.

I’ve always felt that advertising industry could use the methods of documentary making into their advantage much more than what they do. The adverts are a different craft where an idea or a feel or some information is crammed into thirty seconds in order to convince people to pay money to someone. But there are places in radio where even a little longer bit of audio could actually communicate a lot more. The only problem with on-air radio would become the price of this – it would exclude most businesses instantly.

In an online environment, I am much more comfortable saying that why wouldn’t you use pre-packaged audio as a part of your promotion? I say that because the online environment is much more inclusive to businesses, organisations and individuals of any calibre.

You can be a poet or brick layer, a hair dresser or a troubadour, a gangsta rapper or philosopher, a politician or photographer. And you don’t have to be just a person who represents his or her own self, but you can also do this for a shop, record label, club, sports team or a university. Take control of your communication online. You can use these techniques for making engaging audio newsletters for organisations, actually interesting yearly reviews for businesses in an audio format or just build hype around a forthcoming Rap album.

Podcasting, which always is pre-recorded, for instance can be used to keep people up to date with what anyone or any organisation is doing.

And why wouldn’t an NGO want to have a documentary made out of the work they do, interviewing people from the communities they help, employees and volunteers or other relevant people with some lovely colourful audio to support the all around feel of their work? I think it’d sound exactly the kind of thing that their funders, internationally or locally would love to receive and feel that their money is going to a worthy cause. Maybe the documentary could even convince a few new funders to part with their money for the cause. And the reason why audio can be nice to use for this kind of thing is also that it’s a lot cheaper to do a professional quality audio content than its equivalent in video.

In the Internet your small or big features and documentaries have a whole different function and political economy; in all probability you are not trying to sell them, but avail them for free while trying to sell, or communicate something else. Thinking purely financially, then, there might just be a way for you to find some income from all this. Because you are the one who knows how to do these things unlike all those politicians, musicians and other potential users of such content in the Internet.

The additional thing that is enabled by the Internet technologies is for you to access international radio stations. You might be doing documentaries in South Africa, but no South African broadcaster would show any interest in them. Then you can Google the international broadcasters from any country that could have someone suitable broadcasting in a language you’ve made your piece in and you could try to approach them. They will probably even pay better, or at least there’s a chance for it, if they want to buy some content from you. All of the sudden this broadens your potential market into nearly a global one. This way you might be able to even as a freelancer to keep yourself busy and the bills paid. With a bit of luck, but mainly good products, punctuality and firm but polite manners you can be able to build relationships overseas that can be incredibly useful on your career, and trading can become ongoing.

There are ways of using these skills creatively. Creativity exactly is the key word when it comes to figuring out some new ideas that can change things. It is not, however something that everyone needs to do. There’s still some need for this material in the traditional radio as well. And knowing how to do this; being able to visualise the production process and understanding the practices, will only help you in nearly everything that you do in media. There is a lot involved here; being able to identify the relevant information and being able to critically engage with it, thinking about angles and putting things together so that it makes sense. Most of all, I hope this teaches you to not be afraid to work hard in order to be able to get better end results. You can get a nice interview arranged with a bit of fluke, but other than that it doesn’t happen without some dedication and effort.

The media industry is not much fun when you approach it as an outsider. At the very least, it can be incredibly tough to penetrate it in any other way but to get a job instead of becoming a service provider or an independent content producer. I am sure it can be done; all I am saying is that it can be tough. It certainly has had its ups and downs with me. But regardless of the assumed excellence and insightfulness of your production, you now need to place it somewhere. Unless, you had had an arrangement before getting to this point, or, like said, you’re nine to fiving for a station or a production company.

Unless your idea of placing your work is on CD on your bookshelves or as a file in a forgotten folder in the depths of you computer, there’s a need for some decisive action.

Now having a final product, I am sure you’ve thought hard that where would its style work, or alternatively produced it in a style that fits into the flow of your targeted station. It’s important to familiarise yourself with stations where things like these can find themselves in, and work with the knowledge gathered from that exercise. What topics get commissioned and in what kind of style? Is it more hard journalistic expo’s, human interest stories with a strong emotional aspect or reflective journey-like content? Every single bit of information you can find out may be very useful when you approach the station.

If you haven’t had an arrangement to have your piece placed anywhere, it might be a good idea to email the person who is in charge; programme controller or some such (don’t mistake the vague sound of that with it not mattering; it might just depend on the station’s organisational structure who is that right person – but you need to find it out), and demonstrate to them why your feature or documentary would specifically work on their station. It’s generally better to email than to call as many people can find phone calls from people they don’t know a bit irritating, but once you have created a contact, if there’s a delay with their response, you can call to remind. I do advise you to remember that sometimes it is a thin line between  reminding and pestering, and many of the people you must get through to have many meetings so don’t try to prolong the conversations if they sound hurried. That’s not to say that you couldn’t say what you called to say.

Another very practical reason why it is better to email is that then there’s a digital paper trail, and whatever arrangement you end up with, the information can be traced back, which erases many potential misunderstandings and also the occasional people who don’t agree with fair play.

There are of course other reasons why you may have produced your material, than to just get it sold once and then move on to the next one to do exactly the same thing. Maybe you did it as a showcase that you hope will get you hired. It’s not a bad plan either, especially if you are a student.

And as a student you can’t expect to automatically be able to sell everything that you do. Strictly legally speaking actually, you might not even have a right to if it’s part of your studies, but I am getting into the copyright matters in a moment.

I always recommend students to blog. You have your Facebook and Twitter, but realistically as a media student, you should have a blog as well. I am not the one who decides that, but I really struggle to come up with any reasons why you wouldn’t. Your blog can be your showcase of your writing, videos, photographs and of course also audio. You can be a podcaster or just occasionally upload some audio you’ve worked with for people to hear and for you to learn the way the technology works. There’s all the chances in the world that you need to know the basics of updating a blog of some kind when you are hired and it’s something nice to pull out of the bag in a job interview. It’s demonstrates taking initiative, creativity and passion for production. I’d see it as a massive plus on the corner of your application, and although not everyone in the industry feels as strongly about this, I can’t see how it would reduce your chances. Maybe with an exception of you having uploaded photos from the weekend night out where you passed out half naked and your friends draw a Hitler moustache on you with a marker pen, but isn’t that what Facebook is for?

As always, you can find many services that you can use online, but I wanted to provide you with a very short list of a few web services I like, and find convenient specifically when it comes to blogging and placing audio online. A word of warning though; in the Internet these things keep on changing and what is good today, may be overdone by someone else tomorrow. So there will be a moment in time when this list becomes outdated.

• WordPress

WordPress is one of the free ways of blogging. You can make your blog really rather professional looking by tweaking it for a while.

• Blogger

Blogger is one of Google’s services and one of the older blogging platforms. It is increasingly flexible and has an added social networking aspect by allowing you to follow other blogs and them to follow you.

• Posterous

This is probably the easiest and by far the most convenient blogging service that I have tried. With a Posterous blog everything can be done by sending an email. That includes attaching pictures, PDF’s, audio or video to the email and the blog then presents them in a nice stylish manner. There are things you can’t do with it, but the ones you can are incredibly effortless.

• PodBean

While Podbean also gives you a blog, it is actually more of a podcasting service. By opening this account you can upload 100mb of audio for free and get automatically created feeds for your audio to be subscribed to via iTunes or RSS. Even if you’d use other services for blogging, this could work as your audio base.

• Soundcloud

Created more for the purposes of musician, Soundcloud allows you to upload and store audio for free. It gives you, in my opinion, very stylish audio players that you can easily embed into your blog or elsewhere online. You can decide whether your audio is downloadable or not, and the drop box enables you to easily receive and give files to others.

• PRX

PRX, or the Public Radio Exchange is a website for the American Public Radio system. This is a place where you can upload your material and even sell it to the stations for some money. While the money isn’t necessarily going to blow your mind, it might be a nice thing to have in your CV. You can listen to other people’s work here as well, get ideas, give feedback to others just as they can give it to your work and generally get good ideas for your future work.

Finally, whether you are uploading your audio on your personal blog or on someone else’s website, working for a station or a production company or trying to sell your content independently, it is good to have an idea of copyright matters. They can be tricky on a good day.

You own the full copyright to your work as soon as you have done it. You don’t need the © symbol or a detailed explanation on how you are going to let the blood thirsty dogs after anyone who even thinks about using your work; what you have done, you own the rights for. Copyright is your incentive for your creativity.

Or so they say.

Here’s the fine print; for the sake of clarity I wrote it on the same font size as the rest of the text. If you have done your work at a university or with university’s equipment, depending on their policies, but quite likely, they would own the copyright to your work. In theory you are not able to sell that or arguably, if indeed they do own the rights, legally put it online to your blog. I am sure that the latter should never be a problem and even the former generally shouldn’t land you in trouble. The truth is that if you as a student manage to sell your work while studying, you are also positive PR for the department and that may even end up recruiting a few new students; that’s where the money is for them. And where it definitely isn’t, is to make a few bucks out of selling student work for which they claim ownership. Even if they did own the rights, they wouldn’t probably use them.

Another option is that you work for a radio station or a production company. It is then also, in all probability somewhere in your contract that the work you have produced is owned by them. Which means that, again, at least in theory, you cannot even place it online for free for others. In practice, I am sure you can, but legally, you could be sued. Definitely they wouldn’t be happy if you tried to sell the work they paid you to do to someone else.

It can also so happen, that you are an independent producer who has taken a risk and without any advance payments produced something out of your own concept with your own equipment on your own time, and when you wish to sell it to some broadcaster, instead of one-time only rights, they want the full copyright of your work. That means that they pay you once a bit and then own this work for so long that it could as well be forever. In practice it means that they’ll play it once and then it goes into an archive in all likelihood never to be played again anywhere. Legally, they will decide what happens to it. You could renegotiate this clause, I guess, as I doubt it’s a deal breaker since often especially in radio, the stations and broadcasters aren’t banking on further income from your work. For some reason the contacts are not drawn that in mind.

Basically what that means is that it’s important that you know what kind of contracts are involved and what are the policies. Just because I have said many times in the previous paragraphs that in all probability a non-commercial usage of your production, would not create problems, doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t know what you are dealing with. And I can’t promise to you that there definitely won’t be trouble. One thing that you can learn more about is the idea of Creative Commons. Creative Commons licences are part of copyrights, only with them you can release some rights so that people can use your content just like you can use the content that has been licensed in this same way. I personally wouldn’t mind seeing these licences used more by universities and even radio stations, which could release some rights after the first broadcasting of the content, but that is not a very common practice at this point in time.

But whatever is the case with your legal rights to your production, I’d encourage you to upload it online to your blog. It’s your demo tape and a proof of the standard of your production work. No corporate lawyer will realistically bother you for having it there, because they are not losing revenue in the process. At this point that is what it all comes down to. Everyone needs to pay the bills and how does this kind of audio content support that?

In the next segment, we look into how important all of this really is – I mean who even cares about the radio documentaries anyway?

One of the key ideas for everything that I’ve written about has been a union of content and style. If you have a piece that lacks substance or any kind of meaning – or just doesn’t reach a good enough standard – it won’t reach the listener. It automatically lacks the authority. I am not qualified to give analysis on basic human psychology, but I suspect that if your listener doubts the authority of anything in your piece, she may as well doubt the legitimacy of everything. It’s harsh. People like to know better and that’s why you must check what you’re doing.

But even that’s not enough. So, you don’t make any mistakes and you even double checked how to pronounce the French name you had to include, and no one can catch you for not knowing what you talk about. You can even bring out some rather outstanding new data on board and potentially improve the public discourse, but if your work is unlistenable or incoherent, you won’t reach many people either. And radio is still a mass medium. The people who decide what to put on radio have to think about that.

You’ve worked hard, with all the foot work of finding interviewees and angles, this is the time when you put it all together – so shine.

How can you start off strong? Try to hook the listener from the very beginning. Start with a provocative short comment from an interviewee or any audio that you feel would make the listener feel “I want to hear more”. Sometimes there are songs that start off bland and only in the chorus become very catchy. The reason we know this is probably because we hear songs over and over again, at least if we are music radio listeners, but when it comes to other content, we don’t have the luxury to think that maybe on the fifth listen, they will get it. There will probably only ever be one listen per listener. So regardless of how artistic you want your expression to be, if your message is more important, then you must think of the best way to communicate it.

I personally never like to start or finish with my own voice over. I just feel that surely there must be better audio to describe what I am covering. Surely I can’t be the most interesting person recorded. Surely, out of all the people, I can’t be the factor that makes my work stand out. If I was, I’d have to rethink really hard if my story and angle are good enough.

The beginning of your piece hooks your listeners and makes them want more, and then in the end, the final thoughts, hopefully, leave them thinking about your point. Or at the very least something. Whatever you end up including in the middle of these two things, think of them as factors that can boost your chances to be heard and remembered.

I was talking about the style and flair that the script gives to your audio, and while I am not taking that back, I must add that editing and compiling your work obviously deals with the same matter. I was also saying that when recording, do record a lot of audio that isn’t an interview, but just something happening. At this point, you start drawing from that audio archive you’ve created on locations. Which atmospheric sounds are clear signals of the space, and which ones signal the mood? Some other sounds are great for transitions between places and moods; from interview to another when they are in different places. I personally think cars work very well for that, but you’ll find that many of these things don’t have to be made too obvious. They are small signs maybe on the background communicating almost subconsciously  the message. Transition can be made, for instance, by cross-fading the relevant background noises with long enough mix, so the change has just happened. Use other audio over the fades and think carefully if you want to use your audio in a way that it’s bang! here, and now the next thing. Your mix of atmospheric tracks shouldn’t look like a queue of audio items but rather a number of tracks fading in and out and layered on top of each other. Well, at least possibly so. I can’t tell you exactly how your work should look like on the screen or sound like from the speakers, and of course we all like different things, but still, I’d recommend you to try and make  sound rich features and documentaries. Most people don’t seem to do so, so this can be your advantage and unique selling point.

Often we feel tempted to undermine our listener. In general radio practitioners seem to every time either under or overestimate the audiences’ attention span, brain capacity and dedication to listening. We can’t take anything for granted, but patronising won’t win you any sympathy either. Be clear, but don’t make your point like the listener is stupid. Contents like the ones we’ve been dealing with here, are probably listened to in a different way and in all probability with more attention. If not, they probably aren’t listened to at all, or at least not in a way that the message demands in order to be communicated in any meaningful way. So if we assume that people either give you their attention to an extent which is enough or then they don’t matter much (as far as your documentary goes), you don’t have to assume that they can’t comprehend anything. They can.

Actually, even if we assume almost anything, or you could prove my thinking faulty, I still think that people aren’t stupid and therefore shouldn’t be treated as such.

You don’t have to use a formula where you talk, place an interview clip, then talk more, another interview and so forth. Make the clips from different interviews talk amongst and to each other. Make them support each other, fill in gaps or even argue. You don’t have to always introduce them. Be creative and try it out. It may not immediately click, but with few trials and errors you might just get somewhere.

Sometimes this type of juxtaposing can tell so much more about the situation than you ever could verbally. How people approach things from different angles and have different priorities.

If you want to use the different interviews to support and compliment each other, try to find a seamless way to tell the story through a few different characters instead of all of them saying the same thing one after another.

You can consider the order of the interviews based on how you want to tell the story, but also how interesting they are. Sometimes someone we don’t know says something incredibly interesting and other times the President of the Nation says something rather dull, but is such an important figure, that it’s interesting anyway. It may be worth placing bits and pieces of the interesting people strategically in the beginning and the end for the reasons I’ve mentioned already – to attract attention and hook the listener and to leave something to think about and remember, but you can also try to evenly distribute them so that there isn’t a long dry phase somewhere in the middle.

I had dedicated an entire segment reminding you how important it is to be familiar with the necessary technology in order to achieve good results. Just before reaching the very end of your production task, make sure that you listen to it back and forth a good few times to identify the potential problems. Then fix them. Make sure that the audio levels are not jumping from high to low very quickly and dramatically. Use some compression and mix until you are happy with it. And don’t go too easy on yourself; it’d be shame to fall short on the last leg of your production mission.

The way your final piece will be, depends on you and how have you managed to work it. I can’t really tell you the way to do it, because, well, it depends, but I have tried to give you some ideas of what to consider. That, of course, goes for all the segments of this ebook.

But now, at this point, our documentary is done. How nice. We’ve done a good job, but no one, maybe outside of your group of friends and family, has heard it. The last chapter deals with how to get it placed and what other options there are, and should we actually rethink why we do this type of things completely.

At the time you start writing the script; your own links, you already pretty much know what your final piece will be about. You must create an effective workflow that makes sense to you, but generally speaking, I would expect you to have most of the other audio edited at this point. It might not be finalised and honed, but it is in a rough form of what it will be in the end. That’s purely because while you can’t guarantee that the material you have recorded others saying or doing makes sense when mixed, your own script will bring things together, clarify, summarise and generally help you to make a point.

Writing a script; something you will read out loud is quite different from writing an essay. It’s different from writing most things actually. The text you are producing must be something that sounds natural. Have you ever heard when people have written their public speeches word by word and it sounds like they are reading it for the first time, when making a mistake saying, excuse me, and then continuing the reading? That is exactly how you are not supposed to write a script. You are supposed to modify your writing to match the way you speak, not the other way around.

Use shorter and punchier sentences to write the script. Find ways of efficiently expressing your thoughts in a nice and clear way. Don’t worry much about unnecessary big words as this really isn’t about trying to impress anyone with your endless vocabulary, or even word games. The script serves a different purpose. It exists for everything else to make sense and bridge the gap between different interviews and spaces. Unless you are one of the few famous film documentary makers the average people know by their name, you are not the star of your documentary. Not even if you are a character in it as a participant, observer or explorer of some kind. Actually, even if you are one of the famous documentary makers, you still shouldn’t be the star of the show. Also, if you are one of them, I am flattered that you are reading this, and struggle to understand why you would.

The script also is something that gives the feel to your work. Since it ties things together, it also is the only thing that is really consistent. Whether you have the interviews to support the point you are making or you supporting the point that the interviews make, your script; the voice-overs are usually what gives your piece its style more than any other speaker. Of course there are other stylistic devices and in a while, we’ll talk more about editing, but on the talk based content, in most cases it is you who have the greatest impact on how the package will feel like.

I learned the script writing in live radio. As a presenter I used to write a script that had pretty much every word I said out loud written down. Initially, they didn’t sound very natural, but because I also afterwards listened to every link I had done that day, I managed to improve my writing. It is by listening to yourself recorded that you not only get used to your own voice and how it works, but also to how you speak. After two years of me writing down all of my links, I found all of my writing being influenced by it, and I had to learn again how to write just for text. That in itself is hardly your goal, but you should probably try to keep both ways in your active toolbox.

One of the mistakes I hear often, especially in the news, is repeating what the interviewer says. Actually, since the order is usually first the link and then the clip, the journalist makes the interviewee sound like they are repeating what has just been said.

Have you ever heard something like this:

Voice over: … and the opposition leader says that she disagrees with the decision the government has made with the strongest possible terms.

Interview clip: I disagree with the decision the government has made with the strongest possible terms.

I wish I didn’t hear something like this quite so often as I do. Not by professional journalist any more than from the students. And it’s not always as clear and word for word, as there are varying degrees of bad writing. Still, none of them are good.

A good script links interviews and other audio seamlessly together. It gives the flair to the final work and its function is to take the content forward to a direction that is coherent and meaningful. You can use scripted voice-overs to introduce the interviewees, to introduce the questions, to provide commentary or facts, but you can also use it to summarise. Many people you end up interviewing are very smart and professional on their field, but not necessarily on the field of effective communication. They can really slaughter a great point to the degree that it makes no sense for you to use it. Or they can talk for an hour, but you can afford to allocate them four minutes in your piece.  In the cases like these, you can easily have a good solid interesting clip you have edited and write script that says: Mrs X also mentioned that the other concerns are a, b and c. Usually, you are able to say things in a clearer way and get to the point quicker. This kind of summarising enables you to keep your work easier to follow, more straightforward and it allows you to use the minutes you have to say much more.

If you have been at an event such as demonstration or anywhere that would be worth describing to the listeners, you can record something as things happen, but you can also do this afterwards by writing it down on a script as it happened. It might lack the sense of realism and urgency that recorded when it happened a link would have, but it can be more reflective and you can really consider what were the important elements that should be covered.

It’s a fine line between writing commentary and writing opinions. You can reflect on the material you have used, you can link ideas and make conclusions, but I would really advise you to stay away from giving opinions. Especially in a news story. In a human interest story you can consider them, even use sparingly especially if you, as a journalist, are part of the journey that is being followed. Then it is particularly appropriate to tell how did things make you feel and use your opinions as a sounding board to what the general thoughts may be, but even that is separate from giving your opinions as the truth.

If you have political or religious views, be particularly careful. There are things that you may view to be true and righteous and therefore appropriate as evidence in themselves, but others may have very different views. The best case scenario is that everyone who doesn’t agree with you will discredit anything you have said and the worst case scenario is that you offend them. Offending people is always  a tricky thing; it can’t always be avoided, so should it happen, make sure it’s at least for good reasons.

There are some technicalities to write a good script. Most of the time when we open our word processing software on the computer we get the default setting: Times New Roman on the font size 12 and single line spacing. As useful as that may be for the average document, it doesn’t do much for the script writing. If you work for different media organisations there might be specific rules and standards, but whatever script you write, use a bigger font size – I use 18. Use a font that is easy for your eye; Times New Roman is not bad for that, and especially if you write for someone else, but even if it is for yourself, rather use a double line spacing as that allows notes to be made and generally creates a sense of clarity.

On top of the general rules, I personally like to use a lot of space. Unfortunately, when the script is printed, it’s not very environmental, but it makes me feel less hurried and helps me to emphasise every part the way it must be emphasised. I use a lot of dots and write a separate paragraph for everything that I conceive to be even a slightly separate thought.

It is my personal habit that I use the dots to signify the length of break I want to take. Few dots is just a small break but more dots I write, the longer gap I intend to have. That gap is a stylistic device I use to emphasise. This might not be something that makes much sense to you from my script, but I know exactly what it means. You will, no doubt, find your own ways to write for yourself. When you write for other people, you must take into consideration that they can’t read your mind, but also that they don’t necessarily use the same words as you do naturally or that their way of speaking is very different. When writing for others you might need to be more general. Unless, of course, you know and understand exactly the way they use language.

After all this work, you’ve got a script in your hands. That in itself is not the final product – you still need to record it and mix with other content. For now we are dealing with recording.

If you can, make sure you have enough time booked in the studio and that you are comfortable with the equipment. Basically many of the principles I talked about earlier with recording on location apply here as well, although the setting is calmer. Try out different ways and think about what is the purpose of your piece. Should you sound serious, curious or hilarious? Emotional, thoughtful or cold? Having written the script, you’ll have a clear idea, I am sure, what it is that you need to do.

Listen back to your recordings and make sure that every word is pronounced correctly and the flow is as you need it to be. Try things out; maybe a pause here and there and things like that. Or how about even longer break to really emphasise and give the listener some time – or rather – force them to think.

One thing that you can always keep in mind when working with a script, whether you are writing or recording, is that this is where you have the most control. You don’t have to rely on anyone and unless you have limited access to the studio facilities or far too little time in your hands, you can keep on rewriting and rerecording until you are happy.

And what if you don’t have an access to the studio? For whatever reason. There are many DIY ways to record with just a microphone and recorder. I am not getting into them in any detailed way, but let me just say that a makeshift studio acoustics can be achieved with soft things; pillows, mattresses and fabrics and many people even record underneath a blanket. It gives you a better sound quality and excludes many noises from outside, although, of course, it is not necessarily a very comfortable experience otherwise.

As you have been collecting the material you have created a good sense of what you got. There is always a chance that one more interview would improve the final product, but there is also a chance that it wouldn’t. I mentioned earlier that you should have enough material so that you don’t have to fill and kill time with nonsense. Don’t claim lightly that you’re done collecting the audio, but don’t get obsessed with more material either. Never finishing your work will only mean that no one ever gets to hear the final product and in the context of university, it means that you are late for the deadline. That’s never a good way to score points no matter how noble a reason you have.

Already when you are collecting the audio you get a rough idea when something really useful has been said. Make at least mental – if not written – note where these good bits are so you remember where to start looking for them. It is also during recording your material that you start realising what is the direction your piece is taking; what it is actually saying.

It is really difficult to know, or even guess, how engaged your listeners are going to be and how carefully they will listen. How carefully do you usually listen to radio? The more you trust your audience the less you have to stress ideas. I remember one film documentary – I won’t name it here as I wish only the best for its producers – that felt like it might never end as all it really achieved was repetition of one idea and it lasted for  close to an hour. There was the same thing said with different words by different people in different places, but all that was said was that one thing.

If it was not for the reasons of politeness, I would have walked away after the first ten minutes even though the topic was something that I thought should have been very interesting.

Basically overemphasising one message is like explaining your jokes; everyone got it already and if they didn’t, how well will it go down just because now you are making it obvious? It is a very tricky balance between under and overestimating the attention of your audience.

Consider how clear your message is, and is it enough that one person makes one point? Even if everyone agrees, you don’t have to use the same type of clip by different people over and over again.

Some people say things because they just think that it’s the right thing to say without any critical engagement with whatever meanings those words have. If that is obvious enough to make a point on something interesting; the interviewees character for example, and if his or her character is important in your piece then you can keep it, but otherwise, be harsh on people saying empty lines. Not ideally to their face, but in the edit. These lines represent the kind of language that makes people call politics boring. Well, politics maybe boring or just complicated, but ideally your piece should be able to package the boring – if that’s what it has got to be – at least in a more interesting way.

If you have enough material, you don’t have to use any weak meaningless statements that no one even fully understands.

Listen to all of your material and try to find interesting bits which you can then mix together. Later on I will talk more about editing and compiling your final product, but when you listen through the interviews, try to identify topics and ideas from different people that would work very well together either juxtaposed or supporting and completing each others. At best you could create an interesting almost tennis match-like feel where you don’t have to even comment much yourself.

At this point you should also consider how does your collected material represent the different sides of the story. The mistake that happens when you are trying to prove your opinion to be the truth is that you are not inclined to talk to anyone who would disprove it. It’s good to talk to people who you disagree with and there is no need to worry about people’s opinions. If they are very offensive you don’t have to use them and if you feel that they emphasise a point; even one that is the very opposite of what they are intended to, then you can use it. People are smart enough to make up their own mind.

If there is no realistic or sensible way of getting any dicent voices in your work then you can acknowledge that. If you have tried to contact a person who represents the dark side of the story and he or she has declined or not been reached, then you can say that. I personally would not wish to make it too dramatic or judgemental; again, people are smart enough to decide for themselves.

These editorial questions of what to include are the ones where you have to use your judgment informed by your target audience and platform where your work would end up in. Whatever you decide, I’d advice you to avoid trying to shock people. That usually makes one half of the people upset and another thinks you’re fool.

It is not, however, the attempt of shocking that strikes me alarmingly often. It is probably because of the commercial and promotional cultures where we live in that has shifted the presenting of content towards overtly positive. Not that one should be negative just because, but commercial media also veils the promotion of films, music or almost anything with a feel of journalism, and this seems to have had an impact on even the content that is not paid for by the promotional budgets.

It’s important to think about this quite critically. Especially every time you have used words like phenomenal, amazing, breathtaking, unbelievable or so. Firstly, you should not use them because there are much better words out there, and secondly, when you think of those words, consider are you having an honest unbiased angle to your story? It’s not that some things aren’t great, but just like, regardless of what the hit station presenter tells you, no Britney Spears song is a classic, there should not be an urgency to describe anything with unrealistic phrases. If something is really amazing, then make sure your material communicates that without you having to underline it.

At least for me, the promotional sounding content on a platform that is not promotional makes me suspicious, and if I feel like you are trying to make up my mind for me, I instinctively react against it. I will later on talk about the potential of using content based audio in other ways and that includes advertising and promotion, but unless it is clear that the purpose of the content is commercially inclined (money has been paid for it to advertise of promote something), keep it closer to neutral.

The rest of the audio material such as the audio tape and all kinds of atmospheric sounds work as signifiers of spaces where you wish to take the listener and transitions when you move forward to the next segment in your final piece. Later on I will talk more about them, but try to have a high standard with this material as well and don’t just have any odd buzzing of the bees in the mix even if there were bees where you recorded. Or if you do want to have it as a part of your final piece, consider its strengths and weaknesses. Without pictures such things demand an explanation or they remain unexplained and more as a confusion taking the attention from the real substance of the story. Ideally it should be there to support it and putting it in a context.

The moment you start recording your raw material is a great one. At least I like it a lot. It is when the ideas and concepts you have been working on and thinking about become real and also get tested. It is possible that the realities as reflected in the interviews you’ve done make your whole concept a bit redundant, but even that is ok. It’s just evidence that we don’t really know what the documentary is about, or at least what is it saying until at the very end. It’s good to keep an open mind and allow the changes to take place rather than to try to force the initial view.

If we take the process to its very basic level you’ve got two ways to get things started: an ease-your-way-in interview or the deep-end-option.

Especially if you feel that you could use some more information and confidence before facing the hard questions then start off with someone who is either an easier person to talk to (should you have access to that knowledge) or someone who is less central to your story. This kind of interview gives you confidence and ensures that you have some audio secured. The value of getting started should never be underestimated.

The deep-end-option is when you decide to tackle the most difficult thing first and then build the rest around it. It is a good way to do things if you feel that you understand the subject well or otherwise feel particularly strong and confident. Quite often, after this it becomes easier to find and record the rest of the material as you have the main substance of the story already collected. Although, of course there can be more big interviews lined up, but you are at a good start.

You never know exactly what kind of material you will end up with, but it is good to consider the order in which you intend to talk to people. Sometimes, you can kick yourself for realising, during your very last interview, an interesting angle or a question you should have asked everybody. These are the things that you can never know so there is no point in worrying about them. Just imagine if this could happen and then start based on your best, and at least a bit informed guess.

It is good to have at least a rough wish list of who you would like to interview. Be prepared to think on your feet and react quickly; at times a chance for a great interview will present itself without warning. Sometimes your interviewees will recommend other people that you could find interesting and other times they may cancel or just not show up, although most often, they do the interview as agreed.

Before going to record an interview it’s good to think of good questions, and if possible have more of them than what you think you’ll need. Some interviewees answer your first five questions when you’ve only asked one. And you only had prepared six. Not that it’s that much of a problem necessarily, if you get your material, but I always try to add a few questions in the end that sort of invite the interviewee to expand the story and identify other aspects that I haven’t known or just thought of. After all, they probably are specialist in the field and I am only covering the story.

Your questions should be rather open than closed ones. That means that they should not be answered by yes or no. Sometimes you can prepare a great question that covers all the facts and reflects on them appropriately and then your interviewee says “yes, that’s correct”. Now that is what you got recorded. Make sure that your interviewees give you all the good stuff even if you yourself would know the answers already. It is their voice you are after because your own you can record whenever.

When you think of the style of your piece you might have an idea of its treatment. Are you going to edit the answers and mix them with your studio recorded voice-overs, or are you going to use them as an interview with your questions in the mix as it happened? Regardless of how you will use them, a good interview is generally more of a recorded conversation than a questionnaire. React to the answers you are given and follow them up, ask for more clarification and further questions even if they are not on your list. There’s an old anecdote, which can actually be an urban legend, where a radio DJ asked a caller “So how has your day been?”, the caller responds “It hasn’t been good. I was horseback riding, fell and broke my leg”. The DJ responds “Ok, what song would you like to hear?”.

As conversational as your style may be, you as an interviewer should try to keep quiet as much as you can when you are not saying anything. In a normal conversation we make all kinds of small noises of agreeing or being surprised (yeah, oh, umm, mmm, aha), but whether you use your own voice in your documentary or not, those sounds can be rather annoying, yet difficult to edit away. You don’t want to have your “yeah, I see” on top of a very interesting answer. As an interviewer you must come up with ways of encouraging the interviewee by nodding, facial expressions or anything you can come up with. Keep eye contact as much as you can. You don’t have to say anything out loud to be part of a conversation. At least not all the time.

Depending on your story and approach you can have an interview with many different kinds of people. Many politicians and public servants are infamous for giving you official statements which tend to be rather dry accounts. It is something we are quite used to and we don’t think too much about it, but it is also something that many people find boring. Think twice before using long interviews like that if it doesn’t fit your target audience. Some academics know so much about their specialisation that their answer seems to last forever and you know you’d need a quick 30 second summary of 25 minute monologue. I have found that a good way to achieve that, is trying to summarise vaguely by saying something like “so if I have understood correctly it is about A and B”. After that I often get a nice half a minute summary that explains how it is about A, B, C, D and F. It doesn’t work every time, but it surprises me still, how often it does.

It may happen quite naturally when you are working on a story that you end up with a set of questions that you could ask almost from anybody. That kind of general list of question is good and works well especially if you are at an event, such as a conference, fair or festival where you may get interviews from people who are interesting, but you didn’t prepare questions for. If you end up in a situation like that and you don’t immediately have anything particularly insightful to ask, start of with very general questions to buy yourself time to think on your feet and hopefully come up with better questions towards the end of the interview.

It is important to know how long your final piece will be when you collect the audio or even work on the interview questions. Sometimes it is easier to say something in a longer time than in a short one, but however long your documentary is, make sure you have enough material.

When I was doing my first work placement in the late nineties, one of my friends had been sent to a press conference to interview a Swedish pop rock group the Cardigans. The band was busy and being a trainee, he hardly got first turn. He eventually came back with four minutes of audio. His assignment had been a seven minute feature. Now remember those four minutes were not edited audio but raw material that had all of his questions amongst other things. He hadn’t thought of doing an emergency voxpop to meet the required time so he had to rely on his own recollection. He then wrote a script which he read to fill the time.

I can’t even remember how it sounded, did it make any sense and how was it received by his supervisors, but this is an alarming story, not one of triumph. Even if he would have managed to get away with it, you must always remember to get enough material because it is not about getting away with things anyway.

There are no rules really how much is enough raw material for a story of any length. You must have enough. That is the most definite answer I can give you. Some old school documentary makers demand hours and hours of raw material, but I wouldn’t worry about that. In the modern media production environment we don’t have the luxury of time like some previously have had. We must produce stories much faster than before so having those hours and hours of audio is not only a massive task to record, but also to listen to and edit later on.

I have been talking a lot about recording interviews and they are often the substance of your story. They are not, however, all that matters. Earlier I had mentioned how you can learn about documentary making from TV and film. If a TV documentary would only have talking heads, the footage of people talking, and occasionally footage of the narrator talking, they would have to have pretty amazing content for us not to change the channel. But that is still how we often without questioning, produce for radio. There is very little sound environment there. We pause our recorder when interesting things are happening. By interesting I don’t mean only very exciting, but just sounds that signify moments, places or just human beings on their job. If you interview someone in their office, then a phone call or someone at the door is what signifies that. If it happens in the middle of your interview you can edit it for the beginning as something that takes us into a new space. If you are going to interview someone start the recording before you’ve met them. Get the audio of that meeting when they introduce themselves to you. It can be nice way to get into the actual answers. This way you also avoid the often awkward moment of setting up your recorder. That is the time when the interviewees get nervous so skip that if you can.

The supporting audio material; atmospheric sounds, more specific signifiers or observed interactions can be almost anything that is sound. When you are collecting it, keep your eye on the recording levels and look for the best place to record from. To collect this audio it really helps you to ask what are the producers of film documentaries doing right and how will I translate that into audio?

Collecting the audio tape, as this type of material is sometimes called, is a different practice from the rest of the recording as you don’t have to worry about asking the questions and from a participant you have become more of an observer. Your TV equivalent would be a cameraman instead of the journalist or a reporter that you are when you are recording the interviews.

In radio production we often have more roles than in other media as the production teams are small. The chances are you are the production team. It’s good to be comfortable with all the different roles. At the end, the content must be relevant and interesting and it must be packaged in a way that it deserves.

Collecting material; interviews and otherwise, is what really ensures that you are able to say what you want to say about the topic you are covering.

Technology doesn’t make the media, although media production needs it. A lot. For some reason many of the radio students seem to think that understanding recording levels and audio quality is like understanding the relativity theory. The very basic technology that gets you far in radio is not very complicated and most of all, once you master it on a decent level, you don’t really have to think too much about it anymore. Sounds like a reasonable deal to me. Then you can focus on your great ideas.

Besides adverts, the main reason for people to change the radio station is a bad signal, and I’d imagine that would apply to any kind of sonic irritation including inaudible interviews, cacophony and general chaos created by bad recording.

It really doesn’t matter how good your idea is and how much you worked for it if you cut corners with this. This is the point that not doing it right can make all of the material useless. And if it is useless, don’t use it.

As a radio student you should go out with a recorder and record for no other reason than to learn how to do it properly. Try it out and while at it, maybe you will end up with a small sound effects library and some cool atmospheric backgrounds you can use later on.

Is it better to record from far and turn the recording levels up or to be quite close with levels turned down? Find that out.

Take also into consideration that microphones can differ so it is important to get to know how the one that you are using works.

Have a good read through of the manual of the equipment you are using and become familiar with using it in practice. Recording is something that should become an act of muscle memory like driving a car. If you are a driver you know that initially you had to focus on which pedal is which, how to change gears and even not to forget to indicate when you are turning. After driving for some time, and I doubt it happens in any other way, you stop thinking about most of these things. They just happen. You can drive a distance without thinking once about changing gears yet surely you have done it.

When you gain confidence and get the recording and other production to a comfortable level you are really in a position to focus on your content and expression. If you don’t, you might find yourself ruining the interviews by either bad audio quality or losing your focus to questions and interaction as you stare at the recorder and try to ensure that everything is fine with it. Neither one of the options give you any good results; what they do is make either you or the interviewee look and sound bad. In all likelihood, it actually does it to both of you.

Also, always wear headphones. You wouldn’t write an essay without a screen on your computer, just hoping that what you are typing reads well, so don’t record without headphones either. The example may sound a bit extreme, but that is how it is; a kind of guessing game with a hope that things will be okay.  When you monitor the recording you know what kind of material you go home with and you can fix the levels while it still matters. With interviews you can also end up having very disturbing background noises that you don’t necessarily pay attention to without the headphones; air conditioning, computers, ambulances, dogs, playground… you get the idea.

Unless those additional sounds are an integral part of the story and something that you want to have as describing the situation or space, try to avoid them. Even if you want them, you are usually better off recording them separately and mixing in when you are compiling your work. If something is making a sound you’d rather not have, don’t be afraid to ask if it possible to go and record the interview elsewhere. People generally understand when you explain your reasons and most of the time, especially at events or in public spaces, just going around the corner will be enough.

These things are more common sense than pure technological know-how, but without paying attention to the recording as a practice you may just not realise them in time.

It is always good to aim for the best possible quality and never use bad quality audio, but even after all the hard work there can still be some annoying noises on the background, or keeping the levels was tricky as the interviewee was moving too much. When you listen to a lot of the talking content in radio, you hear that many interviews are telephonic which makes their quality, realistically speaking often quite horrid and always a bit compromised. It seems that there is an unspoken agreement that this is acceptable in radio and without it a lot of content would not exist. So use your own judgement with the quality of audio you have recorded, but set the standard a little bit higher than where you instinctively would have it.

Learning the technology, like many things in general, is first about learning the basics and creating a routine. The creativity follows usually afterwards when you try things out, but even that has got more to do with what type of raw material you collect than how you record that audio. I will later on write more about your material, but for now, as we are still talking about the equipment and how to use it, consider making yourself a checklist.

The good thing about checklist is that once you’ve written everything down, you might not even need to consult it, as you remember these things already. That is not to say that it’s not good to confirm; it generally is good to confirm.

On your checklist you should have ideas like…

• Checking the equipment before going out to collect audio
  • All the necessary cables (check your microphone cable by recording a bit – broken ones can add horrible cracks to your material)
  • Enough batteries with enough power (have some spare ones)
  • Recorder and microphone
  • Depending on your recorder, are all the recording settings as you want and need them to be?
  • Headphones
  • Enough space on your memory card or MiniDisc depending what you are using. I recommend to have a lot more space than what you estimate you’ll need. Sometimes we get surprised with what is available and it’s good to be prepared.

• When on the location, whether inside or outside, listen to the sounds of the space and identify potentially problematic ones. On top of alarms, sirens and air-conditionings take wind specifically into consideration as for microphone it is not just sound, but rather something blowing in it which compromises the quality of recording even making it unusable.

• Record atmosphere, because it can be very useful later on when in edit.

• Before recording an interview or collecting any audio, make sure that you are happy with the recording levels.

• Make sure that the recording starts and runs. People have made the mistake of having the recorder on pause which feels like recording as you hear the sounds from the headphones and the levels are showing, but the numbers on the display of your recorder are not changing.

• When you record, depending on the equipment, be sure that you don’t record over previous tracks and lose other interviews.

• When you transfer the material to a computer name the files appropriately and save them in a folder that you can easily find.

These are just some examples that will help you to create a workflow. A routine. All of this, after some practise, is like remembering which pedal in the car is the brake and which is the accelerator.

When I was an undergraduate student one of my lecturers told us: if you want to have a good idea, come up with ten and pick the one that is good. That, he said, was based on the general rule of 90% of everything being rubbish. No matter how many times I was turning this idea in my head, I had to agree with it.

Initially it sounds like  hard work, but it is not like someone is going to come and ask for evidence or an industry standard business plan for every idea. The whole concept needs a bit of demystifying because we come up with ideas all the time and out of those ten you may end up having five ridiculous, few that kind of make sense, one that is okay, and one good one. Some of them are just half ideas and some build on the bad ones. Maybe your final one is a combination of few, or that crazy thought that you stripped down into a doable one. This bit is not the science; it is just for you to think about in order to avoid too much unjustified satisfaction with the first thought that enters your head.

When you hear someone saying trust your first idea, be careful. Of course it might be an amazing concept, but at the same time it might be something that everyone else has also thought first and then gone with it. When I was a presenter on a hit station I used to spend quite a bit of time writing my scripts. My goal was to write some jokes about current affairs and such; basically just punchlines to amuse the listeners (and possible more than them, my peers and myself). A friend of mine said that if in my evening show I go with the first punchline that comes into my mind, listeners may have heard that same joke in a slightly different versions many times during that day. News stories after all, are same for everyone. You may not write jokes, like I don’t much either anymore, but we still benefit from considering our angle.

Having said this, and I hope I am not stating too much of the obvious, it is not about never going with your first idea. Just as long as it isn’t your only idea and therefore win by default.

Another thing that is good to keep in mind is that you are not supposed to prove your already existing opinion. That would be just a self-congratulating exercise and it has very little journalistic, or any other kind of value. Make mind maps, think about the different sides, but at least give the material a chance to differ from what you thought. If you find out, for instance in one of your interviews something that changes the nature of your piece, then that’s okay. Follow that. You have just found something out and it does not ruin your idea, but your idea has developed into something else; something better probably, and even if not, it’s better that you found out it now rather than when already finished the last edits.

Coming up with an idea involves thinking about an angle that would be interesting; maybe something that is not overdone by every media outlet, and knowing your target audience and where you would like to have, at least theoretically, your work to be broadcasted. Remember that while it is important to be realistic about the industry you aim to work in, your studying times may be the last times for years when you get to experiment and it would be a  shame not to do that. Try things out and think creatively.

Besides having to know who you are targeting, you should also think about how are you going to reach them. Is your story going to be a human interest one, a hard news story or something else. Thinking about these things will help you when you think who would you like to talk to and what kind of other material you would ideally like to have included in your final piece.

There isn’t one set way for a creative process. Even if there was, wouldn’t that be against the whole idea of creativity? There are different methods and they work for different people. I find mind maps very useful. I started off drawing them into my note book. I still do that but I also have one of those boards on the wall in my working space so I can actually conveniently see the idea when I am writing. I also use free software called FreeMind which allows me to have the ideas archived on the computer. I am not convinced it is the best one, but it is decent. I recommend you to go and explore the options from this list if you feel that it could be useful.

There is nothing wrong with doing mind maps by hand and most of the time it is faster and you get to record the idea as it comes without having to, for instance, wait for your computer to turn on.

If you are only starting to experiment with mind maps you might need to ‘let go’ a bit. It is possible that it is you, who is standing in the way of good ideas. Don’t be shy with a mind map; it isn’t your final product and it doesn’t have to cover absolutely everything before you start. It only has to make sense to you.

Mind map: this is just an example of how I thought this segment to be like.

After my initial mind map I usually go either for a long walk or a run (depends on your exercise preferences, but if you don’t run, try walking). For me it is a very good time to think. Philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche said “only thoughts which come from walking have any value”. Whether you agree with him on this one or generally; or rather even if you would disagree with him generally, a moderate version of the statements makes sense to me. Lets just say, walking may be good for developing ideas.

I already introduced the idea of letting go. To stop worrying about what people think about you if they see you and even if they don’t. This can be very difficult thing to do for many people, but there’s a way that works at least for me. Not accessible to everyone (and by no means reduced to a tool of work) children are great assistants, because they don’t care and therefore you can lose yourself as well. If you’ve got siblings or cousins or even own children then give it a go; volunteer to baby-sit (mentioning your ulterior motive is optional, but don’t forget your actual responsibilities for the young human being and his/her parents). No one is looking at you weirdly if you go and play in the park with a child and therefore no one thinks you’ve gone mad. Maybe these things don’t concern you, but in case you feel self-conscious then try to find ways to overcome it.

Also, using drawing and colours is said to be good for creativity.

Getting in touch with your creativity is not about being silly as such. I personally find it easier to think outside of the box when I am not on the computer trying to force ideas. I talk about letting go, but don’t forget to also critically engage with your ideas; are they actually as great as you thought, and most of all, are the realistic.

On top of creativity, the ideas need a more  pragmatic approach. This is where the journalistic side comes in. I have covered some of the ideas already in the previous segment, but knowing what others do, and have done, is important so that you are not doing the same story with the exact same angle, because there is a chance that the others had more resources and found better interviewees. Remember that you don’t produce these things in a vacuum, but in the context of some kind of industry or community. Unless, of course, it’s only for you and maybe your mum to enjoy, but realistically, that is an honest goal to very few of us.

You must also understand the significance of what you are doing and familiarise yourself with some background of the story. How much of that is necessary depends on the style and approach of your piece. You should also consider is your documentary going to be outdated before it is finished. News stories age quickly. If you have the luxury to decide yourself and don’t want to hurry, think about more timeless stories or at least something, that still makes sense to listen to a week from now.

At this point I’d like to repeat my disclaimer: I am only offering ideas; tools for your tool box and you must decide which ones are appropriate. This isn’t a list where you must tick boxes and it definitely isn’t a gospel. These are ideas that have helped me and therefore I offer them to you to think about. There isn’t an order for these things so when you deal with ideas, however they come is good.

The thoughts I’ve described and ideas I have introduced are as they have been taught to me after my own interpretation, preferences and experiments with them. Since it is your process, don’t be afraid to be creative to get creative as well.

It’s also good to have the confidence to change your focus when you realise a better idea, for example from an interview you have recorded.

Sometimes you can have a very rough idea, go and get material and start building on that. That method has also worked for me well. The only thing that I can think of to be a sort of an unbreakable rule is to keep an open mind.

SWEAT (Sex Workers Education and Advocacy Taskforce) is an organisation that looks after the rights of the sex workers in South Africa. It is all part of my documentary series. I had a very good talk there and got some interesting pointers. I am at the moment facing the biggest challenge of this episode as I try to find a buyer. Someone who uses these services to talk to me about it. On top the fact that the whole thing is stigmatised and cynical, it also is illegal for both parties so we’ll see how it goes.

But here is a clip where SWEAT’s Vivienne Lalu explains some attitude problems towards sex workers and other results of the study the organisation had done.