This project for me was an eye opener. Thats not to say that I thought that it would be easy its just that  originally thought that  it would be a simple as gathering the right host and guest and plopping them in a room and getting them to talk for a bit. Needless to say that I didnt realise that it would involving loads of research, liaising and audio editing.

However saying that I am happy that I had to do all of that for it gave me a greater perspective into what goes into creating a show such as this. I really enjoyed creating the content for the show, having a chance to be really creative with the music pieces used on the show. Meeting with the different lecturers was also an amazing experience for me, if you listen to the pre interview with Todd I think you can hear me get more more intrigued with each answer he gives.

If given the opportunity to do this all again with the hindsight of this experience I would definatly go at with more organisational skills and ensure that all preparation for each interview is a through as possible. Another way in which I would potentially change it is that I feel I went a bit safe with the production and that I feel I could have experimented with the format more.

Overall I am extremely proud of what I have produced and truly believe that I have created something that could become a real staple of the university and something that Id would be proud to place on my resume.

While Episode One went really smoothly it seemed that lightning didn’t strike twice!

For this episode due to both Dave’s and Todd’s timetabling I could only have them for one hour on the 25th of November. This also meant that I had to use a room I had never had the opportunity to previously use before, the Radio Drama Studio to record in. On the day I had limited time to go into the studio beforehand to set up the microphones and desk which the later wouldn’t work for a good hour( due to some technical faults and my own inexperience with the desk). In addition to this the script had not sent to Dave which meant I had to try to print it off in the media building which also didnt work! The combination of all this meant that the recording was held back right to the last moment and in the last half an hour it finally started.

The actual interview went okay if not a bit rushed and if I had another chance I would have delayed the record to a later date. Saying that I feel that the content of the interview is very good and that it reveals an interesting insight into Todd’s life.

Mixing for this episode was exceptionally easy because I had already done the first episode I was able to use that one as a template for this one and pretty much use all the same settings and effects. The only difference that I made was that I put a compressor and hard limiter on the master bus in order to get the levels to a radio quality level. I later made the same changes to the first episode as well.

A screenshot of the master bus effects

Screenshot of the final multitrack mixdown.

Recorded on the 6th November in the radio studio in University, this is where weeks of planning, preparing, liaising and hard work came together! And surprisingly it all ran smoothly!

Dave arrived first about half an hour early which gave us a chance to record the couple of stings that can be heard in the opening. Then we chatted about the script and some research notes before Peter came in. I set up the mics tooks level and made sure that it was all ready to proceed then we recorded.

The interview went swimmingly, all to plan. They both talked as though there were no microphones in front of them, which was exactly what I had been looking to achieve when I started this project. The entire time I was checking levels and keeping an eye on the time. The script I had written lasted the whole half an hour that I was aiming to achieve and there was just a couple of questions that I asked Dave to ask at the end which would be edited in later. Next job would just be mixing.

I used Audition to do all of the mixing. In terms of the actual mix it was relatively straight forward, the first job was editing all of the dialogue getting rid of long pauses, mistakes, pop’s, and other vocal anomalies. Then I focused on the actual sound of the vocal’s the process I went through was doing a noise reduction, then normalisation, adding a single band compressor, hard limiter, adaptive noise reduction then dynamics processing.

The effects used on the vocal track

After this it was a case of fitting all of the parts together and making it into one coherent piece,

The final multitrack mix.

Overall I am very happy with how this episode went, I think that when listening to it you can hear a person who has had a great life doing what he loves and that is working with words.

In the course of doing this project one of the highlights for me was having an opportunity to work with Dave Bussy. Initially I was weary that he may not be the right fit for my show and that he may sound too “radio” for this discussion based show however after my first meeting with him my fears were put aside.

What surprised me about working with him was how he could take my research notes and script and change it, on the fly, into something that sounds naturally like his language whilst still fitting the tone of the show. When recording the first recording I found it was a joy to watch a radio professional in action and work in his element reacting to questions and moving the  interview at the pace and feel as I had exactly imagined it in my head.

One thing that I would have changed if I had a chance to do this again would be the amount and quality of research I provided Dave and make sure that there is time for us to meet a day or two before each show so he could have as much information as possible going into it.

Overall I am really happy with how it worked out with Dave and if given the opportunity I would love to work with again in the future.