Creating a radio documentary in a pandemic

2020 was a year like no other, not that I need to remind you, doing just about anything was alien compared to the years previous. That is no different in making a documentary with new challenges overcome and skills to learn to produce a high-quality product. On the Brink faced tough challenges to come to fruition and while the finished product is now available here are some of the challenges faced as a direct result of the pandemic.

Zoom

Everyone is familiar with zoom by now it's been relation in 2020 and no doubt will in 2021 too, but with it comes to its own challenges. While everyone with computer access has the ability to use that doesn't mean they have sufficient hardware. Fortunately for me only one interviewee had a poor quality mic, but that still lead to a lot of work.

After spending many hours listening and watching Youtube tutorials I spent just as much time playing around with the audio to improve the quality. Eventually, I got there and while it isn't on par with the other interviews it is vastly better and as are my audio skills as a result.

Backing track and audio

With it being an audio documentary one of the most imperative aspects is the audio. However, with lockdowns and various tier systems going out and recording the noise simply wasn't possible. With no creative license to get out and about, the best part about journalism, I really had to get innovative with the audio. With it being football-related it was key I had fan chants, and very kindly FootballChants.Com gave me permissions to use anything from there sight which was an immense help because without that I would also be stuck.

I also included football sound effects, well just the one to avoid becoming cheesy, background music with an emphasis on the listener not noticing it start to play or end, and finally played around with my links to speak over the interviewee. This took a lot of time deciding what worked best and I eventually found fading the interview out as I fade in best, before muting the interview entirely.

In normal times I would have conducted at least two fo the interviews in person and gained plenty of backing track, it's exactly what the documentary is crying out for but given circumstances I believe it still sounds good.

Rebrand

Halfway through creating the project I encountered a problem. Having initially called it Open Up in relation to opening up grounds to boost finances and support the #OpenUp campaign after a four-week lockdown clubs were indeed allowed to open up. Although only a finite amount and mostly for only two games before the privileges were revoked again, due to a change in circumstance, it still warranted a change.

So looking for inspiration I went through the interviews and one phrase that kept popping up was football and clubs being on the edge/brink and going to the wall. From this, I took on the brink, created a rebrand of the social media, website and logo. Even in January, it is a fitting title perhaps even more so now, with many clubs games being called off due to covid outbreaks and a circuit breaker being touted as well as the light at the end of the tunnel with fans returning now blown out.

Motivation

This is a problem experienced by everyone in 202, motivation. Getting yourself in the right creative frame of mind to work is hard when you're trapped in a box for weeks on end with little human contact outside of your house. The work, which usually (in normal times) when you're out and about is exciting and enjoyable, slowly becomes a chore. I was fortunate enough to have a quality of interviews fairly quickly, had I been digging around for multiple interviews for weeks I know the quality of the final product would have been vastly diminished and so I very thankful for the contributors and the quality of their part. As well as my tutor Rudy for giving me fresh inspiration and ideas when I needed it.