After much deliberation on the final idea of the radio podcast idea, we finally decided upon one. The original idea evolved from ‘how the elderly are treated’ to one centred on the event of Remembrance Day. I wanted to unearth the grim reality of war and really hit home what Remembrance Day means to me and to the rest of the nation. In the podcast I tried to get this point across alongside as many viewpoints as possible. I used a varied approach covering different styles including street interviews, phone interviews, vox pops and adding music.
I planned to record a multitude of different people but after listening to the rushes recorded on Remembrance Day I thought it would be a waste of their time to interview them for such a short podcast as I already had enough for 5 minutes. I did some on location recording for the Sunday service. Unfortunately I could not get proper recording equipment for the service so I had to resort using my Dictaphone. This wasn’t a problem later in the edit as I didn’t use this recorded material.
I found the editing relentless as I had such a large amount of footage I wanted to cram into the five minute time slot. After listening through the entirety of my recordings I then went about selecting the best bits and placing them into a multi track. Reflecting on the edit I found that the interview with my grandfather most challenging as we had just over forty five minutes of recordings to put into a thirty second time slot.
I selected 3 different tracks for the podcast in keeping with the theme of Remembrance Day. Katherine Jenkins - I Vow To Thee My Country, Paul Hardcastle – 19 and Vera Lynn – We’ll Meet Again. ‘I vow to thee my country’ was originally selected for the introduction of the piece. I decided not to use this as the last post recording played by Larry Coles seemed to fit in better with the theme of Remembrance Day. Overall we put in the city of Bath poppy appeal organizer, Remembrance Day Organiser from the Royal British legion, my grandfather a WW2 Lancaster bomber pilot, children laying a wreath with their parent, Bath Parish Church Father Bill and a couple of vox pops. This interlinked with music and the Remembrance Day service recordings tied the piece together. The variation in different generations worked well with the dynamic of the podcast and really made the podcast relevant to all ages.
I hope I did the subject justice as taking on this ambitious task was both exciting and a learning curve. I found this subject truly intriguing and exciting to hear all the different viewpoints related to Remembrance Day and what it really means to my country.
Thanks to my Grandad for his input.
Will We Still Remember (Remembrance Day tribute) - Matt Steel
