News

How to do a story for radio:
Listen to a lot of radio. Not just music countdowns but radio documentaries, news and other non-music programmes. Understand the aesthetics of radio. Sound can be visual too. It can create a picture.

The beauty of the web is that you can not only tune in to local radio stations but also worldwide. All major broadcasters have archives and many sound buffs have put up their personal collections and write blogs.

So it is easy to expand your knowledge. Or just learn.

Now for the real work:

• Make a list of ideas.
• Expand them. Write down twenty-five to fifty words about how you want to express the idea and what you want to say.
• Think about what you need. It is best to have at least two-three voices because just one voice can be monotonous. Unless you are reading from a book.
• Record the voices. Not all ‘interviews’ should be done in a studio. Field recordings, ambience are a good way to create atmosphere and give a ‘feel’ to the story.
• If the field is too noisy then do an interview indoors and record the ambience separately.
• Play the recordings back to yourself. Listen carefully. Log them ( matching timecode and sound byte).
• Make a paper edit. This is a ‘rough cut’ about how the story should be.
• If you are happy and can edit on software at home then do it. (Audacity is a free and relatively easy software.)
• If you cannot edit at home then send us the paper edit and the recordings.

PLEASE RUN THE IDEAS PAST THE TEAM BEFORE YOU START. ONCE WE AGREE TO THE CONCEPT WE SHALL GIVE YOU THE LINK TO THE DROP BOX.

Remember that not all stories turn out the way you expect. So be flexible and work on the editing. Also, out of a hundred ideas you may have only one is likely to work. Or not

If you are recording on your mobile phone or i-river products then your soundbytes will be in mp3 format. To make it broadcast quality make sure to record clearly and without any disturbances/artefacts cluttering the track.

Email: theasianradioshow@holycowmedia.com