Facing the Challenges

When I started this participatory production I was excited at the prospect of doing a rather laid-back and fun project- especially since it involved a few performers who are always entertaining, and of course producing a radio drama- which was different to anything we had done before. But over time I am becoming increasingly aware of the challenges that face us as radio producers. Although there is a fun aspect to this assignment, there is even more ‘admin’ stuff to contend with that I wasn’t necessarily aware of.


At the top of my list of challenges I would put communication and reliability. Obviously, when Sipho and I began this production we were fully aware of who we were working with: 20-somethings who live in the location and enjoy drama. Perfect! What’s not so perfect though is the rather frustrating fact that most of these guys are un-contactable. One day they’ll have a phone, the next there’ll be no phone and the next there’ll be a phone but with a different number. This makes communication and thus planning and executing those plans a rather difficult, or near impossible task. So where we are now, in terms of producing the three episodes, is not as far as I would like us to be.

Another challenge I am dealing with is more of a personal one. I have never been the best at group work (a blessing in disguise that I didn’t make it into the TV class?). What makes for an even more frustrating situation though is that my partner could also do without group work! This being the case, we are manoeuvring and finding ways around our group work related issues and will hopefully come out on top!

Lastly, editing the content that we have so far is proving to be a little harder and more time consuming than I thought it would. You forget just how helpful a picture or a series of picture frames help to set the scene and thus give the audience an idea of what’s going on. As producers of radio, we don’t have that luxury. I didn’t realise just how much we are going to rely on ambient sound to paint a picture. We might even have to resort to incorporating narration into the story.