Evaluation - Package

The brief for this project, was to create a 6 - 8 minute package on a topic of our choice, as long as that choice fitted in with the theme we chose, as a group; every group had to think of a theme for our packages, and then we all went off and made our own pieces, relating to that theme. We also had to settle on a radio station that our packages were going to be played out on, and make our packages with this station in mind at all times. These packages must include at least 3 interviews each.

Our group chose to go with the theme of Scottish Exports; things from Scotland, that have made an impact elsewhere in the world. The first idea that we had for a theme was doing packages on all the different aspects of student life, but we decided that that’d be too easy to do, as we wouldn’t really have to go out-with the college to find all of the interviews. An idea I had was to go through every aspect of setting up a live gig, from the idea to the promotion to the performance, in seperate packages; with this one, it was a worry that we wouldn’t have enough original people to interview.

So we went with the Scottish Exports idea, which I was very happy with. Straight away I decided to do mine on Scottish Comedy Exports, as it’s a topic I’m really interested in and doing my package on it was a great change for me to learn more about it. My main aim was to find out why a lot of brilliant Scottish TV comedies were not getting the credit they deserved outside of Scotland.

I was hoping that the general path that the package would follow would be: talking about the creation of a scottish comedy > talking about getting a scottish creation shown to an audience outside of scotland > the opinion of scottish comedies from someone outside of scotland. To work out exactly how the package was going to flow, I felt that my main task was to get the interviews confirmed and recorded. 

I set out to interview the following: a creator of scottish tv comedy, a commissioner of tv and a reviewer from outside of scotland who could talk about how scottish shows are received elsewhere. 

When I was looking for a reviewer, the first person that immediately came to mind was Grace Dent; I’d seen some of her articles on scottish comedies such as Burnistoun on the Guardian website, and thought she’d be great to talk to about why scottish comedies aren’t shown in england, as she obviously has an interest in that topic (as there was an article in the guardian about it.) I tried sending her some tweets about this but she didn’t get back to me, so I asked a mutual friend to forward an email to her about the email. She also didn’t respond to that, so I decided that it’s obvious I wasn’t going to get her to be a part of my package. But I still needed to get the opinion of a reviewer, so I approached Jay Richardson, a freelance journalist. He was very nice, but the audio I got from that interview wasn’t really useable; he was both on a bus, making the quality poor and he didn’t really say anything that I was looking for. Luckily, Paul English from the Daily Record got back to me about the interview an was available for an interview; I was a bit worried as the interview was just a week before the final package was to be completed by. But I’m glad that it happened. The only thing I’m slightly disappointed about is the fact that he was not a reviewer from outside of Scotland, which is what I was really looking for. Though everything Paul said was brilliant, so I was happy to work with that; especially his point about TV commissioners in London not really paying attention to Scottish Comedy because it wasn’t made for them in the first place.

Robert Florence, one of the two writers of Burnistoun, was straight away my first choice for the ‘scottish comedy creator’ of the package, as we’d spoken on twitter before and he’s a fan of some of the comedy stuff I do. I emailed him about the interview, and he said that he’d definitely be up for it. But when it got closer to the date I suggested, he wasn’t replying to emails. And when he did get back to me he said he’d still be up for it, I suggested a date, but there was still nothing. It got too close to the hand-in date, and I really hate bothering people who’re obviously too busy/not really interested in taking part, so I decided to move on. At the same time as the above was happening, I asked a mutual friend to forward on an email to Greg McHugh who writes the show Gary: Tank Commander. No response came from that, and as I was aware that he was filming the new series of his show, I decided just to leave it. In all honesty, I probably should’ve emailed a few more people about interviews.

By this stage, I decided to change one of my interviews; I wasn’t able to get a creator of scottish tv comedy, so I went for a performer of scottish comedy, who has played outside of England. I originally thought of people like Fred McCaulay and Kevin Bridges but thought it would probably take too much organisation to get through to them in time. I asked ‘Teddy’, a comedian I know and have met before, if he’d be up for an interview and he was, and available to do it the next morning. That interview was good, and he said exactly what I hoped he would say; the fact he changes his material for the different gigs he does sometimes and the sense of humour getting darker the further north in the uk you go being the two main points.

For some reason, it took me a while to think of someone to interview for the commissioner part of the interview. But I’ve no idea why, because I remembered that a contact of mine, Jemma Rodgers, used to be the head of comedy at BBC Scotland/was a commissioner. So I emailed her and asked if she would be up for an interview, which she very kindly agreed to. There was a problem with the audio that I got from this interview, in that the room we were in was very echoey and my levels weren’t quite right, so that’s something I’d change if I were to do it again. Also, listening back to it, it felt a bit like I was interviewing her about herself, and not my package; at this stage, I don’t think I’d quite worked out where I was going with the package, and what questions I wanted to ask, so I should’ve focussed on questions relating to the actual package a lot more.

Once I had all of the interviews, the script came pretty quickly to me. But I did have to alter the original order and plan of interviews. Originally, it was going to be: Scottish comedy creator > commissioner > reviewer. But after listening to the audio of the interviews, I worked out that this original plan wouldn’t really work anymore; the whole point of ending with the reviewer interview, was to show that scottish comedies can make their way out of scotland. But because I couldn’t get that interview, and Paul English was a Scottish journalist, that didn’t really work anymore.

I decided to start the package off with Paul talking about why he thinks some scottish comedies don’t make it south of the border, followed that up with ‘Teddy’ taking about if it’s also different/hard for scottish stand-ups when performing outside of scotland. And then I ask whether the creators of scottish comedy should alter their work, for a larger appeal to audiences outside of scotland. The last interview in the package is Jemma talking about her ambition, which is to create a scottish comedy that is popular worldwide. Which I think is a good ending, because it shows that somebody does want this to happen, and that there is some hope out there; she also talks about the comedy she’s hoping to go worldwide, which should intrigue the listener as to what this show is/about.

In the package, I wanted to use clips of scottish comedies, as I thought it would be a good addition to it, and I’ve heard Radio Scotland play clips from comedies before. It took me a while to find the right clips to use, as I had to find ones that were both short, and worked on the radio; that ruled most sketches from ‘Limmy’s Show’ out as the majority of them are very visual. There was one comedy sketch, that from the start, I knew I wanted to use, and that was one from Burnistoun; it’s a sketch that takes place in a lift, and it’s about the automated lift not being able to understand the scottish accents of the characters, which works perfectly in a package about scottish comedy not getting as much coverage elsewhere.

Another clip that I used featured Kevin Bridges talking about the stereotype of Glasgow being seen as rough by people in England, and generally not in Scotland.

In the final package, I only used the Kevin and Burnistoun clips, as there really wasn’t any room for anymore. I also feel that it was enough; any more, and the message of my package may have been diluted by people just wanting to hear the clips. But I feel that I found a good middle ground. 

It was all very last minute in terms of getting the script recorded; I asked Stephanie Drake to record the presenter voice for me, as I feel this would help level the playing field, so to speak; there were already, including clips, 5 male voices, and only 1 female. So that’s why I asked Steph, and I personally think her voice worked really well, and complimented the others. It was then just a matter of piecing together the audio.

Overall, I’m very happy with how the package turned out. I was worried as a lot of it was being done in a rush; I thought I’d maybe miss out some crucial facts, or not think about something enough and want to change bits when it’s too late. But in an odd way, maybe the sense of urgency to get it done added to the final product; I always think that I work a bit better under pressure, and it also gave it that fresh feeling. It wasn’t something I’d planned weeks beforehand and something that was going to stay untouched; it was a brand new, just made thing that I enjoyed working on. 

If I was to do it again I would definitely work on my questions more. I feel that with a lot of the interviews I did, I was coming up with the questions at the very last minute and not doing enough research in to the people I was interviewing, especially when the interviewees were people I already knew. I thought ‘oh, it’s fine if I’m a bit sloppy and unprepared here, we’re friends’ which is obviously a bad way to be thinking.

So yes, I think I’ve made a good package, and that it fits what I was expected to do. The majority of accents in the package are scottish ones, the clips played are scottish, the topic is scottish; it’s exactly the sort of thing I’d expect to hear on Radio Scotland.