From 0 to 80 MPH: Becoming A Producer In Record Time

I love radio. Always have.

I remember my first time descending to the basement in Freeborn Hall at UC Davis (my sophomore year) to check out the college station, KDVS 90.3 fm. As I walked through the double glass doors I was immediately surrounded by people of every stripe, shelves overflowing with records (this was the pre-CD era), and walls plastered with posters featuring rockers, folkies, mariachi bands, sonic artists and more. In one studio there was a grrl band warming up for their live spot; in the other the on-air DJ was back-announcing the set he'd just played featuring surf music mixed with bluegrass. Then some official looking types came in, the guest for the evening's public affairs show. The topic: US foreign policy in Nicaragua.

In that trippy, eclectic den of sound and information, I felt at home. And I moved in--hosting a regular show for about 10 years. That stint gave me a chance explore and experiment with various musical genres, public affairs programming, and audio production.

But being an announcer/programmer is way different from being documentary producer. And did I learn that through making our national hour long documentary special, Saving The Sierra: Grassroots Solutions for Sustaining Rural Communities.

Sure, having a background in radio production helped. Plus, for the past 15 years I've been a community video maker/trainer as well as indie documentary film sound recordist, producer, and assistant director. So it's not as if I hadn't been in and around media making for a while.

But telling stories with images and telling stories with sounds are two very different worlds. In radio, every second counts in a way that is totally different from video/film, where you get to put images together with sound to convey a place, a person, a feeling, or an issue.

I'd never done a radio doc, so I didn't stop to think that maybe doing a short piece instead of an hour long special for public radio might a wise first step.

And perhaps taking on the entire Sierra Nevada Mountain range was a tad ambitious. It is, after all, about the size of the state of Kentucky. Made up of some 20 or so counties within about 20,000 square miles stretched along California's Eastern boarder.

Yep, not exactly your small scale starter documentary. It felt like going from 0-80 mph. The speed dating approach to becoming a radio documentary maker.

Fortunately, I wasn't going it alone. I teamed up with two-time Peabody award-winning producer/editor Catherine Stifter. Between her skills and saavy and my curiousity and logistical abilities, we made a great team. And we had a bevy of project partners and allies along the way.

So in just two short years I've managed to get hip to the digital production realm (I'm old school and learned audio production on tape), handy with portable recording gear, better at crafting those pithy, yet descriptive radio lines (though still a challenge), more willing to cut the parts of the script I love, and enlightened about the whole radio documentary process from start to finish. Looking back, it's amazing to see how far I've come. And looking ahead, I can see that I want to do more.

Which is all to say: if I can do it, just about anyone can. And everyone should. Don't you think?

We all have stories about a place that means something special to us. Or people who inspire us. Stories about successes, challenges, and how people found a way to make things work. The kind of stories that help us make sense of the world and our place in it.

If I gave you a recorder and my newly-acquired 10 tips for radio documentary, what places and people in those places would you record? What stories would you want to tell?

I'd love to hear.