MEDIA PRODUCTION TECHNIQUES:
Tips, Tools and Tricks from Youth Radio's Award-Winning National Newsroom
At Youth Radio, we model our media production process on the standards of professional journalism. But from an educational perspective, the methodologies our students use open up rich learning experiences related to some of the most important skills and pedagogies teachers value in their classrooms, including:
• Project-based inquiry
• Collaborative learning
• Authentic assessment
• Primary-source research
• Creative story-telling
• Multi-modal and digitial literacies
• Complex critical thinking
• Inter-textuality
• Evidence-based argumentation
• Culturally relevant content & practice
Below are some Youth Radio guidelines on how to invite your students into the process of producing original media. While they are designed around hand-on media production, please take a look even if you don't have access to high-end electronic equipment! You can use these ideas to design compelling learning experiences for your students for which they will only need pencil and paper.
BASICS
Two styles of story Youth Radio contributors work with are: the “feature” and the “commentary.” Both have themes, content and skills that transfer to other formats and can work well as individual or collaborative projects:
Features – Stories that include multiple voices and scenes, and aim to present a balanced view. With their emphasis on research, interviews, and creating effective questions, these stories promote skills that translate directly to journalism and non-fiction writing. However, they can lend themselves to everything from contemporary print/web news stories to more creative interviews with historical figures or periodic table elements.
Commentaries – First-person narratives, which may or may not include additional voices, and put forth a clear point of view. With their emphasis on personal expression, supporting evidence and comprehensive analysis, this genre lends itself to traditionally academic position papers and debates as well as real world applications like personal essays, op-ed articles and advertising campaigns.
Regardless of the final product, both require applied critical thinking, which cuts across all content and curriculum lines.
To short cut to a section, click here:
•Production Phases •Interview Tips
•Commentary Guidelines •Finding a Good Story
PLANNING:
During pre-production, young people dream up and discuss story ideas, plan projects, prepare tools, and practice skills they will need to carry out their media projects. With radio stories, this phase often involves making a list of the characters they want to interview, the scenes they want to capture, and the sounds that will bring their stories alive.
1. Identify “thesis”
Students often write a 3-4 sentence "pitch" for their stories to present at an editorial meeting attended by peers and adult producers. Here's where they essentially have to "sell" the story:
• Argue for its relevance
• Outline the approach
• Consider outlet and audience
• Receive feedback
2. Brainstorm
With a preliminary concept for the story in place (but knowing that concept is likely to shift as soon as they get going), they then answer some key questions:
• What do I already know about my story (free-write an answer)?
• What critical information do I (and my audience) need to know about the story?
• What sources (individuals, organizations, sites, etc.) can help provide that information?
Here’s where students refine their brainstorming and lay the groundwork for reporting.
• Research existing data, relevant studies, etc. and note key points and findings
• Identify sources and book interviews
• Come up with questions for characters
In designing interview protocols, students learn to push for specific stories and telling details, rather than generic impressions or positions. Simply asking "do you remember a specific moment when?" and then "what happened?" and then "what happened?" can keep an interview focused on compelling stories; sticking with "how did you feel about?" kinds of questions sometimes yields superficial answers (see below interview guidelines for much more on this!).
4. Checklist
Before heading out for interviews, students prepare checklists of the information they absolutely must get from each interviewee before parting ways - always ending their question lists with a request for contact information, so they have the option to get back in touch if necessary.
FIELD RECORDING:
Whether recording sound, capturing video, or just using pen and paper, "production" is the same --material needs to be collected to create the final product. In order to do this effectively, there also needs to be an idea of the final structure of the piece so that the right materials are available for the post-production/editing phase.
In radio, the reporter's own narration is called "tracks," and the interview clips are called "acts," short for "actualities." Stories that follow a predictable "acts and tracks" rhythm can start to feel a bit formulaic. When gathering tape, advanced students learn to think beyond "acts and tracks" to more complex structures. Usually, mixing up this basic structure with naturally occurring scenes, ambience, music, and even "found audio" (see below) enriches the finished media product.
There are 5 types of recordings that students can collect to create a feature story:
1. Interviews: Students interview their characters, a line-up that might include friends, teachers, parents, policy-makers, or university-based researchers in a given field.
2. Scenes: Students capture key events, interactions, activities--perhaps a teacher handing out a standardized test, or a group of friends gossiping in someone's bedroom. A scene should be more than just "background sound." You're looking for a genuine moment your listeners wouldn't otherwise have access to, had you not captured it for them, and it should reveal something meaningful that advances the story. Scenes should do some of the descriptive work for you, so the story's more "show," less "tell."
3. Sound: Students find sounds to give a sense of time and place to the story. They gather long beds of audio, called "ambience," essentially rolling tape of natural sound without saying a word, so they can weave those scene-setting elements throughout their story. Ambience might include the sound of someone's mom frying fish, unzipping a backpack, passing traffic on a city street, or the rush of students spilling into the hallway between classes.
4. Music: Sometimes producers download music that resonates with the themes they're exploring in their stories, to add texture and mood. Check out this resource on fair use and digital rights.
5. Found Audio: Always be on the look-out for pre-existing audio that will help breathe life into your story--e.g., voicemail recordings, old tapes from someone's attic, the pings and bleeps of a child's electronic toy.
Students without access to audio equipment can easily experiment with production by writing down interview notes on paper, and describing key scenes and sounds they would use in their stories.
SCRIPTING AND EDITING:
For radio, these are the steps:
1. Transcribe Materials: All of the materials--the interviews, the scenes, the beds of ambient sound, even the music--are transcribed, or "logged," so they can be organized into an outline. (More advanced students or those with the help of an experienced mentor can often avoid transcribing everything because they can pretty much identify what material they're likely to use and transcribe only that. But this story sensibility takes practice!).
2. Select Strongest Pieces: One of the most important phases in the entire production process is the moment when young people "pick their best clips" - in other words, when they review all of the elements they've collected, and select the bits and pieces they plan to use in their stories. For students working on their first stories, often adult producers sit with them to review raw tape and help identify the best clips, checking sound quality as well as content.
3. Structure Outline: At Youth Radio, we ask students literally to cut and paste the strongest or most relevant two-to-three sentence chunks from each interview and scene, and line them up in a single document. The script for a full feature-length story you're likely to hear on an outlet like National Public Radio might be only one and a half or two pages long, so that means a reporter might use only six or seven "clips" total in an entire piece.
4. Connect & Complete: Once students have picked their best clips, scenes, and sounds, they arrange them in an order that makes sense logically and narratively, and then simply "write around the clips" - in other words, compose their own narration in such a way that:
• Introduces each character and scene
• Makes transitions
• Fills in missing information
• Draws the story to conclusion
Youth Radio reporters use the digital editing software ProTools to "mix" their pieces, recording their own narration, "dumping" all their audio elements onto a computer, and then arranging the audio to match the script. Those without such software, or without the time to use it, can have students "perform" their stories out loud, either playing or acting out tape from the various characters and scenes comprising their narratives (this exercise actually reflects professional practice, as reporters sometimes do exactly this kind of performance with their editors before mixing their stories in the studio).
DISTRIBUTION:
Youth Radio stories air on various local and national outlets, as well as through online channels including our own website, podcasting, and iTunes radio. Particularly with national outlets like NPR, with its audiences that number in the tens of millions, getting a Youth Radio story on the air can entail several rounds of editing with the outlet's show producers. We have achieved this kind of distribution through years of work in the field, networking, and relationship-building.
To be honest, it's not always easy to get stories on the air. And yet, of all people, teachers know that offering access to "real" audiences can be enormously motivating for students, and public release for student work can also influence pressing social, cultural, and policy-level debates at local, regional, and national levels. It will take energy, creativity, determination, and patience, but if you and your students are up for the adventure, we suggest the following:
1. Brainstorm with your students ways to distribute their stories, perhaps through the local public radio affiliate station, the school newspaper, or a community forum.
2. Prepare them for the fact that listeners might not always like or agree with what they hear, and discuss guidelines for dealing with audience response, positive or negative
3. Where appropriate, consider ways to spread the word about student stories to relevant policy-makers, advocates, and providers - for example, sending a young person's commentary about dating violence to the local adolescent health center.
4. And please send your students' stories to Youth Radio. One of our primary roles as a youth media organization is to curate youth voices from across the country, and our website can be an outlet for your students' work.
A NOTE ON SOCIAL MEDIA:
It used to be that we could march through these phases of production one-by-one, but that's not the case anymore. Digital media culture has shifted the order, pacing, and gatekeeping mechanisms that have governed production phases. Conceivably, producers could start anywhere on the above list--e.g., at scripting and editing, by remixing someone else's media rather than gathering their own recordings. Also, distribution is a whole different ball game because of Twitter, Facebook, and other platforms for spreading and "hyping" content among young people's various networked publics. These shifts in the media landscape, though daunting, present a great opportunity for educators interested in shaking up traditional classroom dynamics. Students can bring expertise teachers don't always possess about how to keep media production in step with the way information flows these days between makers and audiences.
INTERVIEW TIPS FROM YOUTH RADIO'S NEWSROOM
When young people are given the chance to frame and pose interesting questions, they "flip the script" on old-school modes of education, in which students are, typically, the ones asked to answer questions, but not to raise them. Interviews also challenge young people to move beyond their assumptions about the topics they care about, and to analyze responses in ways that further their stories and honor their interviewees. Interviews are, essentially, exercises in intellectual curiosity through conversation. Here are some interview tips from Youth Radio reporters.
Getting started:
1. Before you start the interview, make a checklist of the information you absolutely must get from your subject and bring that list with you.
2. Brainstorm the kinds of things that make you feel inspired to disclose aspects of your own life, and try to create those conditions in your interview.
3. Always remember to get permission to use your interviewees' voices and names in your story and to ask for name and age (where appropriate).
4. Let your interviewees know that you'd like to be able to use their answers without hearing your questions, so ask them to answer in full sentences. For example, if you ask, "At what age did you first meet your biological mother?" if they answer, "12," ask them if they'll repeat their answer in such a way that includes the question: i.e., "I met my bio mom for the first time when I was 12 years old."
Getting into it:
1. Start with "easy" questions- ones your subject should feel really comfortable answering, so you can build a rapport. It can be effective to start with general questions, then move to specifics.
2. This one's obvious, but easy to forget: avoid "yes/no" questions! Frame your probes in ways that elicit stories and vivid details. Don't hesitate, at any point, to say, "Can you give me a specific example or memory of what you're talking about?" or "That's really interesting...Can you say a little bit more?" or even, "I'm not sure I understand, can you kind of bring me back to that moment...".
3. Try not to "lead the witness" - in other words, asking questions that reveal your own biases, or making your interviewee feel pressured to answer in a certain way.
4. Even if you have a detailed list of questions, make sure you really listen to your interviewees as they speak, and respond to what you hear, and not only what you came prepared to ask.
5. Think about what you want to reveal about yourself - how you can make the interview feel like a real conversation, and not a grilling (but be careful about speaking "over" your subject - that can make it harder to use the tape).
6. Always a great follow-up question: "And then what happened?" Remember that the best tape comes from characters telling specific stories that bring you into the details of their lives, not articulating generalized positions or simplified points of view.
Finishing up:
1. Review your checklist of crucial information and make sure you covered everything before you say good-bye.
2. At the end of the interview, ask subjects if they have anything to add (that question often yields the most interesting material!), and make sure to get their contact information and ask permission to get in touch again if anything further comes up.
Commentaries are short, conversational first-person essays. Commentators often share experiences that are personally meaningful, perhaps counter-intuitive or surprising, and resonant with larger social themes. They might take a position or express an opinion on a specific issue. In this sense, commentaries don't have to be "objective," but they should take into account opposing points of view (this contested issue of "objectivity" can be a provocative subject of discussion for teachers and students doing commentaries for the first time). The best commentaries aren't political rants or personal diatribes, nor do they stick to generalized observations. Through commentaries, young people articulate perspectives grounded in compelling evidence, which might come in the form of lived experiences, references to research, or bits of dialogue with people they've encountered in their everyday worlds.
1. Commentaries should be 1-2 minutes long (that's about one page single spaced).
2. Write about issues that inspire passion in you. Write from your own experience. You could respond to a school shooting by talking about how you were an outcast and really overlooked by adults in your school, or you could start a commentary about body image by describing a moment when an audience member approached you after a performance and thanked you for showing the world that "us fat people can dance." For example, see Phatty Girl, by Youth Radio's Emily Schmookler.
3. Use concrete examples and stories in your writing. If you are talking about getting along with your parents, tell us specific incidents when your communication worked or broke down; or if you are writing about a political issue, like the war in Iraq, try to give examples, like a young soldier in your community who came home with post-traumatic stress disorder. For example, see Living with PTSD, by Youth Radio's Jesus Bocanegra.
4. Write conversationally. Write like you speak. Read your scripts aloud as you write. Don't just mouth the words. Say it out loud before you write. On your first try, you could sit with someone who can listen to you tell your story and type it out for you to be sure it's conversational. For example, see Slang, by Youth Radio's Sanovia Jackson.
5. Don't be afraid to use humor. Funny lines and topics capture people's attention. For example, see Nutritionist Nightmare, by Youth Radio's Simon Hadley.
6. Think about the rhythm and pacing of the piece. Vary sentence length.
7. Read your commentary out loud to someone else and see if it flows and sounds natural. Underline words you want to emphasize to be sure a listener doesn't miss anything.
Tips for Finding Topics:
1. Check out the newspaper, but look beyond the front page for stories. Some of your best stories are in the back pages, with just a few lines of copy.
2. Find a new angle. Move the story forward. What is the youth angle? Some stories, like federal budget negotiations or corporate corruption scandals, may seem like they have NO youth element, but they do. Think creatively about finding the youth side of the story.
3. Think about how you can cover a story differently from other outlets. Education stories are a perfect example of stories that directly affect youth, but often don't include the perspectives of youth. That's where youth-produced coverage can be unique.
4. Think about your audience. Are you aiming for adults, so your stories often work to explain dimensions of youth culture to older folks? Or are you aiming for other youth? Do you want to address "like-minded" listeners, or convince an audience that might initially be opposed to what you have to say? These questions have a major impact on the topics you choose and how you approach your story.
5. Work creatively with assignments. It's your job to find the angle that best reflects the youth perspective on any story - even one you are asked to cover!
Practice: Pass out newspapers, and ask students to read a headline and then describe how they would transform the article into "their" story.
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