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Micro-Local Radio Features: Alan Dein (BBC) and Ronan Kelly (RTÉ)
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4.8 Micro-Local Radio Features: Alan Dein (BBC) and Ronan Kelly (RTÉ)Having noted the existence of studio-based forms of oral history, it may prove instructive to begin to answer Dein’s question (above) by investigating exactly what is gained by the field method of recording actuality. The idea of field-recorded micro-local radio features has also already been raised in the thesis, particularly through reference to the work of Brandon Acton-Bond and Denis Mitchell in Chapter 2 and the work of Tony Schwartz and David Thomson in this chapter. Through the following discussion of the contemporary micro-local capture of actuality by the BBC radio producer and oral historian Alan Dein and the RTÉ producer Ronan Kelly, however, further distinctions will emerge between the work of the radio producer and that of the oral historian; firstly that the radio producer, unlike most oral historians, is habituated to the recording of actuality on location and ‘on the move’. As Alan Dein reflected in an interview with the present author, [Recording] a person in their landscape or environment, that’s what I like the best. I suppose it’s more exciting sometimes, interviewing somebody on the move, in their environment, in their workplace, walking around somewhere…Then they’re responding to the environment…I remember making a programme some years ago called Life on Christmas Street [first broadcast on 25th December 1998]…it was a one-off programme for Xmas, and the idea was based on article that was published in Picture Post magazine in 1946, which was called ‘Life on Christmas St.’…All the interviews were recorded on location…I’m talking to people about their lives… it was all in one take…like a really really long tracking shot…where the camera pans round on the street, and you’re just following the different protagonists and the places they’re involved in…I still called it oral history, because I was still using the methodology where the key thing is to ask people about themselves, who they are, what their backgrounds are, what things mean to them, how they came to do what they do. But…it was an incredible snapshot of that moment in the life of Christmas Street which will be, in 50 years time, as historic as that Picture Post article (Dein 2008: 159). The ability to recording extensively on location has also been utilized by Dein to make the “process of programme-making transparent and real” (Dein, quoted in Liddington 2006: 96); to leave self-reflexive clues about the nature of this process. The BBC feature producer Peter Everett has discussed this impulse of wanting the audience to ‘see the joins’ and to be aware of his ‘authorial stamp’ as a programme-maker. Listeners can gain an understanding that decisions in editing, for example, are conscious and informed by the eye and ear of the programme maker (Everett 1993). The programme The Fire is in Our Hearts (produced by Mark Burman, and broadcast on BBC Radio 4’s Document strand in November 1997) included Alan Dein’s phone call as he attempted to trace a particular former pupil who had written poems for ‘Stepney Words’, a published collection of poems by a class at Sir John Cass School in Stepney, East London, that had kick-started community publishing movement in the 1970s (see Maguire, Mills et al. 1982; Harcup 2009). The raw, telephonic quality of the sound reinforced the genuine astonishment at the other end of the phone line (as would frequently occur in the innovative and conceptual phone-out programme Don’t Hang Up, which is broadcast every Christmas, and also produced by Mark Burman and presented by Dein). Dein’s programme You Must Remember This, broadcast on BBC Radio 4 on 11th June 2006, charted the development of oral history since the 1960s, and featured audio extracts of pre-interview preparation with Harry Landsman, a Jewish resident of the East End. As Harry was blind, Dein talked through the interview process in great detail: For me, some of the programmes I make I like to have a certain transparency, so the listener can understand how it’s put together. A few mic wobbles, walking into someone’s house with the microphone on. Someone asking me what it’s about or why I’m doing what I’m doing. And it’s nice to have that on sometimes. It shows that there is life before and after the interview… (Dein 2008) Because I was making a radio programme at that time, I recorded all that stuff like buzzing the intercom and walking up the stairs to [Harry’s] apartment – and then there’s all the descriptive chatter about what sort of interview it’s going to be. No one would usually ever bother to capture all that on tape. In this case, it helped set up the idea of a journey of discovery – that’s what I think oral history is all about (Dein, quoted in Liddington 2006: 99). The RTÉ producer Ronan Kelly has implemented a similar approach to on-location recording and interviewing for many years, and, even though he is not an oral historian as such, he often spends 4 or 5 hours with each interviewee, even if he is only recording for a 15-minute programme: I know that you get the best stuff from people not just by sitting with them, but from walking around and doing things, and getting them to show you stuff. And the other thing is, [I’ve been] going from quarter-inch tape to longer and cheaper tapes and then flashcards. What I do is get out of the car, and the machine is rolling as soon as I get out of the car. And it means I have a huge amount of editing to do, but it also means I can pick up absolutely everything. So the thing itself is a document (Kelly 2008). Kelly maintained this modus operandi throughout The Terrace, a radio series of fifteen-minute ‘episodes’ broadcast in 2006, based upon the lives of ordinary people in a single terrace street in an unspecified town in Ireland.155 For The Terrace, Kelly wanted to find a Church Street to record in, as there is a Church Street in every town in Ireland, so it has an archetypal or indexical status. Focussing on a single street gave Kelly a microcosmic perspective on the social history within the community.156 For example, Drogheda, the town in which Kelly found his Church Street, is on the River Boyne, which used to be plentiful in fish. Kelly discovered from some residents that the housing estate was built in the 1940s, when there were no cars on the street, as the residents were fairly poor. In those days the fathers of the female residents that Kelly interviewed would go fishing on the river on the weekends and when they returned they would hang fishing nets across the street, on lampposts, to dry them. Interviewing one man gave another insight into local social history, which provided a perspective on trade unionism in the area that counters the simplistic or ‘monolithic’ view of labour movement solidarity in working-class areas: One of the first guys I met was an elderly man walking down to the bus stop. He had worked in a boot factory in Drogheda. His name was Paddy. But he had always wanted to be a carpenter, but he could never get into a carpentry union and have a workshop, even though he had been back to school, and he had studied [carpentry]. He couldn’t break through it because the carpentry union was controlled by families. In Drogheda they have a museum displaying trade union banners, which again is relatively unusual in Ireland. You don’t [usually] have the same folk culture associated with trade unionism that you have in Britain. So in the same town you had the idea of a trade union that supported people through difficult times, but you also had testimony from a man of the trade union movement excluding him from his lifelong work. He had worked in the factories for 50-something years and then started working as a carpenter when he retired [from the factory] and started work as a carpenter doing odd jobs. He never paid taxes on some of the odd jobs, and he didn’t want to say it on the radio in case he’d be chased afterwards… (Kelly 2008). The Terrace is reminiscent of Denis Mitchell’s radio features, in the use of actuality to capture the drift of people’s thoughts and preoccupations, and in the way that Kelly showcases the diversity of stories in a local constituency, and reveals some of the secrets hidden behind its curtains and in forgotten alleyways. In The Terrace Kelly made economical use of narration to set the scene, and, unlike Mitchell he often included his own questions and responses in the interviews. This helps to give the listener a sense of his developing friendships with the residents of the street across the series, and it also provides some self-deprecating humour: Kelly: Frances won’t talk to me ‘cos she’s in her pyjamas. Well no, that’s not quite true. She won’t talk to me ‘cos it’s too early in the day for a big ‘eedjat’ from RTÉ to come shoving a microphone in her face… …Kelly (quizzical): “Is that your own baby?” Sheila: “Yes, yeah, miracles do happen…” (Kelly 2006). Through meeting the residents and recording their thoughts, Kelly gained an understanding of how the rise and fall of the ‘Celtic Tiger’ economy had affected their lives, and since making these programmes Kelly has also gained an understanding into how the programmes captured moments in people’s lives which already provide rich information about their immediate socio-economic context at that time. Even the minutiae of daily life provided clues.157 For example, different indicators of economic or social status suited different times and different generations: I was interviewing a brother and a sister who talked of how their mother would put up clothes on a washing line every day at 7 o’clock in the morning, and she’d have all the children’s shoes polished for school at the same time. And this woman had about 13 children. Her line of washing out in the back garden was a sign to the woman across the road that she was on top of [things]…on top of her house…of her 13 children. It’s fascinating to see these tiny little things... (Kelly 2008) Download 1.05 Mb. Share with your friends:
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