Lyndon Saunders, who graduated in 2000, offers an insight into the world of radio documentary making. Love the passion, Lyndon!

Hello. When Suzy asked me to contribute something for her new radio blog, I started writing the following with the intention of a bit of an industry overview but it’s ended up as an immersive, personal account of how intimate an experience producing radio documentaries is.  So, in the end, I decided to overtly answer the question ‘what’s so special about making radio?’ from my own point of view.  Sorry if that results in something a little bit self-obsessed but the beauty of making radio is that it’s really personal. I’ve presumed, if you’re reading this, then you’re likely to be an aspiring producer with an interest or at least a little flirtation with making radio documentaries. I hope it’s relevant stuff.

I’m currently a TV producer but have produced BBC radio documentaries for Radio 1, 1Xtra, 5 live, Radio 4 and World Service for a combined six years at different points during my career.  As anyone who started out in radio but has moved on would most likely tell you, ‘I would go back to it in a heartbeat’.  Not that I don’t love making telly but radio remains this special, intimate, immediate and cerebral way of communicating which is why, in a world of whiz-bang content and diverse platforms, the oldest form of AV broadcasting is still smashing it.

There is something almost primal and instinctive about only using sound to tell stories. Stand in a wood at 3am, close your eyes and your mind will soon provide the visceral pictures for every rustle, creak and crack you hear. Radio, for me then, is the refined, evolved version of that.  Your neural synapses fire like crazy, far more than when you’re being fed TV pictures. I absolutely love the fact that people listening to speech radio have to really think about what they’re hearing.  They have to picture and imagine what’s unfolding in sound. That means the best radio producers out there think so carefully and relish in meticulously painting a picture of places and people through sound, in a way that immerses listeners and tells them an unfolding story the way you – as producer – want it to unfold.  It’s a really powerful and evocative thing; both making it and listening to it.

I’ve never been complacent about making radio documentaries because doing it is quite some privilege and means – albeit briefly – you live a thousand lives. What other career do you get let in to so many worlds and see so many things?  I’ve entered a gang-ridden Chicago southside towerblock with DJ Spoony, flanked by the Police Department’s Tactical Armed Gang Response Unit. I managed to win a cat and mouse chase by battling through a super typhoon in the mountain region of the Philippines to bag an interview with world boxing icon and renowned elusive interviewee Manny Pacquiao. And, in my very own Almost Famous road trip, I’ve been on tour with a British band throughout The States to make a Radio 1 rockumentary.  It’s certainly an incredibly agile, exciting and multi-skilled career.  You get to see the world, meet amazing people, see incredible things and, above all, tell people’s stories.

I think we all get in to this business because we love creating and communicating. At its simplest, this is all story telling.  I’ve never felt so in control of my own creativity and in charge of my programme’s destiny as I have when making radio programmes. (TV is much more a case of being made by many, rather than a few.)  Logistics and affordability play a part in that.  Radio documentaries require very little kit or manpower – a teeny tiny digital audio recorder and the light edition of Pro Tools or similar editing software and you’re away.  In its simplest form you go out, record interviews, record sounds, disappear in to a low-lit room, cut it all together on computer and emerge with a finished programme. Simple? Well, anyone can try their hand at being a radio docs producer but, of course, the bit you can’t buy is the flair for doing it well.  Some of that comes through learning, some from growing experience and some from gut instinct.

Radio doc production is a really solo gig, you largely work on your own or, at most, with one or two other people.  And I absolutely love that because when something is finished and it goes out, it really is all your work and that’s an unbelievably fulfilling and rewarding experience.  I have to concede there’s also a bit (okay, quite a lot) of ego attached to programme making like this but, sod it, that’s there in most of us and so scratching that particular itch is a real buzz.

That said, no creative relationship is without its ups and downs (the relationship being me and my programme).  Every programme I’ve ever made where I’m truly happy when I hear it go out on air, I have, at some point in the process, hated it, shouted at it, wanted a divorce from it (sometimes all the way through making the bloody thing!)  And every time I ride this painful roller coaster, I say ‘never again, get a real job, why do this to yourself?!’  I even avoid touching the programme for a while, for genuine fear of it being rubbish.  I don’t think I’m particularly alone in that and I know that’s a fear many fellow producers also suffer each time. I specifically remember my radio lecturer at Stirling and a stand-out career mentor of mine, Adam Fowler (who’s a brilliant, sensitive and human radio producer worth checking out) balancing his teaching work at the same time as making docs for BBC Radio 4 and Radio Scotland. There were periods of time where he’d give us such dedicated input and help with our coursework that we wondered how he ever found time to make his radio programmes. Gradually, it dawned on us that these amazing periods of contact were nearly always times when he had a programme he should have been editing at home but didn’t dare touch! Creative temperament is a crazy thing.

So, I’d say the downside of radio documentaries being ‘all yours’ is that, at certain points, it can also leave you feeling incredibly naked, exposed and alone!  You have to really ask yourself ‘is that the kind of creative pain I want to endure?’ because I can assure you, it is a genuine pain, and it’s rare that making these kinds of programmes will be offset by huge financial reward!  When things aren’t going so well, either in getting the right people to talk, having the right recording access during production or in struggling to shape the sound of a doc (on location or in the studio when editing) it can feel like the hardest thing in the world. Largely because it’s such a solitary bubble. Somehow though, you have to find a personal resilience to just keep going, keep plugging away, keep on solving the problems. My solution is a mixture of getting on with it and going for lots of walks

When the pressure’s building as the delivery deadline fast approaches and, even though I know it’s probably the wrong approach, I tinker, whittle and chip away little bits of my programme, rather than getting orderly, organised and savage with my audio. (After all, I’m a programme producer, not someone making something on a pre-planned production line.)  Then, as the pressure really builds and the deadline REALLY approaches, something clicks and, with no option but to make a programme, I get in to what I guess athletes call ‘the zone’ and I can start to see the wood for the trees.  I see a structure emerge and get a sense of where things should go.  The way this thing flows suddenly reveals itself to me. (And, funnily enough, a phrase used by another former Stirling lecturer of mine Leslie Mitchell always rings loudly: “Kill your babies” i.e. It’s a half an hour programme, of course you love the ninety minute version with all those ‘special moments’ that you’ve currently got on the edit timeline but, no one else will, so make some bloody decisions and get this thing in shape!)  “Yes Leslie!”
Therein lies a very good tip too. When I’m struggling with something, as long as it’s in some sort of listenable shape, I get someone fresh to listen to it and I sit next to them while they do (in silence). You often don’t even need to hear what they think of it, you can feel in yourself when a section is too long, or when it’s the wrong bit of interview you’ve used. You hear it through their ears as opposed to your biased, over-involved ones. It always, always helps.
And when all that’s been done… there you have it. Your programme. As complicated and painful as that. Ready to be fine polished, balanced, mastered and, best of all, transmitted and listened to as was intended.

 So, having been on the brink of quitting and retraining to be an accountant so many times, there is always a point at the end of the programme where I fall in love with it again. (I’m terrible with numbers anyway so accountancy really isn’t an option.)  The dark, thunderous production cloud lifts, I feel the weight removed from my shoulders and find myself emerging back in to the real world again. And then, I feel bereft, I miss it terribly and want to do it all over again! It really is a labour of love. There are no two ways about it, you have to love it to do it.
Will I do it forever? Probably not! It’s stimulating but it’s also very tiring. However, when I do finally stop and get that ‘real job’, what I have to look back on in terms of programmes made, life experiences, travelling done, inspiring people met, situations I’ve been in (good and bad), it will 100% feel like time extremely well spent.
Should you do it? I guess if you’ve read the good and bad bits here and kept thinking ‘yes, yes, yes’, then perhaps you should – you nutter! The only way to truly know if this sort of twisted, abusive, yet ultimately rewarding relationship is for you, get out there and make something for yourself.  You don’t have to be commissioned. This doesn’t have to be for broadcast.  The kit is cheap and accessible and there’s a world of ways to broadcast via the likes of Soundcloud and promote through blogs and social media.  So find something or someone interesting, go off, record them and tell a story with just spoken word and creative sound. Also, give yourself an accountable deadline where you promise it to someone by a certain date and you’ll be embarrassed if you don’t meet it. This process doesn’t work without a deadline! Going through it yourself is the only way you’ll truly find out and, in doing so, you’ll hopefully create yourself a genuinely impressive calling card to go knocking on industry doors in the process
Enjoy!

Lyndon – @lyndonlarge on Twitter

Lyndon Saunders is a Class of 2000 Stirling Film and Media Studies graduate and has been a producer of radio, television and digital media for fourteen years.  In radio he’s won two Radio Academy Gold Awards and has been lucky enough to travel the Globe making programmes on things as diverse as Hip-hop and homophobia, the aftermath of 9/11 in NYC, North Sea fishing quotas, the rise of the BNP and a rock-doc biopic on Florence Welch of Florence and The Machine.  In television, he’s made Dragons’ Den, Strictly Come Dancing and numerous other BBC and ITV factual series. He’s currently based at Media City UK in Manchester, working as development producer for Shiver (www.shiver.tv) and lives with his wife Abby, daughter Megan and baby son Dylan.