Βι¶ΉΤΌΕΔ

Sunday 27 July

As part of the Blast Reporters scheme we have to do two days a week here at the Βι¶ΉΤΌΕΔ, but me and Suzanne have been given the opportunity to work on Raw Talent which goes out on a Sunday night on Βι¶ΉΤΌΕΔ Radio Humberside.

Bearing in mind that I came to university up in Hull and have been travelling back and forth between here and Birmingham for four years, Sunday's journey up is the worst I've ever had. Literally everything that could have gone wrong went wrong and a journey that should have taken three hours turns into a five hour trek. Actually it's hardly a trek seeing as most of the time was spent sat on a train but you'll come to notice I'm prone to exaggeration.

Needless to say I turn up slightly flustered and straight away I'm thrown into the confusing world of wires and technical shenanigans. (I've since been told that putting up mic stands doesn't count as a technical job.)

In preparation for the interview that I'm doing with tonight's session band, The Cherry Cobb Cartel, we track down a NAGRA (a piece of equipment used for recording audio) and I get a 30 second crash course in how to use it. I make sure I give the impression that I'm taking it all in my stride but previous experience tells me there's no way it can be as simple to use as it looks.

TCCC live on Raw Talent before my interview

After TCCC finish their live session, I dive in with with my questions and end up chatting to them for about 20 minutes. How I'll turn into a worthy online interview is anyone's guess at this point!

By the way, it would seem that a NAGRA is that easy to use.

Monday 28 July

When I get in I have to wait for someone to show me how to get my interview off the NAGRA and onto the computer where I can listen to it and type it up.

In the meantime I fire off my questions to Pulled Apart By Horses, the Leeds band I'm interviewing by e-mail, then lose myself in the internet doing a bit of research for the gig guide to go out on next Sunday's Raw Talent, before spending a bit of time tweaking my personal introduction that I wrote during the second half of last week. It's a busy morning!

I get an e-mail from Pulled Apart By Horses with one half of their answers and apparently the rest will follow shortly. With the deadline looming tomorrow, I breathe a massive sigh of relief.

After lunch I get some help to get the interview onto the computer, and the rest of the afternoon consists of me sitting at my desk with headphones on trying to work out who said what and typing it all up. The only interruption to my frantic keyboard tapping is the second half of my e-mail interview responses coming through which makes me very happy indeed.

By the end of the day I'm about halfway through typing up last night's interview and a bit anxious as to how I'm going to managed to pull both interviews together by the end of tomorrow. What a cliffhanger.

Tuesday 29 July

The pressure is on.

When I wake up my head is ringing with "D-Day for interviews! Deadlines, deadlines, deadlines!" on a continuous loop in my head.

Battling it out with CMS and Photoshop

I get in and decide to go over what I typed up yesterday before throwing myself back into the task of transcribing the interview I did on Sunday. Thankfully it all makes sense.

Rather unsurprisingly, the morning flies by and when lunch time comes, I've got it all typed up ready for some heavy editing.

Thankfully, this doesn't take me too long and so I decide that it is time to venture into CMS (the system we use to get our stories on the internet). Unfortunately, it would seem that all the training we got less than two weeks ago has long left my brain so it takes me a while to acclimatise but in the end it's relatively painless.

When it comes to the images though I'm at a complete loss. I ring Rachael down in Birmingham who is producing the Blast Reporters project and she uses her technological wizardry to temporarily take over my computer. To be honest it's a bit eerie, but very helpful. She guides me through Photoshop, showing me how to edit photos down to the right size, put borders on and all that jazz.

I spend the last couple of hours of the day sifting through photos of the two bands and using Photoshop like a pro. (I'm dubious about that actually, but I can do what I have to without any problems which makes me a pro in my eyes!) I give the articles a final proof read before printing them off and leaving them on our mentor's desk. Mission accomplished.