Part 2
Alright, so I have now successful gotten a telephone recorder and joy of joys it actually works.
It’s true I tested it.
Twice.
The next problem was that it is 9 am in the morning - is it too early to ring someone for an interview?
I fiddle around with papers and mulled over my questions for the next 15 minutes before I gave in. Firstly I rang the produce of local Brass Broadway society, thinking he would be most likely to answer. Nothing. Then I ring vocalist Ebony Buckle, voice mail. My last option is Cairns hip hop artists, a male in his early twenties who raps – oh yeah I’m sure he’ll be awake! I ring anyway and what do you know he picks up straight away! Today is going to be a strange day.
He sounds pretty stoked at the prospect of being interviewed and is more then happy to talk about his album, his enthusiasm resulted in some great and honest quotes. I then had to ring his manager to get some photo sent through to accompany the article. Which he did, however he also had another request; he wanted me to send him a copy of the article… before it was printed. Alarm bells instantly rang in my head, remembering how many a lecture had told me to NEVER do this. I am sure it was JCU email address that gave me away. Damn.
I turned to my fellow office employee and asked “Should I send him the article?” suddenly a disembodied voice sternly and rather loudly confirms my suspensions “NO!”
“God?” I wondered.
Oh no, it’s Jane from the other side of the cubical. Phew. I then promptly write to the manager explaining that my sending him the article was unethical and detrimental to my journalistic integrity but assured him that I had represented his artist in a favourable manner. He understood. After completing this article I got a call from Ebony, asking me if we can do the interview at 12:30, which suited me just fine. Problem was though it is 10:30, I have two hours to kill. I spend these 2 hours ringing the Brass Broadway society…every 20 minutes (but to no avail), tweaking the hip hop story, getting a head start on this weeks blog entry (woo) and drinking a huge mug of coffee.
Fortunately 12:30 finally arrived and I called Ebony for the interview. It was obvious that she was nervous. It was one of those interviews where I asked open questions but only got 1 or 2 sentence answers. It wasn’t until 2/3 of the way through the interview that Ebony started to relax a bit more and give more extensive answers. After the interview was over and I was listening to the recording, I had a bit of an epiphany. Phone interviews got nothing on face to face interviews. As this was a profile piece, I had difficult adding colour and personality to the story. I had no idea what ebony looked like, or the environment she lives in. No witty anecdotes about how her mannerisms mirror her vocal harmonies. However, I heard something much worse on that tape…me.
Me going, ummmmmm, ahhhhhh, oh sorry just checking over my questions…. Don’t mind me I’m just writing - whenever there was a long silence. Of course, you would not have to say these things in a face to face interview, she can see that your writing. I think face to face is easier too, you can see who you are talking to, there is eye contact and it is more personal. Telephone interviews on the other hand are colder, and to be honest much shorter. When you make the effort to hall yourself up and go interview someone, you expect to talk for longer then 2 or 3 minutes. Unfortunately though, I don’t have the time to actually conduct face to face interviews they have to be over the phone. So I think I definitely need to get my act together and try and make this work. Luckily I have 10 more weeks to work on that.
By the end of the day I still hadn't made contact with the Townsville Brass Broadway. Oh wells, can't have everything I suppose. At least I got two interviews and stories done today which is more then what happened last week. Week two down, ten more to go.
No comments:
Post a Comment