Wallowing in the Muck is Fun!

Ok, I didn't really wallow in the muck for this story...but one of the CARP program volunteers said that is why he joined the program and I thought it was a great quote. Anyways, this week I completed team story number 4. Right of the bat, let me just say that this week's team story went much smoother than the others. The story pitch went well, as we were not told that we needed more information or that we had to re-pitch completely. Shannon and I were able to get in contact with quite a few sources on friday afternoon and set up all of our interviews for monday. Although we had some equipment troubles on Monday morning (two marantz's we took out did not work), we were able to reschedule our interview for later that day. On monday evening we went to the Columbia Aquatic Restoration Project instructional class and talked to program directors, the horticulturist, the volunteer coordinator, and volunteers, both experienced and unexperienced. Everybody was very helpful and happy to answer any questions we had. With all of our interviews done by monday night, we had the rest of the week free to work on the script. This turned out to be a good thing, because the script needed a lot of work. With Karen's guidance, Shannon and I must have re-written the script about 6 or 7 times, each time improving on it and expanding it. When shannon and I voiced and edited the approved script the audio piece ended up being almost 6 and a half minutes. At the last hour we asked Karen to listen to the piece and she made suggestions for shortening it, which I think greatly improved our piece.

Shannon and I did a great job getting nat sound for this piece, a component that many other of my audio pieces have lacked in the past. I think it really added a lot to the story because it made the piece much more engaging. I also learned a lot about writing for the radio and using more descriptive terms. When talking about the CARP class, Karen made the great suggestion that we should describe what type of attire the people in the class were wearing. This added more visual writing to our story and again made it more interesting to listen to. Armed with the knowledge I gained during this week's story project, I think I will be able to turn out much better stories in the future