Quarantine FM Content


As I mentioned in my last post, we began using our time in Lockdown to adapt and work creatively. As we saw the way things were moving forward with the Coronavirus we bought a Vocal Booth to record remotely and both Tom & I signed up to a Voiceover site to do ad hoc work. After a short time we were asked to present ‘Children’s Corner’ on new Irish radio station Quarantine FM:

Over the course of producing this new show, I felt I’d enhanced my skills and started to get to grips with remote recording and editing software. For ‘Children’s Corner’ Tom and I created content with the focus being on high energy games and a large section focused on a ‘theme’- like Under the Sea or Antarctica! We added in fun facts to educate about the topic and then the show culminated in a story involving the places we’d talked about. Although we had a vague outline of the segments and the storyline, most of this was just diving in and inventing characters and accents as we went along. As actors who have both worked in children’s theatre previously, this was quite an easy shift for us and enjoyable creatively!

After a few weeks, however, the Children’s corner segment was cancelled as the user base of the station shifted and was much more within ages past the 15 + bracket. We pitched a new show and very quickly had to adapt and make it happen! We committed to presenting a show five times a week on the news and current events but were to make it snappy, funny and full of interviews.

I certainly can’t pretend this was an easy transition! Going from producing two half hour segments a week to five hours of content per week with underscoring, interviews, features and comedy was a huge ramp up! However, I’ve begun to feel that I’m growing so much more confident with the software and editing, which I couldn’t do at all just two months ago. Our style had to change to be a little more relaxed, satirical  and sarcastic to appeal to the adults rather than children, so this was a shift. We also had to keep segments quite short and add some lighter features so that the show didn’t become a straight-laced news hour, as that can be quite heavy and was not the aim of ‘The No Filter Show’

In terms of content, the segments are planned in advance but we’ve found that we need to do as many interviews as we can over the weekend when we have the time and then edit and place them in to the shows the evening before. This was we can keep the headlines and up to date news for the morning of the show and finish and send the completed episode by our deadline of 2pm for broadcast at 5pm. We’re definitely both getting in to the pattern and it’s becoming easier as we develop a process for our new show.

I was most definitely not expecting to delve so quickly in to the world of radio in the midst of this bizarre situation of a worldwide pandemic, but as I’ve said many times on my blog before, making your own work and taking control is the best way to forge forward as a performer. We’ve now been made and credited as Producers of the show and we couldn’t be more proud!

Have a listen!

The No Filter Show:
https://soundcloud.com/thomas-william-cove/sets/the-no-filter-show-with-laura

Children’s Corner back catalogue: https://soundcloud.com/thomas-william-cove/sets/childrens-corner-with-laura

Quarantine FM Website:  http://quarantinefm.ie/our-team/


Comments

  1. ElizabethApril 29, 2020 at 5:38 PM

    Congrats on the new show! I just gave it a listen. It's great to see so much adapting and creativity coming out of this time.

    ReplyDelete

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