Last year I was commissioned by RDU 98.5FM in Christchurch to produce and mix a radio documentary series called A Flat City.
As you may have heard... we've had a bit of seismic activity over the past couple of years, and the goal of this series was to capture a snapshot of what was going on before the quakes, what went on during the events, and also get a sense of what people think will happen next.
The piece of audio above is a "best of" type episode, which gives you a taste of what the series is like, however 9 of the other 12, 30 minute episodes focus on a specific genre of music each, with the final 3 episodes telling the stories of the sound engineers, venues, and RDU's own struggle to survive. The episodes also have relevant music woven throughout.
One challenge in creating these episodes was that from the start we decided not to use any voice over or narrator. We wanted the story to be told 'straight from the horses mouth', more like an audio montage. This took the series away from that classic radio documentary format into a more abstract style, with the only way to carry the story along being clever editing. Definitely a challenge!
On a side note I think that although I'm very proud of the result, I think that most local listeners, if not national listeners have been so over saturated with the earthquakes, whether it be first hand or through the news, that they just don't really want to hear about it anymore. I totally get that. But one thing I've always kept in my mind throughout the process was how interesting this will be in 20, 50 or 100 years time. And so just the fact that we've documented all these thoughts and emotions is fantastic in it's own right! But for anyone who does listen now (and a lot of people have done) the series definitely takes you on an honest trip where you'll hear a lot of stories you never heard in the news!
You can listen to the rest of the series on RDU's Mixcloud page.