Blast

Week 4: Rachel is… wanting to come out of the darkened room now, please.

It’s 2am on Saturday morning, and I’ve spent the last seven hours poring over the rushes from the Underage Festival last week. It seems mad now that on the day we were so eager to film everything and anything. Three hours of footage is a lot to cut down into ten minutes, and it takes even longer if you keep having to leave the room because of the nausea that grips you when forced to watch video proof that you’re a bit of a prat. You know the first time you listen to your voice on a tape, and you realise with horror what everyone else hears when you open your mouth? Film is a hundred, million times worse.

After some much-needed sleep, I head to the office for the BBC Introducing… show. This week I’m voicing the Gigging and Clubbing guide again, and also get the chance to make my presence known in the studio, to report back about the Underage Festival.

Tristan & The Troubadours

We’re joined by three of Tristan and the Troubadours’ eight million members, who arrive sporting fabulous, gravity-defying haircuts and winning smiles, and are utterly charming. Meanwhile, Tim and Dave have an impromptu dance-off, in which Tim does a spectacular Britney Spears impression but still manages to lose. I’m now campaigning to get a webcam put in the radio studio.

By Sunday night, I’ve tallied up about thirty hours cutting the festival video, and all the interviews that were so exciting to me last week are fast becoming the stuff of nightmares. Editing is weird at the best of times, because it’s basically just sitting in a darkened room on your own. When it also involves you watching yourself do things that seemed like a good idea at the time life becomes very bizarre. I’ve started wondering whether everything I do is being scrutinised by a third person somewhere, sitting in a dark edit suite, pondering over how best to cut out that unnecessary pause before I brush my teeth, and paste over the join with a cutaway shot of my bathroom.

The Verdict

Highs: Putting the first, short, rough cut of the video on Facebook for all and sundry to see.

Sighs: Any longer at the computer and my eyes will start to bleed.

Week 3: Rachel is… addicted to festivals and questions

I spent the weekend at the Big Chill festival, so Tuesday is painfully knackering, despite my having crawled into work a full four hours late (err, sorry BBC.) The news that Blast have picked me and Frankie (Kent) to report on the Underage Festival in London on Friday is a mixed blessing. On the one hand, yay, another festival! On the other, oh God, I hope my legs start working again by then.

In the meantime, I fire off a few emails, and engage in a debate with Tim over the benefits of long hair on men (growing it for a hair transplant for a bald friend, using it to practice for a world hair-braiding competition, going undercover in a hippie commune etc). The boys also ask me to write and voice the Gigging and Clubbing Guide for the Introducing… show, but I don’t get round to it until after they’ve gone home. As I’m sat in the radio booth alone, I know that they won’t listen to it until tomorrow, which gives me a weird sense of talking to them as if I’m from the future, and I can’t resist pointing it out on the tape. Funnily enough, that bit seems to have been left off the final edit.

On Friday I meet Frankie and Blast panel member Shandice in East London and head over to the Underage Festival. The Backstage area is like a who’s who of young talent: Bombay Bicycle Club, Dizzee Rascal, Poppy & The Jezebels, Maccabees, Foals, The Gallows, Kid Harpoon – oh, and did I mention Dizzee Rascal?!

We manage to blag interviews with most of the main players, including a lovely chat with Yannis from local boys Foals. We meet so many acts that I’m finding it difficult to say anything without ending with a question. A lot of the bands are surprising: The Gallows hang around with us for at least ten minutes after the interview, discussing the merits of tattoos (they reckon the elbows hurt the most) and casually strumming a crystal-covered guitar. Bombay Bicycle Club start off full of attitude, but then admit that their most rock-n-roll moment involves stealing teabags. I leave them promising to do better in future.

The Dizzee Rascal interview is probably the most epic – mainly because we’ve been waiting three hours to get it. In the meantime, I’ve written my interview questions on my hand in case I forget them, so on all the footage it looks like I’ve either failed to wash that much recently, or I have a very strange tattoo. When I finally get to speak to him, it takes place crammed onto a bus with a huge crowd of industry pros there to witness my totally professional (ahem) interview technique of nervy gabbling and the odd high-pitched laugh.

It must have worked though, because at the end he gives me a high-five and a hug. And a blast of euphoria that lasts all the way home.

The Verdict:

Highs: Getting to ask Dizzee Rascal to sing me a little tune.

Sighs: If only he had, my day would have been complete.

Week 2: Rachel is… a numpty. Repeatedly.

This week Summer Screen is the big story to be taking over Oxford. I spend five hours at the filmmaking workshops in Bicester, and am having a ball. We end up with some brilliant finished material, as well as enough comedy ‘outtake’ moments to fill an entire DVD. Highlights include the girls getting stuck in a fence in the middle of an Evil Chase (“I don’t think ancient evil sorceress tyrants say ‘ow’,” says Dave,) and another actor running smack into the camera.

I’m also feeling much more enlightened than I expected. I now know how long it takes to film five minutes of Doctor Who footage (a week, apparently) and what a McGuffin is (the central device that drives along the plot in a film, if you must know.)

When I get home, I turn my attention to a semi-secret Blast project we’ve got in the pipeline which involves my car. It means having to ring up my insurance company to check if they would mind me doing it, and I’m surprised to find myself having what I think is a really rather lovely chat with the man on the other end of the phone.

Nattering away to the poor man!

Unfortunately, he seems to think I am slightly mad and actually can’t stop laughing whilst trying to talk to me. This may be because:

a) I have just told him that driving makes me go a bit mental – not good considering he is my insurance man

b) I have admitted that sometimes I sing along to the music they put you on hold to, and then find myself still singing when the operator comes back on the line and it’s embarrassing because you sound like a bit of a numpty, which I think is a valid argument for not putting people on hold. But unfortunately, having that conversation in itself makes me sound like a bit of a numpty. And I wasn’t even singing along.

So, if your name’s James, and you sound a bit Welsh, then hello and thank you for the aforementioned Lovely Chat. Sorry if I scared you.

The verdict

Highs: The McGuffin fact is a brilliant bit of pub trivia… and it didn’t come off the back page of Nuts magazine.

Sighs: I have now enforced my numpty status by revealing the gibberish I chat on the phone to call-centre staff. And by using the word numpty five times.

Week 1: Rachel is… wondering if you can overdose on being Healthy and Safe

It’s my first day at BBC Oxford, and I arrive raring to go (and ridiculously, insanely early). I’m naively expecting to be able to rock up to my desk and start writing, but I haven’t factored in the massive exercise that is health and safety training.

This involves watching a two-hour long video starring Michael Buerk and some tigers (yes, really.) There’s also a checklist of precautions, almost all of which can be rephrased as ‘don’t break anything,’ ‘don’t kill anyone,’ or ‘use your common sense.’ So far, so good…

It’s not until day two that it really hits me. I’m writing for the Beeb! The first ‘article’ is actually just an ‘all about me’ piece, which is worse than a UCAS personal statement, and at first I don’t know where to start. But when it finally goes up on the web, I have to resist the temptation to tell everyone I know. (I fail miserably and the link goes straight on my facebook page. Oops.)

The rest of the week I’m not in the office, but that doesn’t stop me sending my poor colleagues emails every ten minutes, or ringing up everyone I can think of asking them for an interview. The tactic works, though, and I find myself agreeing to pull out of a netball tournament with my ex-workmates (sorry ladies!) so I can rush off to Soho for coffee with a lovely girl from dance troupe Ockham’s Razor. Oh dear. Week one, and it looks like I’ve already been well and truly devoured by the BBC.

The verdict

Highs: My first articles have appeared on the site. Ohmygodohmygodohmygod I’ve been published!

Sighs: The health and safety video. “If you’re exposed to noise that causes pain in your ears, you should get away from it as quickly as you can,” Michael Buerk says at one point. Brilliant, I feel like replying. Does that mean I can switch you off?

Week 0: Rachel is… wishing she’d got the recipe for the BBC cocktail

It’s 10am on Thursday morning. I’m sitting in the dark, in a room full of people I don’t know, having just got very lost and cross on the M4. I’m wearing a badge with my name on it. We’re being talked through video clips of all the wonderful things Blast reporters did last year, and I’m beginning to feel a bit scared.

Welcome to the BBC Blast induction – a two-day training course in Bristol designed to jump-start the 2008 team with a whole bundle of different workshops and seminars. After the intro, we’re divided into groups which we’ll stay in for the rest of the course. Mine is full of lovely chatterboxes: once the girls bound over and say ‘Hi! We’re your group,’ none of us stop talking until Friday afternoon. What was I worried about?

The workshops are completely knackering, although there does seem to be an endless supply of coffee breaks and mars bars (clearly the secret to working at the Beeb is to maintain some kind of permanent sugar/caffeine high.) Day one includes a newsroom tour, writing for the web, and a gruelling session on audience trust.

We're not having a Blast at all

After all that, you’d have thought we’d just want to sleep. No chance! At dinner everyone lets their hair down and ends up heading out to a waterfront bar for mojitos. A few of the girls persuade the barman to make a special BBC (“Berry Berry Creamy,” apparently) cocktail, which tastes like raspberry ripple ice-cream. I could definitely get used to this.

By day two we’ve all ditched our name badges, and are really getting into the swing of things. At an interview workshop, we get completely carried away slating a guy who rudely interrupts our session, before finding out he’s only an actor illustrating a point about first impressions. Oops. Things get even better in photography, when our tutor zooms in on a hideous close-up of my eye to show everyone how much I need to tweeze my brows. Err… thanks!

By Friday afternoon, it seems like we’ve been here much longer than two days. I’ve got quite attached to the other Blastees, and I think everyone feels the same – there’s already talk of Facebook groups and Blast reunions. The workshops have been a massive plus too, and I feel much better prepared now that I know a bit more about what I’ll be doing.

So... here I come, Oxford! And I’m ready for anything. Except perhaps eating any more mars bars.

The verdict

Highs: The interview skills session was brilliant.

Sighs: My eyebrows need plucking, apparently!