This is the first part of a series of posts written by our production intern, Simone Seiver, as she works with the Life of the Law team this summer and explores the world of podcasting.
Radio has its own language. I learned this in March when I spoke to Nancy Mullane, our executive producer, for the first time. We were brainstorming what I contribute to the podcast. The conversation had an interesting rhythm because of the language barrier we faced. Nancy would say something like, “Do you think you want to do post-production, or production, or are you interested in cutting tape and editing?” Cutting tape… I thought. Am I going to be in a dark room somewhere doing the equivalent of darkroom photography except for radio?
Of course, this wasn’t at all what Nancy was talking about. She was just asking me where in the process of making radio I saw myself—whether it be recording material, or editing it, or helping listeners find it, or all of this. The way that conversation was peppered with industry vocabulary (and a number of definitions kindly provided by Nancy) made me excited to become fluent in this new language.
Every industry has its own speak, jargon, patter, dialect, argot and slang. You know you’ve made strides into that industry when you stop consciously recognizing these idiosyncratic words other people are using (and you yourself are using them, too). This has slowly started happening for me. Weekly production team conference calls Thursday mornings are reminding me less and less of struggling in Spanish classes elementary school and more of my English class last semester in school. This is a very good thing.
Over the next several weeks, I’ll be producing some “two-ways” with interesting people in the legal world. I’ll do my own “graph and sketch” for a piece I want to do on police blotters. I’ll handle my own “post-production” efforts for all of this when I’m done with it.
In other words, I’ll be learning a new language, and how to use better a language I already know.
photo credit: Francesco Basile via photopin cc
