Andrew Siggs Interview 27th March

Location: NFU Office

Weather: None

Equipment

·      Marantz

·      K416

Podcast Hypothesis

What is Country life? It seems that only the people within the close nit communities know. Like everything, country life has a particular stigma surrounding it, isolation, tweed jackets and blood sports. This is what I want to subvert. I want to make the unknown, known. Invite my listeners to understand more about what happens in the countryside. To give an insight into a live that is opposite to their own, but to which they can relate.

Topics that I would like to cover

-       What growing up in the country is like and the community that comes with it.

-       The role of women within the farming community and how it has changed over time?

-       What affect the Ban has had on country life, if any?

-       An outline about ‘The Hunt’ as a community and its role in country life.

Outline Questions

-       Please could you briefly outline your background in relation to hunting and the countryside community? i.e. Childhood, previous jobs/positions

-       How long have you been hunting for?

-       What is your current role within the community (if not already covered)?

-       Can you describe the relation between the Hunt with the Farming community, how they are connected and support one another?

-       To what is seen as a patriarchal society, how has women’s roles changed within it and would you say that women now have an equal role to men?

Outcome

The interview with Andrew went really well, I gained a lot of material that will very useful for my podcast, especially the insight he gave me about the role of women in the farming society. His outlook was on the situation was diplomatic but he also gave his own opinion on the subject as well as the NFU’s opinion. Technically the recording went perfectly.

Chasing Love by M Macias

I really enjoyed the start of this podcast, with the use of the different levels of voices and and sounds. As well as the truth behind what there were saying, the sound lulled you into wanting to listen to the rest of the podcast. It made the listener interested in what was going to be said next. Also by using a few different voices copying each other, it gave a sense of 'wholeness', and willed you to believe what was being said was real.

This podcast has made me thing about the hook of my own podcasts and how I will use sounds to draw in my listeners. Unlike 'Chasing Love' my podcast will use the contrast of light and harsh sounds to bring pace to it. I think that this will help me entrance the listener, and help them hear from my perspective.

For the Blood is Life

Produced by Julia DeBruicker

"In June, as you’ll hear, everyone in rural Appalachia is out — the birds, the
hounds, the children from school — and the mountains are at their most luxurious.
Summer’s alchemy has a way of disguising how lean the coalfields of eastern Kentucky
can feel when what you’re trying to do is make a living. Summer emphasizes fullness,
possibility, a resurrection of sorts.
This piece chronicles one family doing their part for that resurrection. In a place centered hungrily and for too long on the harvest of timber and coal, the Fraziers are carving out a new way of making a living that doesn’t destroy the homeplace, and even chimes into its imaginative renewal. Their small-scale meat goat operation aligns the Fraziers with a whole movement of rural families cobbling visionary livelihoods into new economies by marrying local knowledge with the global tide. Their work is sustainable and rooted. What they mine is ingenuity"

The family slaughter the goats the way that Jesus was crucified, They have a very extreme view on the way they kill the goats, as well as this the  podcast informs the listen about goat farming and meat. Although I don't believe that Fox hunting is extreme, others do. This Podcasts manages to humanise the the way the family kill the goats even though visually it may seem inhumane. This is what I aim to do. I am to make, something that many people who know little about it think is inhumane, the way of the countryside and something that is necessary. 

http://transom.org/2004/blood-is-life-julia-debruicker/

Podcast Progress

Unfortunately I am having a bit of difficulty managing to get hold of people within the hunt who I can interview. However I have called in a few favours with some of my local Hunting friends who have passed on a few numbers which I will attempt.

The first Is Mark Bycroft, Mark is the Huntsman of the Old Surrey and Burstow Hunt, and runs the kennels in Felbridge. Unfortunately Mark has had quite a bit of Trouble with Activists and has recently been caught on camera lashing out at a masked saboteur, but there are two sides to every story.

The second is Andrew Siggs, Andrew is a senior agent of the NFU, he has been hunting since he was six, and his mother ran a riding school, where my Mum learnt to ride.

Hildegard Westerkamp

“Imagine radio that, instead of numbing us to sounds, strengthens our imagination and creativity; instead of manipulating us into faster work and more purchasing, it inspires us to invent; instead of overloading us with irrelevant information and fatiguing us, it refreshes our acoustic sensitivity; instead of moving us to ignore thoughts and surroundings, it stimulates listening” (Westerkamp; 2002:89)

"The majority of her compositional output deals with aspects of the acoustic environment: with urban, rural or wilderness soundscapes, with the voices of children, men and women, with noise or silence, music and media sounds, or with the sounds of different cultures, and so on. She has composed film soundtracks, sound documents for radio and has produced and hosted radio programs such as Soundwalking, and Musica Nova on Vancouver Co-operative Radio."

'From the Indian Sound Journal' is one of Westerkamps recording in which she recorded snapshots of places she had visited in India. It takes the listener to locations they have never been or seen and creates the atmosphere and makes an unfamiliar place, familiar through sound. This is something that I want to capture within my podcast; Fox hunting is something very little people know about or have truly experienced, I want my podcast to inform my listeners and create sounds and atmosphere that they can link to the topic. 

19/02/14 Interview Nic Wheeler Huntsman of Coakham Bloodhounds

Location: The Kennels, Silverwicks Farm

Weather: Very Windy 

Equipment

·      Marantz

·      K6

·      Clip Mic

·      Radio Mic

Interview questions

·      What is the history of the Bloodhounds?

·      How is clean boot hunting different from Fox hunting?

·      Has the ban affected your business?

·      What are your experiences with ‘Anti’s’

·      What is the life of the hounds?

·      How would you describe country life?

Outcome

Although I really enjoyed visiting the Bloodhounds and learning about drag hunting, unfortunately while interviewing him, it seems that there isn’t much of a story behind clean boot. Apart from the life of a hound there’s not much else to be said about Bloodhounds. However, it wasn’t a complete waste of time, listening back to the footage it seems that the wind was too strong for the wind making the tracks noisy, which means that next time I will need pop shields for the microphones to give them some protection from the wind, Also the interviewing was good practice for the next time when it counts.

Power Point