Last Month Coady Consultants made significant progress in the way our training is delivered by recording some audio tracks and asking the trainees to respond to them. While this sort of thing is not unknown, it is the first time the company has tried something like this and we really were going out on a limb in order to make it work. Here’s how it all happened:

"Reflective In The Studio"

One of our clients has us involved with a project called Dignity At Work, where if somebody is having a problem at work with, for instance, their colleagues, or procedures that don’t fit their comfortable work patterns, they can call a Dignity At Work advisor who can advise on what to do, which procedures to follow, who to talk too etc. The project has been live for several months now, and though it has been useful when it has been used, the feedback that we received from our training sessions gave the impression that the team were becoming disillusioned with the lack of calls they were receiving. It is difficult, therefore, for development as an advisor to come with experience, so the group meets up every so often, typically 3-4 months, to discuss progress and how to move forward to deliver a better service. In response to this, Coady Consultants took the step of devising a way to deliver some training that would give the team some experience and knowledge of dealing with issues that might arise in their role.

The initial idea was to conduct the training in the form of a ‘role-play’ scenario; however this was not well received. Role play is a challenge which not all the members of the team were willing to accept, and it would be difficult to construe what was happening in the role play as a ‘realistic scenario.’ John Dooner then came up with the idea of doing it as an audio recording, and called me in to a meeting room to brainstorm the idea…

The project started off with John suggesting that I write ‘radio playlet’ scripts for the audio tracks that eventually became the sound project. This was something I was more than happy to take on; creative writing is something I really enjoy doing! Then we brainstormed ideas on how we might get these scripts in to a presentable form for delivering training. The suggestions went from recording it into a mobile phone – not a popular one for presentation – to hiring actors, recording studios, equipment, engineers and doing a massive production job. I must admit at this point I was feeling somewhat incredulous about all this; it sounded like a great idea but it also sounded like one of those things that sounds great when you’re talking about it, but when it comes down to actually doing it the whole thing becomes too mad, breaks down around you and you just get on with the mundane activities that keep your life ticking over. But then again, through my experience as a musician I’ve had experience in dealing with recording studios, I know some actors, or at least some people who could do it, and as I have said, I enjoy writing… there’s no reason why it shouldn’t work. So I took on the project, and threw myself in to what became one of the most challenging and enjoyable experiences of my employment.

The first step was to write the scripts. My brief was to come up with several different ways of how not to answer a call that you might get as a DAW Advisor, and a couple of good ones as well. We had chosen to base the tracks on a true story of a long-running piece of work we were in the process of completing. We changed the names and places, but I was writing about real things and real people with sensitive issues. We were always going to do this; it lends an extra layer of plausibility to the end result. But as with any piece of creative writing, it’s not going to work without some semblance of a plan, and I had to keep in mind that everything that happens in a call – what is said, how it is said, why, how it all ends etc – happens for a reason. I therefore set about coming up with a few scenarios for the complainant, Emily, based on four points during her sorry tale where she might have called a DAW advisor, if she had the opportunity. I did the same thing for scenarios that somebody who works in an office might find themselves in which might be reflected in their mood and how they deal with the call, e.g. the end of a long day, just come out of a disciplinary hearing, in the middle of a meeting, bright and enthusiastic. It was then a case of matching the two separate scenarios together, and writing the scripts around that.

The actual writing was easy after the initial planning stage. The fact that I have met the people on whom this story was based and know quite a bit about them meant that it was not hard to deduce what might be said and how an advisor might respond. One point discussed in the initial meeting that I was eager to get across was the fact that some people may be struggling with quite a complex set of emotions, and would have to make a terrific effort to convince themselves that it is worthwhile making a call. What that person doesn’t want is to be told that the advisor is too busy to talk to them, or that they think their problem is petty and below their attention. This was a matter that came up in discussions with the actors I eventually hired and the team to whom we delivered the training; the issues that Emily was calling with do seem quite petty and spiteful, playground stuff that shouldn’t really have found it’s way in to work. And yes, it was all that and more – but at Coady Consultants we feel that the fact that Emily had to deal with these problems, which also included a troubled personal history, on her own with little or no help from her employers, made a significant contribution to the damage it eventually caused.

Incidentally, one of the scripts was actually written about half an hour before the first and only rehearsal the actors had! This was due to some communication difficulties; my scripts had highlighted most of the pitfalls that DAW advisors might fall in to but not all, and it took a while before I was informed of what I had missed. Bearing in mind that I did not know from the outset exactly what ground to cover, getting 6 out of 7 correct is not bad at all, but I’d left out the idea of over-promising, so when I finally found this out I had to come up with a script for it very quickly. However, this wasn’t a problem; I came up with a generic script for Emily and an enthusiastic response from her DAW advisor and all was sorted out.

The next step was to hire three actors; a significant challenge. I could, had I wanted to, have found some booking agents and hired out professionals to do the job. A number of things stopped me from doing this, not least of which money. While I had been given no specific budget to work to, I knew roughly how much money we were making from the job itself, and I guessed that I wouldn’t be allowed to throw money around indiscriminately. Also, it was the first time I had tried to do something like this and I didn’t want to hire professional actors to do a job that I’m doing at – not an amateur level, but I would prefer if my actors came in with no expectations that I expect to fulfil. So I had to find my actors elsewhere. The plan was to go for Universities and Colleges; I’m all for giving young performers a chance and they wouldn’t necessarily be above working for a comparatively small amount of money.

The first one was easy enough: My old friend Katie Saunders, who I know to have a huge amount of talent anyway, had recently completed a degree in Drama at Aberystwyth University. Knowing the problems that many graduates find in looking for work after their degree, I guessed she would have no problem with taking on the role of Emily. I did inform her about exactly what had happened with Emily and why to enable her to get in to the role – but not before asking for a confidentiality agreement, remember we’re dealing with real people here!

Katie: Ready to record!

Kate actually found the next person: her old friend Guy Oliver, who I understand has also completed a similar degree and was very interested in the role as the DAW Advisor. John also asked me to find someone to play the part of a female DAW Advisor, and for this one I spoke to Andy Nicholls at Dudley College, asking if he had any Performing Arts students who would be interested in the role. A few days later I got a phone call from a young lady called Gabrielle Thomas, and the following week I drafted her in to the project after someone else pulled out of the role.

Guy, the right Guy for the role?

Finding the studio wasn’t difficult, but it was harder work than it should have been. I spent some time looking at websites for various studios to see about how much it would cost and whether it was equipped for purpose. I thanked my lucky stars that I’m working in an era where such information is available online; in the past I would either have had to make many phone calls and visits to find this sort of thing out, or book a studio and hope for the best having no idea what I was getting myself in to when I walk through the door! I narrowed it down to two candidates who fit the requirements, and chose the one closer to the Wolverhampton area where the actors and I live. Unfortunately they didn’t answer their phone once in six days, so I eventually went with Robannas in Birmingham, who were more than happy to have our business!

Robannas Studios-Birmingham: Professional and plenty of parking!

I then got the actors together for a rehearsal. I don’t know whether a rehearsal is usual in this sort of thing, but I got the idea from watching the DVD extras to Family Guy of all things. The voice actors all sit around a table with copies of the script and read out their parts as they come along. It was possible that the actors could have read their parts of the script in the studio without ever meeting one another. However, because of the way I am used to working with musicians, I am used to an environment where everybody contributes, so what you eventually hear is the combination of voices and scripts that we just wouldn’t have got by working individually. If there was sufficient time, money and inclination, I might have tried to arrange matters to take this idea forward. However, for this project, it was absolutely crucial that the actors had an idea of what the conversation with their counterparts was supposed to sound like, and I think we achieved that. In hindsight, I could have arranged it a little better – nobody knew where the office was, including me, so we were a bit late in getting started, I’d forgotten to print a script off for myself and ended up sharing Guys, and I’d had no lunch so I was starving hungry - but it served its purpose and it’s a step that I’m very glad we took.

The recording itself was the following Friday. That actually went quite smoothly. The three actors conducted themselves with great professionalism and gave stunning performances. I had over-booked the actors slightly; I had given them two hours each to record their parts but in practice most of it was done in less than an hour, and Guy managed his scripts in 30 minutes. That meant that there was a lot of downtime in between actors, however the engineer Slawek used this to our advantage by chopping up the separate lines which actually saved us a lot of time later. John turned up at some point to see what was going on; the actors had left by then but he filmed the inside of the studio to show people what we were doing.

The only slight problem we encountered was that we had no ambient background track to use. This was something that simply hadn’t occurred to me while preparing for the project, and I ended up spending a significant amount of time hunting around the net for an appropriate sound recording. It didn’t help that I couldn’t get any sound out of my laptop either; I need a new one! The one we went with – simply called ‘Post Office’ – wasn’t ideal; it was a lot of echoey noise that was not really representative of the environment we were trying to emulate, but Slawek tweaked it a little bit, and put a few sound effects built in to his computer onto the track as well to make a fairly convincing backing track.

The mixing took a long time; Slawek unfortunately hadn’t heard what the scripts were supposed to sound like before we recorded them so we spent a lot of time working together to make sure all the lines were in the right order. It was a long and arduous process but one that was one hundred percent necessary. It turned out that we needed some extra time anyway just to finish it off and master it; I had no problem with this as we had worked very hard in the day and it was worth the extra money to walk away with something we could be certain was the finished product.

I must also give an honorary mention to another friend Sam Draisey, who wrote and performed the introductory music for the CD. It was certainly no worse than most of the tracks available online for the same money, better than many, and quite well written given the fact that my mind went blank every time he asked me what sort of artists he wanted the track to sound like. (For future reference, Massive Attack would be magnificent!)

We were delighted with how the CD turned out in the end; however there are always things you would do differently next time, so here are some developmental points for me for when we do another one:

More time to do the mixing would be my first priority. Whether that means booking the actors for less time, or booking the studio for more time, we need more time to use the material we have. When we recorded the actors we did about four or five takes of each track. The procedure then would be to choose the best bits of each track and use them in the final mix. That wasn’t really possible for a couple of reasons, time being an important one; we ended up using the first take for near enough all of them, and it was only when I happened to remember that they performed one or two lines better in the other takes that those takes got used. This is a shame because I do remember the actors performing generally better on some of the other takes. The knock-on effect of not having that backing track ready to begin with was not catastrophic but it did cost us. Because I spent most of the recording searching the net, I couldn’t be anywhere near as attentive while the actors were recording, so I couldn’t really be methodical in deciding which of the takes to use in the final mix; the first time I really listened to any of them was when we were mixing. There wouldn’t have been much we could have done anyway because of the time constraints, but it’s a step I would like to have taken.