I had a great time working on this piece about Recycling Coordinator Rob Townsend. I spent two and a half hours following him around last week, during which he took me to the arboretum to see the composting site and to the pig farm where he deposits leftover food from the caf. He's chatty: I think I have over three hours of audio, which will be interesting to edit when I set up my slideshow.
Right now the piece's most glaring error is that I've only talked to Rob himself. This is mostly a product of timing--I wasn't able to follow him until last week. So far I have two interviews set up with other K College staff members that he said know him well and one with a girl who works on his recycling staff. Hopefully those will give me some more insight into his personality.
My biggest question has to do with content: is it interesting? I have so much stuff that I struggled with what to leave in and what to cut out. My goal is to weave a story about his background in with the story of his current life at work, but I'm not sure if I got too bogged down in background and didn't give a clear enough picture of the recycling program. I also have an awkward break between the fourth to last paragraph and the rest of them. Hopefully interviewing other people will help me fill in some gaps.
A big thing I'd like to add: Rob's love of art. He's showing me his art books on Thursday, and he refers to it as his real passion. He majored in art when he went to Western and still does it now. He says it's the first way he communicated with his parents since he couldn't yet talk when he was really little. I'm trying to figure out where to plug this in because I think it's really important to his personality.
Also, it's going to be really long if I don't cut things and I add in the art thing and the other interview information. Problematic! Let me know if you have any suggestions on what to cut out.
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