INTERVIEWEE
Ian Wallace – A psychologist and media dream expert.
He is a best-selling author with books based upon dreams. He has appeared on BBC Radio 2 promoting his books and he has just recently released a new book which he is going on to promote in America.
After phoning Ian via his press number & then ringing several days later to confirm the interview, we recorded a 24 minute Skype semi-structured interview early in the morning on March 5th, and asked him different questions regarding his work into dreams & his own theories. He was very helpful and his answers were very interesting and relevant to our factual piece.
Questions we based the interview on:
* What got you interested in the topic of dreams & why?
* Taking your psychological approach, why do we dream?
* What are the most common dreams that people come to you about?
* What does ‘……..’ (this) dream mean?
* Can we control our dreams – how?
INTERVIEWEE
Anthony Bloxham – A psychology graduate from the University of Lincoln.
Bloxham wrote his dissertation on dreams and their relationship with external stimuli. After contacting Anthony via email, we Skyped him on 17th March for 15 minutes and asked him a variety of different questions. We researched him beforehand to find some interesting facts about him, for example the moment that got him interested in the topic, and carried out some research into lucid dreaming which we went on to talk about in our interview with him. This meant that we were able to control the interview. He was very engaged in our topic of conversation and seemed to know a lot about this topic.
Bloxham also went on to tell us about the music that he creates which aims to relax people and send them to sleep.
The link below is his music & it is called ‘The sleepers night journey’
https://thegreatschizm.bandcamp.com/album/the-sleepers-night-journey
NARRATOR
We chose to have a female voice as our narrator to juxtapose, and stand out, from the majority of male voices that we had so that the listener could distinguish who was speaking. Our narrator, Diane Charlesworth, is a lecturer at the University of Lincoln. Diane was very easy to contact, through email & in person, & was willing to help on numerous occassions for we had to re-record the narration following afew minor changes to the script. We chose Diane as our narrator because she has a very calming and soothing voice which would create the relaxing atmosphere that we wanted for our factual piece. Diane is also a very good talker & fits into the target audience of BBC Radio 4 so would be relevant to the listener.
GILLIAN ELLIS
Towards the end of our project we felt that Dream Clouds was lacking some content in the form of a contributor. Due to the trouble we had in finding another willing expert in the field to help us out, ideally we wanted a historian to find out about the history of dreams in art/literature, we decided to carry out a short interview with an ‘ordinary person’ who was interested in dreams & experiences a fair few their self. Although not planned & left slightly till the last minute, this proved to be a nice contrast in oppose to the experts we already had.
SLEEP DIARY CONTRIBUTORS
As a component part of Dream Clouds, & a slightly more creative one, we recorded a sleep Diary. Each of us both recorded a parent when we went home for Easter over the period of a week. On the first day we asked our parent to introduce themselves & give their age. Then, every morning, we recorded them telling us whether or not they remember dreaming & if they did, what it was about & how it made them feel. This proved very interesting & even when a dream could not be remembered, we tried to gather more content by asking why they think it was that they couldn’t remember – disturbed sleep maybe. The two contributors for this were Stephen Ellis & Julie Girgensons.
VOX POPS
When out & about recording vox pops we made sure to target people in the 40-60 age category as to appeal to the listeners of BBC Radio 4. We tried to gain a mix of male & female voices. We based the vox pops on asking people about a particular dream that they can remember for we felt that this would get the most entertaining responses!
UNSUCCESSFUL CONTACTS
Here is a list of all the companies/individuals that we contacted for our piece but whom were unavailable/unwilling to help us out. Dependent on the situation & which was most plausible, we used over the phone methods, email or visited them in person to ask for their help. For most cases we went through the media/press release contacts. Despite these being unsuccessful, most people did get back to us & explained why they could not help but wished us luck with our projects. We also used these contacts to gain further ones – for example Simon Durrant put us on to his fellow lecturer, also the module co-ordinator of the Sleep & Dreaming module, Patrick Bourke.
– London Sleep Centre
– BMI Health Care Lincoln
– Finn Pollard (Historian & Lecturer at University of Lincoln)
– Simon Durrant (Psychologist & Lecturer at University of Lincoln)
– Patrick Bourke (Psychologist & Lecturer at University of Lincoln)
– Josie Long (for narration)
– Respiratory & Support Sleep Centre in Cambridge
– Joanna Huntingdon (Senior Lecturer at University of Lincoln, College of History & Heritage)