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2013-03-20T14:40:43+00:00

In search of the New York Bee Man - listen to the Radio 4 afternoon docu-drama, The Manhattan Bee Testimonials, from 27 March 2013.

NY Walk sign covered in bees

To be honest, as a documentary maker going to another country to record stories, it's normally pretty scary. Will the contributors give you what you want? Will the story 'work'? It's even more scary when you're making a programme about someone who may not exist.

Mark is a Brooklyn chef where the bee-man has long been used as a story to scare children.

I first heard about the Manhattan Bee Man from the writer, Sebastian Baczkiewicz who found out about him from Tom Waits. According to the story, this guy lives with 250,000 bees in his apartment and is completely oblivious to the discomfort. I too was perplexed. And yet when you tell the anecdote to New Yorkers, they find it believable, hilarious and all too often, familiar.

Manhattan - New York

Our brief was to go there and find him, or at least, find people who have heard of him and record them. Their voices would appear in the programme, and their testimonies would inform the arc of the narrative, or something… Our lovely exec, Polly Thomas told us to follow our hunches, which led us to Hell's Kitchen, a psychic's parlour, a record shop, a poetry church, a farmers market, the oldest brothel on the island, Otto's Shrunken Head, Stuyvesant Town, the Double Down Saloon, and lots of other places you'll hear in this piece. We also paid a visit to Beth Israel hospital.

Cooper, a musician lives in Harlem, where he claims to know the Bee-man's family.

This is the story of the search for the Manhattan Bee Man. It's also about Alphabet City, and the truly amazing people who live and have lived there. Enjoy.

We visited Central Park to find anyone who had heard of the mysterious bee man.

Listen to The Manhattan Bee Testimonials
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2013-02-18T09:50:44+00:00

Editor's note: You can listen to Sebastian Baczkiewicz's fantasy series Pilgrim from Thursday 21 February.

Pilgrim

Harnessing the fantasy
One of the great pleasures of making Pilgrim is meeting the challenges that Sebastian (Baczkiewicz, the writer) presents us with. We love moments in the scripts that say things like 'the dragon lands on the roof' or 'she suddenly speaks with the voice of the drowned congregation' but these are a lot easier to type than to realise!
In this series we've had the challenges of putting a man on a burning horse and galloping it through a clearing, creating a baby that is in fact a repulsive ancient earth spirit, and crafting a suitable climax with a hundred crows in the middle of a lake.
What does a giant sound like?
In part three, we had to find a way of making 'the Dreamer', a huge giant that sleeps, imprisoned, in a sea cave. The giant is waking up and, in the climactic scene, comes fully and dangerously awake. This is tricky to do. It's difficult to convey large variations of scale on radio.

Pilgrim: The Dreamer awakes.

Then there's the question of what a waking giant sounds like - especially one that has no language. And how do the other actors in the scene respond to a dangerous giant that - and I'm sorry if this is disappointing - isn't actually in the scene with them">Paul Hilton discuss William Palmer

2010-09-23T15:38:25+00:00

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00tt5hv

Editor's note: Marc Beeby is Co-Producer of Radio 4's dark, myth-inspired drama series Pilgrim. He's been keeping a production diary. And it has a happy ending - SB.

The cast is blessed by two more extraordinary actors: Jamie Foreman, who has taken time out from developing a film to play Puck for us, and Anna Wing. Anna gets about very well under her own steam, but we've arranged a wheelchair for her for the recording. If we need to hear her footsteps, Ali Craig, the Spot Studio Manager will do them for her. She's playing the spirit of an ancient matrimonial well, and relishes every line.

From an effects point of view, this isn't a particularly difficult episode. We've only got to hoist someone magically into the air, organise a brutal attack by a faerie dog, and set off on a Wild Hunt headed by the mad Hazelbury. Hazelbury's been great fun to do. Sean Baker has obviously really enjoyed playing him (Why isn't he in episode 3, eh?). He appears very suddenly here, mounted on his horse. Sean stands on a chair to distance himself from the mic and contorts himself as he speaks to simulate the movement and effort of someone on a horse. As he does this, Ali works in sync with him, wrestling with a real saddle and bridle arrangement as an accompaniment. When we add a recording of a restless horse, it sounds great.

But this is a hard episode to do. It's both tragic and comic. Jessica, who's directing, does a brilliant job of finding the right balance and tone. Fortunately, there's something about the world of these plays and the atmosphere they create that encourages the actors to immerse themselves. They want to play, to experiment, to take risks. As directors we couldn't ask for more.

All of a sudden, it's done. There's nothing more to record, no more magic to weave. We all feel a bit bereft to be leaving this world. It's been so interesting, so challenging, such fun. The hope, of course, is that people will enjoy listening to the programmes as much as we've enjoyed making them.

And with that we race, en bloc, to the pub.

Marc Beeby is Co-Producer of Pilgrim

Listen to the fourth and final episode of Pilgrim, series two on the Radio 4 web site.
Read Marc's other blog posts about the series.
Jessica Dromgoole, who co-produced Pilgrim, has written for the Radio 4 blog before.
Marc Beeby made a lovely video to promote the series which you can see on the Radio 4 Facebook page.
The picture, WOOF!, is by Tom Conger and is used under licence.

2010-09-15T08:51:12+00:00

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00tj82m

Editor's note: Marc Beeby is Co-Producer of Radio 4's dark, myth-inspired drama series Pilgrim. He's keeping a production diary. Here's part three - SB.

A difficult start to episode three. One of our actors has been forced to drop out for personal reasons. Fortunately, Claire Price, who was in episode one is free and agrees to do it, but can only manage one of the two days, so the recording schedule is tight. Fortunately, she's so marvellous we get through what we have to do with no problem.

This is a really interesting episode to make for slightly different reasons to the usual. There's a lot to acting in radio. You've got to think about your character - what they're like, how they sound - you need to listen to what other characters say to you and respond accordingly, you've got to find something imaginative to do with the director's sometimes baffling instructions, you need to know where you are in relation to the mic, how loud you need to be, when you need to move and, of course, you mustn't make a noise when you turn over the pages of your script! And all this happens incredibly quickly.

In this episode we've got three young actors doing their first professional radio jobs, all doing important parts. Understandably, they're a bit nervous. But one of the great things about making radio plays is that, more often than not, experienced actors are wonderfully willing to help their younger colleagues in all sorts of ways. This is definitely the case here. Paul, for instance, has a scene where he not only helps the young actor by talking about the characters and the play as a whole, he also, during the recording, demonstrates tremendous acting generosity in his timing, his non-verbal reactions and the way he sets his lines up - all of which give his young colleague something to work with. In other words, he helps him be better.

So while the acting more or less takes care of itself, we can deal with how to turn a lake into something malevolent, and how to create an under the lake palace. Most of this we'll construct when we get into the editing and can add effects (there's a recording of water dripping in Wookey Hole that is really useful!). The trick in the studio is to try and get the actors to do things that will work well with the effects you have in mind. And this needs imagination on everyone's part.

So, if you want to show a character being irresistibly drawn into a lake, it's not enough to put on the sound of someone splashing about, we've also got to hear the effort in an actor's voice as they wade into the water. If we want the lake to emit something that knocks a character over, they're going to have to react to an imaginary blow, fall over, recover etc. And all with no lake, no water, no evil entity. Apart from the director.

Marc Beeby is Co-Producer of Pilgrim

Listen to episode three of Pilgrim, series two on the Radio 4 web site.
Read Marc's other blog posts about the series.
Jessica Dromgoole, who co-produced Pilgrim, has written for the Radio 4 blog before.
Marc Beeby made a lovely video to promote the series which you can see on the Radio 4 Facebook page.
The picture, Misty Lake, panoramic, is by Matt Wilson and is used under licence.

2010-09-07T10:24:23+00:00

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00tmlh6

Editor's note: Marc Beeby is Co-Producer of Radio 4's dark, myth-inspired drama series Pilgrim. He's keeping a production diary. Here's part two - SB.

We begin the recording of episode 2. This is a very different world from episode one - more urban, more obviously modern, touching on concerns like consumerism and absurd wealth. So the sound is different. The language and the acting are edgier, there's a lot more traffic in the mix. It's great fun catching up with some really contemporary music to include in the programme. Looks like Lady Gaga, Jamie T and Regina Spektor will all make the final cut. A thousand year-old hero does battle with Lady Gaga. Only one winner.

We've got three really good young actors in this episode: Stuart McLoughlin, Sam Alexander and Iain Batchelor. Stuart is playing the King of the Greyfolk's son who, before he discovered his power, thought he was a postman called Ray Norris. So he's got a pretty big journey - from decent ordinary Ray, to psychotic stock-broking faerie. It's a tricky acting task. The hard bit is not overplaying the madness of the character. Somehow he manages to be thoroughly unpleasant and to make us laugh a lot.

There is a great showdown towards the end of the play. Pilgrim confronts Ray in an enormous crumbling hotel. To do this, we open up all the partitions in the studio to make one huge room. Pete Ringrose, our Studio manager, then puts up 5 microphones at different points which means that the actors can use the whole space. Pete's fingers fly over the fader controls as he attempts to get the balance right. It's a great moment. The acoustic sounds fantastic. Sam Dale, playing Ray's foster father is really moving in this scene, and Paul Hilton has a speech which made me think for a moment that the reason he's so good in the part is because he really is 900 years old.

Marc Beeby is Co-Producer of Pilgrim

Listen to episode two of Pilgrim, series two, this afternoon at 1415 and, for seven days afterwards, on the Radio 4 web site.
Read Marc's blog post about Pilgrim, episode one and all the posts about the series.
Jessica Dromgoole, who co-produced Pilgrim, has written for the Radio 4 blog before.
Marc Beeby made a lovely video to promote the series which you can see on the Radio 4 Facebook page.
The picture shows the Ruined Overlook Mountain Hotel in Woodstock, New York. It's by Miss K and is used under licence.

2010-08-31T11:36:59+00:00

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00tj82h

Editor's note: today we start a four-part series of posts about a chilling fantasy drama called Pilgrim which you can hear in the Afternoon Play slot starting today at 1415 and for the following three weeks. Producer Marc Beeby has been keeping a production diary - SB

To the drama studio in Broadcasting House for the first day of eight recording a new series of Pilgrim. Co-producer Jessica Dromgoole, the writer Sebastian Baczkiewicz and I are really excited to be making another series about poor, cursed William Palmer. We think we learnt a lot from making the first series and we're all very pleased to be re-entering this strange world with new stories that feel so tight and original. We're also delighted we've got such a good cast together. In addition to the incomparable Paul Hilton as our hero, we've also managed to get Claire Price, Luke Treadaway, Jamie Foreman, Judy Parfitt, Bill Gaunt and the redoubtable Anna Wing, still magnificent at 94!

The read through of the first episode goes well, although the world of Pilgrim needs a bit of explaining to some of the cast who haven't heard the first series. It can be a bit difficult getting your head round the hero being the best part of a thousand years old, or the idea that the person you thought was your grandfather is actually a malevolent faerie responsible for letting a whole church full of people drown during the Great Flood of 1757.

The cast are all so experienced and so good the recording is pretty straightforward and goes well. But we have two big technical challenges in this ep. The first is to make one of the characters suddenly speak with the collective voice of a 100 (drowned) people. What does this sound like? None of us knows. Easy to type this in a script, less easy to realise. We get the whole cast to speak the lines in chorus. Then we get them to whisper the lines. At the same time we experiment with different sorts of effect and echo. One thing we all agree on: we want any moments of magic in this series to sound organic - to sound as though they come from nature, rather than signalling them with, say, tinkly music or zappy electronics. Some of the and echo effects we try sound a bit manufactured. They won't do. We'll have to see what we can make of this when it comes to the editing.

Our other technical challenge is that two of the characters actually drown on dry land, with no water present (it's magic, you see), while another character is talking. This is tricky. In the end we decide to record the drowning character separately and then combine them with the speaking character in the edit. Jude Akuwudike is brilliant. He throws himself into it, spitting out great volumes of water, gargling and gurgling and thrashing about on the floor as if his life depended on it. Which I suppose it did. At the end of the take he gets a round of applause from us all. He deserves it. He is brilliant. He is also soaked.

Marc Beeby is Co-Producer of Pilgrim

Listen to episode one of Pilgrim, series two, this afternoon at 1415 and, for seven days afterwards, on the Radio 4 web site.
Jessica Dromgoole, who co-produced Pilgrim, has written for the Radio 4 blog before.
Marc Beeby made a lovely video to promote the series which you can see on the Radio 4 Facebook page.
The picture shows Lessingham Church in Norfolk and is by Steve Bowbrick