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I think there are two vital ingredients when it comes to successful documentary making: instinct for what makes a story and secondly, the crucial skill of knowing how to make use of chance and opportunity. You need a plan, but you need to know when it’s right to change it completely. Would You Believe, or WYB (2005–10), was well established before I arrived in the office as series producer in July 2007. I was uneasy at first, particularly about the religious side of the work (niggling atheism perhaps), but I wanted to tell stories on television as I had done on RTÉ radio in previous years and here was a ready-made vehicle. I had to keep the programme’s reputation up, but I didn’t have the burden of starting from scratch. I had the challenge of pictures and the feeling that anyone coming from radio is assumed to be ‘blind’. But I ended up staying for five years. I learned, made mistakes and of course had to take my fair share of comment about the programmes. Faith matters got a grip of me. Why I was chosen to be series producer is to do with the internal RTÉ process of assigning producers – moving ‘pieces on a chessboard’, as it has often been described. I had something of a track record, having worked in RTÉ since 1979. But they were placing trust in me too. Fr Dermod McCarthy, editor of Religious Programmes at the time, was my immediate boss. He gave wise counsel and encouragement in equal measure. The first thing you have to remember when you go to work on a series like this is that you’re governed by a ‘three-week turnaround’. This is limiting, but it’s also great discipline in your working life.You had to shoot in week one, view and plan the next show in week two; edit and do the script and voice-over in week three. And then you were back on the road. And as series producer you had to ‘manage’ the rest of the operation, as well as doing your shift. So to the work. When you went out to shoot there was no room for slippage – you had to come back with a programme. And when you went into editing on a Monday, you had to finish by Friday. Team playing becomes important. The crews and editors over the years were the people who had to put up with both our good and bad decisions, our good calls and ‘fudges’. 77 The Faith Factor, Skill and Chance Five years in Would You Believe JULIAN VIGNOLES Lighting cameramen as they are termed in RTÉ, including Breffni Byrne, Kieran Slyne, Ronan Lee or Tom Curran, could readily deliver a visual angle that you mightn’t even have thought of. This was how they contributed and although in some ways ‘neutral observers’ with no official editorial role, I always felt they were our sternest and most useful critics. One could tell by their reaction on a shoot if the story was working. There would be a hand gesture or a whisper in your ear, or a silence at the meal break that could cause a change of tack. The sound recordists, Alan Swaine, Eddie Duffy or Cormac Duffy, had a similar influence. You have to try to lead by example of course. My first idea, to start that 1997 season, was that we’d go to Our Lady’s Island near Carnsore Point for the annual Marian pilgrimage. ‘We’ll film the pilgrims arriving,’ I said, ‘the procession, the island, the wildlife . . . We’ll get Liam Griffin (then manager of the Wexford hurlers) and we’ll have it all done in two days.’ Sure enough we did. We also got commentary from Bishop Brendan Comiskey of Ferns (his reputation in those years as yet untarnished). In editing, I had the gritty idea of cutting the procession to U2 singing ‘Wake Up Dead Man’, a robust song of faith, let’s say, that starts with ‘Jesus, Jesus help me/I’m alone in this world/And a f––d up world it is too . . .’ There was narrative in this programme, a beginning, middle and end, which I liked: buses arriving in the morning . . . preparation for the mass . . . the procession itself . . . reflections as the sun set . . . We developed some guiding principles in the team: What’s the story? Where’s the faith element? Are they good talkers? Is there conflict...

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