Ghetto Life 101

I recently listened to the radio piece by radio producer David Isay and two young boys from Chicago, LeAlan Jones and Lloyd Newman, titled "Ghetto Life 101". The piece is done by the two boys carrying around recording equipment for 10 days to capture their lives living on Chicago's South Side, one of the most dangerous housing projects. The piece is "a portrait of poverty and danger and their effects on childhood," as according to SoundPortraits.org.

I found the piece to be very powerful. It was an honest look at the stuff that goes on in the lives of such young boys that have the unfortunate luck to have been born into such a struggling community. However, that is exactly what some people may have felt was exploitative about the piece. These two boys are tools to tell a story and get the honest reaction out of people that may not have been as open with just a regular journalist. But just because the piece was so powerful and successful, does that mean it was exploitative?

I don't really know if I feel that way. Sometimes a journalist has to be creative in order to get real honesty out of the people they want to interview. If they can add to the piece by having the interviewers be a part of the piece itself, then I think, more power to them.

I guess that I believe that these two boys have gained as much from this project creating it as Isay did producing it. Did they get the same recognition? Yes. I even read online that one of the boys is running for Senator now, 20 years after the piece was produced! I definitely think he got something out of the experience. So, vote Jones I guess!!

Newest, and Hopefully Finalized, Interview Idea

This past weekend I spent a lot of time working on my audio interview ideas. I borrowed the Comm Kit from ITDL and kept it with me at all times for both motivation and inspiration. However, I spent the vast majority of my weekend working, which led me to a new idea that I am finally going to keep.

If you happen to know of the book Noise From the Writing Center by Elizabeth H. Boquet, it's a similar idea. I want to do "Noise Inside a Diner". I started thinking of the idea because of Alan Hall's article in Reality Radio titled "Cigarettes and Dance Steps." I was sitting at work, listening to all the sounds in the kitchen and dining room of the diner I work at and realized how interesting it would be to highlight sounds throughout a piece that centers around the chatter from the workers and diners. The diner I work at is currently having a lot of trouble staying afloat and it's affecting the workers and patrons alike. This chatter about the issues and wishes of both groups says a lot about running a successful business and how the current economy is affecting that business.

Do I think this is a terribly interesting idea? Maybe not as much as some of my more controversial and shocking ideas. But it is a story that we don't often here, something that is unique from my other ideas. I also think this new idea has a lot more potential for Big Ideas and is also something I can formulate good questions for.

I would want to maintain the idea of "Noise Inside" by potentially cutting myself out completely and letting the clips of noise, lack of noise, description, and voiced comments from the workers and patrons tell the story. I don't want it to get too analytical with anything like me explaining what the comments mean about business practices and the economy. That would make this much less interesting in my opinion. But by cutting the clips together, I think that they would make the message more thought-provoking.

Is it my best idea ever? Not really. But I like it. And I can do it. And I can hear it in my head. So, I'm gonna do it. Wish me luck!

More on Interviews

So, last night I finally finished my final editing of my peer audio interview about our most embarrassing moments. Yeah, was not fun. Audacity is a pretty interesting editing software, but I still need some work on how to create a piece that I actually like.

For instance, while editing my piece, I quickly learned that I could not add any of my music files because they were no longer working links on my computer. Instead, when I tried to add them in audacity, all I got was some really loud static screeching noises blaring through my headphones. Yeah, not pleasant. Then, to put in breaks, I had to use music sounds I recorded using my computer's internal mic while playing the music on my computer from YouTube! It worked, but was not as pure a sound as I would've liked. Also, I felt that I had limited options for adding sound breaks because of a lack of stored file sounds in Audacity itself. I could "Generate Silence" or some obnoxious monotones, but nothing like a sampling of ring tones type of thing. That would be very helpful to have.

For the editing itself, I got the hang of things fairly quickly and was able to cut and move things, amplify the main voice to minimize the background noise, and found out how to change the speed of the music clips I was adding because at first they were all super speed compared to the rest of my audio. I really need to figure out the best way to record music and my own voice onto Audacity.

So, now that I have finished, I have to say, I hate my piece. I don't think I did very well at all. And also, my own recorded voice at the time of the interview was completely unusable so I'll have to work on that for next time. Unfortunately, it is not exactly the first thing I would have liked to have created for this class, but it's done and due, so I guess it'll just have to do for now. I promise to do better next time.

Now let's just see if I can upload it here for you to listen to....

Nope. Didn't work. I'll have to figure that out I guess....

Interview Ethics: When is it No Longer an Interview?

While doing the readings this week, I couldn't help continually returning to damali ayo's piece "What Did She Just Say?" The piece talks about ayo's unique approach to interviewing and creating audio pieces using footage she gets while secretly taping her subjects during created opportunities for them to talk. In her own words, "creating a situation that offers people an opportunity to be themselves."

So what does this concept of creating interviews, steering them in a way, have to do with my current dilemma of having to interview someone for class? Well, for one, I find the fact that I have to jump right in and find someone interesting to interview in the first four classes very unsettling. It took me a whole semester to work up an idea and the courage the first time. Though I find this class interesting, I did not know that I would have to come out of my quiet, shy writer shell to get a story. With my venting done now, however, I still have to figure out what to do.

Another problem is that everyone I know and find interesting are on Long Island whilst I am here in Philadelphia, working too much to have time or money to go visit these people to get an interview. So, dilemma explained, what am I to do?

That is where ayo's piece comes in. Do I have to formally interview someone for this project, or can I create my interview? Can I structure it to explore a part of society that I find interesting? Because if so, I have some great ideas for that. Not so much for a normal interview though.

How about young mothers? Lower class working young mothers. I seem to know a lot of those. And they have some of the most interesting stories of struggle I've ever heard. I guess this idea would be able to be a regular interview.

But how about confessions of users? I know a lot of those too. But I think things would be more interesting if I just taped them, without really formally interviewing them. I don't know. I guess I still need to give this stuff some serious thought in the next two days, get my idea down so I can ask the right questions in class on Thursday.

Till then, I just want to say, ayo has some pretty interesting ideas about how to get people talking and get to those Big Ideas. Just sayin.....

Occam's Razor

Let me start off with a brief explanation of what Occam's Razor is for those of you out there who don't quite know what it is. Because when first beginning to listen to This American Life's audio piece about it, I had heard the term but never really had it explained. Occam's Razor is basically a principle that states that "the simplest answer is usually the correct one." This means in a little more depth that if you have two or more hypotheses that explain a situation, the simplest one, the one with the least details in explanation, is most likely the one that is most correct. With me so far?

Ok, so based on this small explanation, let me tell you a little bit about the audio piece based on Occam's Razor that was aired on This American Life. The entire piece is titled Family Physics and is about an hour long. It includes a prologue and three acts, the first one being Occam's Razor, which is a 30-minute long segment about 7:30 into the audio stream. Pretty cool story, so go check it out: Occam's Razor.

Basically, the narrator Cris Beam tells a story with voice clips from her story subjects, a family that had one theory about their family and when that theory became no longer adequate, they changed their theory. The original theory: that their first born son was a very dark Italian child, despite being obviously different from his parents and siblings. The reworked theory: that he was actually bi-racial and had a different father, a black man his mother had also been sleeping with when she became pregnant.

So how OR works in this story is that the family was in a sense avoiding the other possibility by sticking with their original theory. No one wanted to brooch the subject and have to come to terms with the reality. They were forcing a theory that was failing. Once they did change their theory though, to the simpler and thus correct theory, their lives began to fall into place. Their simplest explanation finally came to light.

The thing about this story is that Beam is both a prominent narrator and a character in the piece, something that as mentioned in my previous post is a highly debated choice in the multimedia storytelling world. Does it work? Yes. It makes things a little choppy in places, but it gives some quick background and explanations that might have had to be longer if Beam had stayed out of the piece.

So, my personal opinion? I like it. I want to be a part of my pieces if I am a part of them during their creation. You can't cut yourself out completely if you really were there, helping the story happen along in the first place.

To Be or Not To Be....A Narrator

Ok. I know. It's been a few days. My job's got me quite busy and tired all the time. I swear, I'll get the spaced out through the week thing down asap. But for now, you're just gonna have to deal with back-to-back days of posts.

So, today's title. A little corny, but completely appropriate. I've read a lot about the role of the narrator/interviewer in a multimedia story, including audio interviews, video, and audio storytelling. Quite the debate going on out there in multimedia story world.

On the one side, such mentions as "[The Kitchen Sisters] reputation for no narration, which we think of as a sort of ventriloquism - we speak through other people and other people speak through us".

On the other side, "The most interesting stuff usually came [in other people's stories] they interacted with the people in the stories, where there was a back and forth" (Ira Glass); and, "I break the rules of journalism in every paragraph. I write in the first person, and I have not kept any objective distance" (Katie Davis).

Jay Allison also touched on the subject, expressing how he believes that "If you interrupt or overlap your voice with your interviewee’s, you won’t be able to edit yourself out. This will eliminate that sense of the interviewee communicating directly with the listener; instead the listener will be an eavesdropper on your conversation."

But which is the side for me?

I guess I will have to continue with the recent discovery of my own purpose of writing, as developed in my summer class "Writers on Writing." I now look at myself as a postmodernist writer. I like the in-your-face way that I write so that readers know that they're reading. Do I want my readers to lose themselves in my writing? Yes. But only sort of. I still want them to be aware that they are readers. That they are not a character in the story I've created. I want to maintain some of that distance in an effort to really bring to light some of the ideas and thoughts my stories elicit. I want you to know who you are and be able to use that personal perspective to react accordingly.

So, to be or not to be a narrator? To be.

More on Maierson

So I was so occuppied with getting my first blog post done that I kinda realized now that I didn't really express my own opinions about Eric Maierson's piece Three Women. So let me take a moment to do some of that now.

First off, I think Maierson is a very gifted writer. He has written and directed, as well as done some editing on, a few different pieces. One, and my personal favorite, is Three Women. What do I like so much about it? The way it tells a story without needing to say too much. The pictures evoke a multitude of feelings ranging from fear to compassion. The words spoken by the actors are even more powerful. They are easy to hear, but difficult to think about. I'm telling you, go check it out for yourself: Three Women

As for Maierson's other pieces, they cover more of a range. The Party is about speaking the truth to a stranger. His other two pieces are described on his site, but not available to watch. They are a little more on the comedic side.

Also, in my interest search on the man behind the material, I found Maierson's website: ericmaierson.com. On Maierson's site are his blog entries about such things as iFont and other multimedia writers, his television shows, his movies, a list of his awards, his favorite multimedia pieces, Tweets, and various other things. It's quite the detailed site. Again, go check it out!!

Alright, enough about Maierson for now. I just really think that he is one of the interesting multimedia writers I've discovered so far. I hope you enjoy him as well.

I know, def a cutie ;-) JK Eric!!

And so it begins....

Hey classmates! First off, welcome to my blog. I've only ever kept a blog once before and I'm not really sure if anyone actually followed it, so I only hope I can find a way to keep things interesting. Here goes, I guess:

This first blog is about an audio/image multimedia piece I found while perusing the suggested pieces our esteemed professor gave us as a jumping off point. I watched a few that sounded interesting and happened to like both pieces by Eric Maierson, but liked Three Women the most. I like how Maierson created both pieces from a scripted fiction story that explores a reality "readers" may not consider. That's kind of what I do when writing my fiction. I give voice to the people and situations we don't often feel comfortable considering or experiencing.

Three Women is voiced by three different women who vaguely share their personal thoughts about themselves and their lives, which they consider to be insignificant. We see still photographs accompanying the script that also show three women to go with the three voices. I like that this is an abstract story without a tell-tale "typical" plot, but nonetheless it tells a story.

Ok, enough out of me for now I guess. Go check it out for yourselves, it's def something I would recommend:

Three Women by Eric Maierson