Third Coast Conference, Chicago

I’ve been dreaming about this one for a while and I finally made it to the Third Coast Conference in Chicago- an incredible 3 day festival for radio producers and people passionate about great audio storytelling. Heaven.

The weekend was packed with talks and workshops led by US public radio rock stars and international guests, culminating in some mind exploding audio inspiration. One of the stand outs for me was listening to Joe Richman (Radio Diaries), Brooke Gladstone (On the Media), Roman Mars (99% Invisible) and Andrea Selenzi (Why oh Why) talk ethics and audio storytelling in the session ‘Journalism and Storytelling: Frenemies’. It was super interesting to hear how different producers balance creating sound rich and entertaining narratives, with keeping true to personal stories and their context. This session is now up at the Third Coast website.

I also loved ‘Leave No Trace’ with David Isay and Mark Garofalo from StoryCorps. They had some great insights about how to capture the essentials of someone’s personal story, craft sound in artful ways, AND make the producers hand in the work as unobtrusive as possible. I was also totally blown away by Mark Garofalo’s forensic approach to the edit with his impeccable audio cataloguing, session lay out, and attention to vocal nuance.

I also did some interviews with radio producers for my PhD research. Talking to the likes of Davia Nelson (The Kitchen Sisters), Lea Thau (Strangers), Phoebe Judge (Criminal) and Laura Starecheski (State of the Re-Union) was fantastic. I can’t wait to start transcribing some of this material and hope to write about some of the things we discussed in future posts.

Overall the whole experience was a great opportunity to mix with some awesome people and completely nerd out about audio! It was also exciting to hear about independent producers thriving in a market where new possibilities and new demands for audio content are on the rise. I know for a fact that the Australians at the conference now have a fire in their bellies and dreams of a gathering for audio enthusiasts in Australia.

Below are some photos. One is of me and the All the Best ladies front row and centre for Nancy Updike’s (This American Life) closing speech. The other is me after my interview with radio hero and “sound shaman” Davia Nelson – you can see my face exploding with excitement.

Research interviews- LeAlan Jones

I’m in Chicago at the moment doing some research interviews and gearing up for the Third Coast Conference this weekend.

On my first day in the city I met up with LeAlan Jones who shared his personal story in the seminal radio documentary Ghetto Life 101. In 1993, LeAlan (thirteen at the time) and his friend Lloyd Newman (fourteen) collaborated with public radio producer David Isay and produced audio diaries of their life in Chicago’s notorious South Side public housing projects. The boys’ candor, humor and honesty provided the listener with a direct perspective of the harsh realities of poverty and violence in their neighbourhood. Ghetto Life 101 won numerous awards and to this day is considered a significant work in the history of radio documentaries. Along with LeAlan and Lloyd’s follow up piece Remorse: the 14 Stories of Eric Morse (1996), these works championed a new style of self-authored storytelling on the radio.

My conversation with LeAlan is a part of a series of interviews I’m doing for my PhD research into the experience of people who share their story as part of a radio documentary. LeAlan and I chatted about how he feels listening to Ghetto Life and Remorse today. I was curious about how documenting his story all those years ago may have affected his life. One thing that came up was how LeAlan negotiates his youthful perspective and insights recorded in the documentaries, with his 35-year-old self today.

” the most difficult thing for anybody to be, is to be honest with them self. And for me, my life is disciplined by the voice of that 13 year old, and the honesty of the 13 year old”

I got the feeling that LeAlan’s story, eternalised on the public record, has been a check point for him throughout his life, and one that he is immensely grateful for. LeAlan also talked about how sharing his story gave him a stronger sense of his own “voice” and the importance of his own narrative:

“The voice is consistent [and] documentation is what allows humanity to evolve….. growing up I was very fascinated by ancient Egypt, [and] more importantly, I was always fascinated by the writing they had on those tombs …. So for me, the microphone is my ability to document my tomb. I mean I’m going to die one day, but I’m going to live forever through my voice”

Stories on the brain

I came across this image about how storytelling affects the brain on PRX. It made me think about my work as a radio producer, and how the story of the person I’m recording impacts on me as an interviewer and listener.

There are some stories that will stay with me forever. It’s usually a key sentence, or something that evokes a clear visual image, or a moment in time. I’m not sure whether this is the ‘neural coupling’, or ‘mirroring’ referenced in this image, but listening to other peoples’ stories often shifts the way I see the world, and might even influence the way I narrate my own experiences. In this sense most stories, whether they’re sad or joyous, could be seen (or heard) as gifts of human experience. Gifts that might help us think and feel in more empathetic ways. And perhaps the role of the producer is to help the storyteller share their story in the most articulate and/or artful way possible, so that it can have an ongoing and lasting effect.

Notes on Blindness

I first heard this story as a radio piece on 360 Documentaries and was blown away by how great it was. Then a friend sent me this New York Times video version which I also love. It combines audio diaries from a man who documented his experience of going blind, with beautifully crafted film images and archival style reenactments. The story behind the making of this piece is here.

I’m a huge fan of audio diaries and the intimate and reflective space they can create, and I think in this case, the audio works really well with images. It’s a sad piece, but the final part is so beautiful that I don’t think I’ll ever listen to the rain the same way again…..

“rain brings out the contours of what’s around you. In that it introduces a continuous blanket of differentiated and specialised sound, uninterrupted, which fills the whole of the audible environment…..If only there could be something equivalent to the falling of rain inside, then the whole of a room would take on shape and dimension”

360 Documentaries internship

I’ve been doing an internship with ABC Radio National’s 360 Documentaries program and they broadcast some of my work on the weekend.

I’ve been producing audio monologues from 360’s Pocketdocs competition. The competition asked listeners to submit a 500-word piece on the theme ‘a secret revealed’. I chose 5 stories from the finalists and invited the writers into their nearest ABC studio to read and record their story. I then edited the recordings, added some music and sound FX, and did the final sound mix with Andrei Shabonuv, one of the ABC’s amazing sound engineers. It was so much fun collaborating on these pieces and giving a sound life to written works.

The first piece to be broadcast is Collateral Damage, a whimsical tale of two warring sisters that reminded me a bit of my own childhood memories and sisters antics. This is a picture of the writer Ruth Wyer and her sister when they were young. They came into the ABC’s Sydney studio and we had heaps of fun recording their story.

Things I am making, listening to and thinking about…

Things I’m making, listening to, and thinking about…

Canberra trip

I’m in Canberra this weekend doing some interviews for a new radio documentary. A few of my favourite things so far…..

– spending time with old friends and sharing stories

– setting up my gear all over a hotel room and nesting in out of the cold

– listening, logging, computering, and luxuriating in full immersion audio nerd time

– running around Lake Burly Griffin and soaking up the winter sun