Blogs > Special Features > Third Coast Festival 2005
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Go drink with the locals
Posted by: Pejk Malinovski on October 21, 2005 10:01 PM | Comments (0)
Anne Hull opened up her session "Sense of place" by playing
The Lord God Bird by the excellent Long Haul Productions. Her talk was fascinating. If you have a chance you should go to it tomorrow.
She talked about how place is a character in her pieces. Anne Hull is a print journalist for the Washington Post, but everything she says is really valuable to radio folks. Well first of all her thoroughness was admirable and inspirational, oh my god if every journalist in this country worked like her, not just rewriting wires but relying on local sources, hooking up with the sheriff. Talking to the librarian. Going to the football match. Doing what the natives do. Listening closely to what people say, giving the details, beating the temptations to generalize.
In fact her philosophy of using place as a "character" made me think of the long-format features of the Montage Department at the National Danish Radio where I did some pieces. Often these 50 minute features are un-narated, and because they’re un-narated they use a lot of sound from the environment around the charaters and the scenes that unfold there to weave the stories together. I often miss this in American Radio, I think we should always ask this question when we do a story: why radio? What is the sound element that will drive the story, give us sense of place, take it to another level? Hmmm, anyone?
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