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Short Docs: 99 Ways to Tell a Radio Story
Posted by: Robin Amer on October 26, 2006 01:27 PM | Comments (1)
Bed time story, absurdist holiday fiction, hysteria verite, and meta-audio. These are only a few of over 70 different ways to tell a radio story included in this year's short doc competition. Rather than select a theme and commission a few pieces based on producer pitches, this year's short doc competition was based on a set of narrow guidelines to structure production. Each piece submitted had to: be exactly 2 minutes and 30 seconds long, contain a pre-recorded voice, a syncopated rhythm, and an exclamation, and start with the sentence, "To begin with, they never got along." At this point over 70 people from 14 different countries have submitted pieces, and they're hoping for 99 by the end of the year.
This panel was a great thought experiment on the pacing and craft of story telling. The challenge was all about taking basic elements of a story and chopping them up and re-arranging them a thousand times over (or at least 99) so that the basic elements are recognizable but the final results are like a delicious buffet where no two dishes are the same.
Hearing some of the results was fascinating. David Henderson's The Long Way Home, produced in the style of "pseudo-found audio," was a hilarious re-telling of the Odyssey based on "Penelope's answering machine tape found in a thrift store in Athens." Odysseus is a philandering old hippy on a road trip with his buddies who promises to be home soon (as soon as they fix the Taurus that's broken down on I-80), and Penelope is his long suffering wife fielding his phone calls from the road.
Christian Gasser's The Yakuza Code was based on some marvelous Chris Marker-esque field recordings from Japan -- laughing voices, singing in an elevator, fuzzed out sound from game-show television, censor's bleeps -- written into a the saga of an estranged brother and sister, he "the king of profanity on Japanese tv," and she "the most popular elevator girl in a Japanese book store." In addition to being one of what seem to be several pieces dealing with sibling tension, the piece was incredibly dynamic and reminded me how non-English speaking voices presented for an English speaking audience allows the sound to function more like sound and less like language.
Scotland's own Zoe Irvine submitted two different pieces including Au Debut. The piece is mostly French speaking voices translating the original sentence ("To begin with, they never got along") into French, and talking all the while about the inexact nature of the translation. The voices are set in the background off mic, sometimes whispered, sometimes exclaimed, while Zoe directs and talks back. The piece is set to Brazilian mandolin music, which Zoe chose for its "lightness and momentum," saying she needed both to make the piece work. It was a piece made beautiful because, as Julie describes it, "there's no content. It's just an experience. She pushed the story aside and made a listening experience, and something's happening as you're listening."
Now I want to go home and sit and listen to the other 70 pieces. And make one of my own...
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David Greenberger and I flew to Chicago yesterday – a full day of travel. We managed to walk (mostly by choice) 40 blocks over the course of the day. We arrived at the hotel Orrington when the opening reception was already under way. The evening was warmer than we expected. More like spring coming in than winter bearing down on us. As soon as stepped off the elevator we were hit by the buzz and din coming from the Ball Room. We braved the heat and crowds to look for familiar faces. It was too loud to try and meet many new people, but stepping out to the tea station with glasses of good red wine, we could actually connect. Sue Mell, Samantha Broun and Jonathan Miller provided the feeling of a mini Allison-Robbins wedding reunion. Matt Madden and Jessica Abel sat at a nearby table – they are speaking At Powell’s North tonight so we will try to get there, broadening our Chicago experience.
But we were already winding down from a long day so we got back on the train to return to Cousin Addie’s apartment where we are staying. Perhaps one of us should have looked at the station name when we embarked, but instead I went with name recognition and we got off at Sheridan. We walked three blocks in what seemed the right direction when I could see looming orange neon letters on a rooftop ahead of us – C U B S. Surely I would notice that if we had passed on our way to the station earlier this evening? Wrigley Field – I admit I felt a little excitement at seeing the landmark but also fatigue and sore feet. Turns out we got off two stops too soon and had walked halfway to the apartment. So our sense of direction wasn’t all bad.
I intended my first break-out session to be Die Mediocrity Die but I got there too late for a seat – so I scrambled to find one where there might be a seat – Let Your Sounds to the Talking had seats and I feel very lucky to have gotten in, Jonathan Mitchell was great! I loved the commitment to art and sound – he really felt like he was composing but with a full range of voice and sound, pretty amazing technically as well- simple, yet with total consciousness.
We want to make sure we fit in a mix of Conference and Chicago tourism so we’ve got tickets for Pillowman, we’ll see Jessica and Matt and Powells and Saturday a visit to Elliot’s Designer Consignments on Saturday.
Posted by: Barbara Price on October 26, 2006 02:48 PM
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