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Intro by Jay Allison

This is a strange one. When it came into our office, our auditioners were disturbed, unsettled. What is it? Where did it come from? Is it TRUE? It is by no means finished, but when many pieces crossing the Transom do not command attention, this one did, which makes it worth hearing and discussing. It was recorded and mixed in a few hours by Chris Layton, his first radio piece, in progress.

From the Producer

I was on the farm for a day and a half, and was handed a coffee and Baileys when I got out of my truck on the first morning, my arrival. My buddy Rick who lives on the farm, suggested we should check out the pigs. From that point on, I carried the microphone and recorder around stuffed in my jeans pocket, and turned it on and off periodically throughout the weekend.

I've come to consider the most important part of this whole piece, is that none of it was staged. I think for me, the challenge was to take real memories and turn them into something new, with narration and the timely placement of audio footage gathered on the farm. So, I'm not saying this is a new genre or anything, but it's different from the Documentary. Maybe it's a Nocumentary...

Tech Notes

RECORDING: I used a Sony MS907 microphone with a Sony MZ-G750 recorder. I've gotten into a habit of displaying the mic openly at times, concealing it at others-- not out of hopes of getting something embarrassing or revealing on tape, but simply in an effort to keep people from being uncomfortable. They're my friends, and I know they wouldn't mind anyway.

EDITING: I dumped the audio to my PC using Sound Forge, a single track editor. From there, I imported the files to "Internet Audio Mix 1.34," a program I downloaded for free from the internet, with a 30 day trial period and then I think a $25 fee to purchase. My trial has officially run out now, and I haven't purchased it-- not sure what my next step is going to be. The program is appropriately crude, and all mixing can be done with 'point and click' and it took me about 10 minutes to figure it out and then two hours to put together the piece once I had all the sound dumped onto the computer. I'm not that technical, but I do alright.

70 minutes of material collected over 2 days.
2 hrs of editing.

Christopher Layton

About Christopher Layton

I'm currently an attorney in Charlotte, North Carolina, and the only other creative product worth mentioning that I've introduced into the world is a video documentary entitled "Waiting For A Miracle," which is the account of two waiters in Wilmington, North Carolina.