Practice Radio Assignment
There are several steps to producing a radio news story, so we’re going to do a short practice assignment to give you a feel for how it all comes together.
- RECORD your interviews and other sound.
- WRITE the script. (You can’t do this until you’ve completed the reporting, because you need to write around the scenes and sound bites you’ve gathered.)
- TRACK. Once you have finalized your script with the help of your editor (in this case, me) you can move forward with tracking, or recording your narration.
- MIX. Now that you have all the sound elements you need (sounds bites/acts, narration/track, and natural sound/ambi) you can go ahead and edit the radio story in Audacity and export the finished WAV audio file.
- PUBLISH. You’ll upload the WAV file to Soundcloud and post a link to the class blog along with a good title and your final script.
By this Thursday’s class, you’ll need to have completed only the first step of the practice assignment. Record a five-minute interview. Could be with anyone: a family member, classmate, friend. I’ll send out a video tutorial for using the audio recorders.
Discussion: The Power of Voices and Speech Patterns
When we hear someone speak, what are the different things we pick up on? What are the things we assume about them?
During a recent long car ride whose soundtrack was a medley of NPR podcasts, I noticed a verbal mannerism during scripted segments that appeared on just about every show. I’ve heard the same tic in countless speeches, TED talks and Moth StorySLAMS — anywhere that features semi-informal first-person narration.
If I could attempt to transcribe it, it sounds kind of like, y’know … this.
That is, in addition to looser language, the speaker generously employs pauses and, particularly at the end of sentences, emphatic inflection. (This is a separate issue from upspeak, the tendency to conclude statements with question marks?) A result is the suggestion of spontaneous speech and unadulterated emotion. The irony is that such presentations are highly rehearsed, with each caesura calculated and every syllable stressed in advance.
In literary circles, the practice of poets reciting verse in singsong registers and unnatural cadences is known, derogatorily, as “poet voice.” I propose calling this phenomenon “NPR voice” (which is distinct from the supple baritones we normally associate with radio voices).
Here’s an intro by Ira Glass: see what they mean?
“He was hinting at the difficult balancing act reporters face in developing their on-air voice. It isn’t just a challenge of performance — and it’s not as simple as channeling some “authentic” voice into a microphone. It requires grappling with your identity and your writing process, along with history of your institution.”
Challenging the Whiteness of Public Radio
Does public radio sound too white? NPR itself tries to find out.
The reason the sound of your own voice makes you cringe
Why your voice IS a “podcast voice”
On accent bias in the industry, by Baruch’s own Gisele Regetao:
Podcast: Gisele Regatao on NPR’s accent bias
Common speech patterns in today’s world that everyone (men, too!) use all the time:
Upspeak
“Like”
According to Ira Glass:
“…listeners have always complained about young women reporting on our show. They used to complain about reporters using the word “like” and about upspeak… But we don’t get many emails like that anymore. People who don’t like listening to young women on the radio have moved on to vocal fry.”
Why old men find young women’s voices so annoying
99% Invisible podcast responds to criticism about women’s voices
So all of this leads us to the question: How can we be intentional about how we use our voices to tell the best stories as effectively as possible?
Luckily, in radio/podcasting, speaking naturally is what we actually WANT. No one wants to listen to a robot, or someone who sounds like they’re reading.
How I learned to stop worrying and love my voice
Draft of script is due Nov. 2
Final edited radio story due Nov. 9