I think an interesting audio story is one that reveals or illuminates truth about life or the human condition. Everyone is unique and has a unique perspective. There are no two individuals that are the same. As we interview people, I truly believe that if you dig deep enough, and ask the right questions, you will find that everyone has a gripping and emotional story to tell. No two personalities or sets of experiences are the same, and that leads to a wide and interesting diversity. Sometimes you just have to look a little harder than the average casual observer.
As I move forward with audio documentaries, I hope to successfully capture someone’s unique personality. I love it when an interviewee is just a little quirky, or a little unusual, because it captures my attention and makes me wonder how they became that way. There are also several pitfalls I hope to avoid. First of all, I want to avoid boring people to death. It’s easy to just cut together the first things that come to someone’s mind and call it good, but usually that’s not the most interesting to listen to. We all get introduced to new people all the time; I want to find something a little deeper. I also want to use music and sound only in a way that helps my story, not detracts from it.
The audio story that I chose is a recording of John Lennon’s last interview. When I first heard this interview, I listened almost reverently, knowing that hours after this interview premiered, Lennon was killed. What really touched me, though, was the way that Lennon had stripped down life to its very basics. Love, peace, understanding. That’s all he really cared about. This is profound to me, because he spend so much of his time searching for truth and light in strange and diverse places, but none of them really yielded anything but an understanding of these basic principles.
In the recording, there is only the interview, but it has become archival and has been passed down and listened to through the years. I think the reason why this works, even though it’s just an interview, is that it is Lennon speaking from his heart and telling the world how he feels about life. It’s this type of meaningful story that I hope to capture in some small way in my audio documentary.
I am a huge Beatles fan, but I’ve never listened to this final interview of John Lennon’s before. It was really interesting. Before we discussed audio stories in class, I thought that podcasts in general were just interviews like this. . . and for the most part, I imagined them to be boring. However, this interview was not boring. I think a main reason for that is the interviewee is so well-known and interesting. But even if it wasn’t John Lennon, I think I still would be interested in this because, like you said, he is speaking from his heart. He is really telling us some of his deepest and most profound opinions of life.
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