Wednesday, February 15, 2012

Video Killed the Radio Star


I think audio stories are a highly looked over aspect of media storytelling. I myself never really gave them much thought until my senior year of high school. I was asked to work on our high school's radio. I didn't even know our high school had a radio, and I’m sure most people still don't know. But it was a really neat experience for me. Every week I had to produce a new story, and in preparation for that, I was asked to listen to podcast of This American Life. At first, I thought it would be a boring task, but I surprisingly enjoyed it. It was interesting to look at different stories and examine what did work and what didn’t work and then try to translate that over to my own stories. I learned that just one person talking could get awfully boring. Although it is nice to have some narration, it is important to break it up. The one thing I noticed that adds to a story, is music. Since you only have one sense to go off of with audio stories, you need to make it as versatile as possible. So stories that use music or other sound effects work really well. As long as they aren’t cheesy sound effects.

I grew to really like old time radio. Radio used to be the main way to get your media. They had news stories, commercials, and stories of entertainment. When radio was in its prime, it had some really great stuff. They really knew how to tell a story without relying on anything visual. They use music and sound effects, and although at times it might be a tad corny, I think it works with the time period. Definitely check it out! It was back before “video killed the radio star”

No comments:

Post a Comment