“Glass is a writer’s writer, or more aptly a writer’s radio host. He understands how narrative works, how to build tension, how to place words within sentences and sentences within paragraphs, how at the end of a story a character must be transformed. Every good writer knows that the most important, most evocative information should come at the end of a sentence or paragraph, and even in conversation he does this. Take his earlier words, for example: “They’ve chosen, as their medium, food. I love that.” He doesn’t say: “I love that they’ve chosen food as their medium.” Because he knows — probably instinctively — that what comes last will carry the most weight; he knows where inside a sentence the power lies — or rather where inside a sentence lies the power. And so even in his speech you hear the pregnant pauses, the places where, if he were writing the conversation, he would use colons, semicolons and dashes.”
Kirby Ferguson has released the fourth and final installment in his series Everything is a Remix. This final episode is called System Failure and covers the flawed patent system and copyright laws making for a great conclusion to a great web series.
Semi-related: if you haven’t yet, I’d also recommend listening to the recent This American Life episode When Patents Attack! that goes into some more details about the patent system.
“This question of tone, of how we accidentally alienate potential listeners, is something lots of people in public radio have been talking about lately. A 2010 NPR/SmithGeiger survey of news consumers who rightly should be in the public radio audience, showed that one of the biggest reasons adults say they choose not to listen to public radio is that they’re put off by the tone…Radiolab has invented a sound that won’t put off smart people who should be in our audience. Simply put: it’s a show that’s out for fun. It’s no surprise that a much younger audience loves Radiolab. It’s no surprise that a huge part of its fan base is people who don’t consider themselves public radio listeners.”
Ira Glass appreciates Radiolab
I’ve been thinking about radio (and more broadly, podcasting) lately. My working medium relies primarily on sight and the visuals but radio is all about sound and I find that constraint fascinating. Radiolab Ira Glass’s This American Life are two broadcasts I look forward to and I think it’s because of their tone. Ira Glass may be commenting on Radiolab’s friendly, conversational tone, but I think This American Life has that same feel. (I’d argue they have the same tone but very different styles.)
Tone in audio-driven pieces is obvious but I wonder how tone affects the visual mediums? How do the visual arts convey a “friendly conversational tone” that’s not “off-putting?” Is it even possible?
The Cameraman is a beautiful animation from Chris Ware that was used as an intro to an episode of the short-lived The American Life television show. It was easily my favorite introduction in the entire two-season show and certainly a memorable story about a group of middle school students who, in a strange way, became disconnected from their environments when they started “filming” the world around them.
The actor Joseph Gordon-Levitt has a differing opinion:
But most of the time, I’d argue, having a camera and recording our world does just the opposite. It encourages the camera operator to engage, to pay attention and find that sweet shot, to figure out how to tell a good story.
In my opinion, our lives are little more than the stories we tell ourselves and each other. I’m quite certain that the massive increase in people walking around with cameras these days is far more than a passing trend. It’s a sign of progress towards a connected and engaged society. The technology is here. Now we just have to learn how to use it.
Last year I was at the MoMA in New York looking at a photography exhibit. There was a large group of young people who would get really close to the photographs and take a picture of them. I remember overhearing a older woman say to her friend that this concerned her. People never used to do that, she said. By taking a photo of the work for later, you are missing out on seeing the actually work in that moment. Part of going to a museum is to see art in a thoughtfully curated experience. Rushing through the gallery taking photos of each piece for later somehow defiles that constructed experience. It prevents us from being in that moment.
I agree with Gordon-Levitt in that the camera is helping us tell stories, but I can’t help but wonder if we are becoming more concerned with telling a good story instead of being present in each moment. A candid photo is no longer just a candid photo, it’s now a part of a larger story being told on Facebook and the other social networking sites. Is this a bad thing? I’m not sure. But I do think we are missing out on meaningful connections because a camera is in between us. He’s right, the technology is here and we need to learn how to use it. We need to find that place in the middle. That place where we can tell stories without missing out on the ones we are living.
