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LECTURE 5 REVIEW: STORYTELLING THROUGH SOUND

Originally, I attempted doing a  sound recording for this review but well, it failed. ): So yes, I’m back here doing a text post instead.

This lecture was basically a podcast of two interviews of two different radio presenters. The first one started by talking about the difference between radio and TV. He basically summed it up and said that radio is much more intimate medium of communication than TV. It was also mentioned that while people go about their daily lives with the radio on in the background, it becomes almost like the voice is right in your head.

The evolution of radio was also touched on, with how radio has kept up with times by developing new technologies and most recently, the introduction of podcasts.

On top of that, conducting good interviews on radio was also talked about. In a way, the points touched on can not only be applied to radio interviews, but anybody who wants to do a sound post (be it podcast or blog post) can also apply these points. Firstly, content that is too long (e.g. more than 15 minutes) can get boring. Thus, it is essential to make the content interesting. How can that be done? By kicking it up and injecting humour! This is especially relevant when the people on air have been doing this for a long time and this almost become a daily mundane thing to them. To prevent the whole show from going southwards, a little humour always works. Secondly, maintaining warmth and empathy helps you to connect with the audience as well. You can do this by picturing your audience and drawing on your own life experiences.

The second part of the podcast, radio as the “theatre of the mind” came into place. When you are on air, you should try to bring the picture or scenario right into the minds of your listeners. This can be done with proper use of vocabulary and language. The interviewee also touched on empathy. This can be done vocally by changing the tone of your voice. This is because your audience will not be able to read your body language and by changing your tone, they will subconsciously pick it up.

Telling stories through sound, as there are no text or pictures, the enunciation of words is extremely important. We cannot just go about it the same way as our daily conversations. If we do that, the audience will not be able to understand us at all.

Essentially, what we want to achieve through radio or telling stories through sound is to communicate with our audience. We can do this by bringing down the barriers between our audience and us. We could ask questions to communicate (for example, Do you agree?) and hold it sort of like a conversation rather than to drone on and on.

We should not discount the human and life experiences as well. It was said that human are essentially emotional people and discussing personal experiences will help audience connect better.

Lastly, we should not be close-minded people. We must be open to different opinions. We have to keep asking questions and discovering new things, not just from our point of view but others as well. This exposure will help us see and present things in a totally different light that will not only add richness to our content, but will appeal more to our audience as well. We have to shift the thought about ME to WHAT DOES MY AUDIENCE WANT?

This being said, I am not much a fan of storytelling through sound. I enjoy listening to the radio leisurely but if it concerns anything serious (like lectures, or serious discussions or even a story/novel etc), I prefer reading text and looking at pictures. The podcast itself was great, I picked up a lot of different stuff about sound storytelling but if given the choice, I wouldn’t pick it. It might be because I’m more of a visual person rather than a auditory person but hey, that’s just my own opinion anyway.

WHAT SAY YOU?