THE STORY WITHOUT A SCREEN

You have to try new things in life, right? So, I did! Instead of watching an episode on Netflix, I listened to an exciting story on Serial Podcast. At first I thought it would be really boring, because you don’t see anything happen. After listening for a couple of minutes I noticed that my head was making his own visual story with the audio.

The podcast was about a girl that was murdered. You heard the lawyer of the suspect speaking in the audio, she was doing research about the day of the murder. She was telling her own thoughts, but you also heard conversations that mattered in her story. Examples are the interrogation of the suspect and a phone call with a witness. The story felt real when she was telling about certain happenings and when she had conversations with other figures in the story.

The article of Heide McKee examined four elements of sounds: vocal delivery, music, special effects and silence. When listening to the podcast, I became aware of the importancy of those four elements. The podcast used all four elements to make the story more interesting. As I said, the story was told by the lawyer of the suspect. The lawyer spoke clearly and sounded friendly, but she was not the only one speaking. Along the story where different people speaking about the day of the crime. The interesting part was when the way they spoke told something about their personalities. The way that those figures spoke sounded familiar with people I spoke to in real life and because of that, my head was picturing a type of person when a figure was speaking. I found it very interesting that my mind created a type of person for someone I had never seen, but only heard.

The podcast not only consisted of voices, but the podcast made use of music as well. The music was used to define the beginning and the ending of the story, but also to give emphasis on some parts where the lawyer spoke about. The podcast used the music to make a transition between a conversation between two people and the lawyer telling an important part to the listener. The music made me focus on the lawyer, but the music also gave me the impression that she was telling something important. The music stopped before the lawyer was finished with her story, but when the story was very long, the music was playing again. This time only to make you focus on what she is telling.

The special effects in this story where not too obvious. The story had a little use of special effects, but that was not annoying. The special effects where used by conversations between people. The podcast ‘played’ with the volume of the voices, which made the story more real. On the other hand, when the lawyer was speaking about something that happened, the podcast made no use of sounds that she was telling about. An example is when the lawyer spoke about a girl that was crying, you did not actually hear her cry. This made it feel more realistic that the lawyer was talking to me, instead of just telling a story.

To experience the fun youself, you can listen to the podcast (The Alibi) here.