Radio Commons^™

Different Generations Of Veterans On Learning To Share Their Stories, Jeremy Dobbins, Will Davis

Veterans' Voices on WYSO

Jeremy Dobbins served four years as an infantry rifleman in Afghanistan, and when he got out in 2012 he found it difficult to talk to people about his military experience. But when he was ready, he chose to tell his stories to an old family friend from Springfield named Charlie Dyke. Jeremy had joined the Marine Corps at age 17. Charlie enlisted during World War II shortly after his 18th birthday. Both men returned to Springfield after their service ended to raise families and begin new lives.

Mighty Beast: A Critical Reflection, Neil Verma

RadioDoc Review

This review-essay considers Mighty Beast, a radio feature by Sean Borodale, Sara Davies and Elizabeth Purnell, exploring how it approaches vernacular speech using poems based on auctioneering, sounds of market places and interviews with farmers and other workers. Listening closely to key passages, I highlight the role of Borodale’s 'in the moment' process and the use of sound editing as a form of writing, while situating the work within a longer history of livestock poetry and auctioneering in the sound arts. In the end, I argue that Mighty Beast is an outstanding piece to help think through larger issues of …

Mighty Beast: Review 1, Mike Ladd

RadioDoc Review

MIGHTY BEAST: written by Sean Borodale, soundscape by Elizabeth Purnell, produced by Sara Davies, performed by Christopher Bianchi. BBC Radio 3, Between the Ears, 2013. 29mins10.

Mighty Beast is a ‘radio poem’ that takes us into the cattle saleyard, and the lives of the auctioneers, animal handlers and farmers that are its denizens. Radio poems operate through feeling as much as intellect, and give scope for different interpretations. They are not so much about imparting information or telling a story, as creating an experience. They are more associative than expository, often proceeding in a non-linear way. Often radio poems …

My Share Of The Sky: Review 2, Alan Hall

RadioDoc Review

This documentary by the celebrated Danish producer Rikke Houd, in collaboration with Iranian journalist Sheida Jahanbin, is a work of art. It is also a powerful piece of documentary journalism that measures the pulse of a young couple’s emigration from Iran and their attempts to settle in Norway. The narration by Sheida Jahanbin, our guide to establishing a new life as an asylum seeker, is lent a profound dimension by being choreographed in a sophisticated ‘hocketing’ with the voiced-over translation, which acts as Sheida’s Norwegian voice. This is an inspired device, which also serves as a metaphor in a story …

My Share Of The Sky: Review 1, Helene Thomas

RadioDoc Review

My Share of the Sky speaks like a poem. A poem of love, of life, and of loss. It is a story of finding refuge and freedom in a foreign land and reconciling with the longing for loved ones back home. Presented as an audio diary, Sheida Jahanbin invites listeners into her world as she and her husband Madyar make a new life for themselves in Oslo, Norway as political refugees from Iran. The program presents a stream of live happening moments which intimately capture Sheida's life as it is unfolding. Juxtaposing the mundane and the terrifying, the ordinary and …

From The Air Force To Ice Cream, Navigating A Transition Out Of The Service, Allison M. Loy, Will Davis

Veterans' Voices on WYSO

US Air Force Lieutenant Bobby Walker created Fronana, a dairy-free ice cream made out of bananas. In August of 2014 Bobby found out he is being involuntarily separated from the Air Force because his career field is over manned. Walker is using Fronana as a way to transition to civilian life.

The Left-To-Die Boat: Review 2, Peter Mares

RadioDoc Review

In March 2011 an inflatable boat carrying 72 asylum seekers from sub-Saharan Africa set out from the coast of Libya hoping to reach the Italian island of Lampedusa. As one Italian official commented, sailing from Libya towards Italy should have been ‘a bit like doing a slalom between military ships’. Yet as, out of fuel, supplies of food and water dwindled to nothing and the people on board began to get sick and die, the boat continued to drift and no help came. Eventually it floated all the way back to the Libyan coast. Of the 50 men, 20 women …

"Your Information Station": A Case Study Of Rural Radio In The 21st Century, William Jacob Amadeus Pinnock

Dissertations and Theses

The study examined how the introduction of high-speed internet into a rural community affected audience members' use of their local radio station. A qualitative case study was guided by uses and gratifications and niche theory. The author conducted interviews with KMMR FM audience members in Malta, Montana, to investigate how the introduction of high-speed internet impacted listener habits. Twenty participants who either listened to or produced content for KMMR FM were interviewed. The author performed a thematic analysis of different uses for the radio guided by typologies created by Rubin (1983), Palmgreen and Rayburn (1979), and Katz, Haas, and Gurevitch …

Making Waves, Frank Bures

Colby Magazine

Familiar voices on National Public Radio belong to reports Christ Arnold '92 and Gerry Hadden '89

Maya Angelou, Poet, Activist And Singular Storyteller, Dies At 86

Joanne Braxton

Elsie: A Screenplay, Eileen M. Spath

Honors Capstone Projects - All

Elsie is a 57 page, one-hour screenplay. A modern adaptation of a true story, Elsie tells the tale of Elsie Whitman, a young housewife unhappy in her marriage and looking for a way out. When her estranged sister arrives, she finally finds the strength to do the unthinkable.

Our story opens with the arrival of Elsie's sister, Marianne, and the departure of her husband, John. Alone in the house together, the sisters relationship grows complex. Marianne begins to see Peter, a young man with a mysterious past. However, when Elsie is wronged by John, she jumps into bed with Peter. …

How To Be Alice: A Feature-Length Screenplay With Production Package, Alison Joy

Honors Capstone Projects - All

This Capstone consists of a feature-length dramatic screenplay of 110 pages along with a production package including schedule and budget. The production documents, created using Movie Magic software, detail a shooting schedule of 21 days and a budget of $890,979.

The film centers on a successful magazine editor who loses her job and her fiancé in the same day. Professionally disgraced, financially stunted, and unexpectedly hearbroken, she is forced to take on a “How To” blogging gig to pay the bills while she gets back on her feet. She begrudgingly accepts mentorship from an eccentric older neighbor to help her …

Anthony Jr., Allan Duso

Honors Capstone Projects - All

Video Editors are the unsung heroes that take every piece of media, shot in production, and spin it into a story that is entertaining from beginning to end. It is hard to spot a marvelous editor because the better they, are the less the audience notices. It is only the bad cuts or the mismatched shots that the audience points out. There is no way to show the amount of work and puzzle-solving editors put in to make a movie sparkle.

For my capstone project, I edited The Sopranos television series down into a feature length movie. The story focuses …

The Evolution Of Comic Book Movies: An Exploration And Implementation Of Comic Books In Academia, Michael C. Rogers

Honors Capstone Projects - All

The following paper outlines my Capstone, which centers on the creation and implementation of a course focusing on the academic study and consumption of comic book movies and the comics they are based on. The study of this medium has been absent from classrooms for too long, and so, in the pages that follow, I have included a syllabus, sample lesson plans, and a detailed exploration of comic books and the films they inspire in an academic setting. This paper includes research, analysis, and insight detailing the exploits of the class I taught in Fall 2013, HNR 210: The Evolution …

Syracuse University Los Angeles: A Promotional Video, Bradley Slavin

Honors Capstone Projects - All

Created in 2009, the Syracuse University Los Angeles Semester Program has allowed students interested in the media and entertainment world to spend a semester working, living, and playing in Los Angeles. Despite being a well-constructed and impressive experience, the SULA program is still very much in its infancy. The purpose of this Capstone was to film, edit, and distribute a short promotional video that may be used by the program for recruiting initiatives.

The target audience for this project is current Syracuse University students considering the Los Angeles Semester Program, prospective Syracuse University students seeking additional benefits of studying at …

Minnesota Public Radio (Mpr) News/Gary Eichten Fellowship, Alex Forster

Celebrating Scholarship & Creativity Day (2011-2017)

The College of St. Benedict and St. John's University offer two summer student fellowships with Minnesota Public Radio (MPR). These MPR/Gary Eichten Fellows complete an internship at MPR and learn the basics of news writing, reporting, and production with a goal to write and produce material for MPR newscasts.

Tim Key And Gogol's Overcoat: Review 2, Kari Hesthamar

RadioDoc Review

The documentary Tim Key and Gogol’s Overcoat is based on the short story The Overcoat by Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol. The Ukrainian-born Russian was one of the major authors of the 19th century, who tried to demonstrate what Tsarist Russia entailed. The Overcoat, published in 1842, is a satire of the civil service and petty officialdom. It is about how an external object transforms a person's self-esteem and others' opinions of a man of low rank.

As the program unfolds, the boundaries between fact and fiction become more blurred, and the weave between St Petersburg and London, between Akaky Akakievich (protagonist …

Tim Key And Gogol's Overcoat: Review 1, Michelle Rayner

RadioDoc Review

This finely wrought fusion of fiction and realism is an illuminating, enchanting, listening experience. On one level it can be heard as a playful riff on absurdism, on art, by a clever comedian (Tim Key) who harbours an obsession with one book and its author: Gogol’s The Overcoat. And yet on another level it offers a wry and gentle insight into, among other things, the nature of the human condition. Key's tone is intimate and confessional as he attempts to deconstruct the meaning (or meaninglessness) of Gogol’s story. The program wears its structural architecture lightly, combining the element of …

Soliciting The Universe, A Prose/Poem 4/1/2014, Charles Kay Smith

Charles Kay Smith

Why it may not be wise to radio our presence into outer space, but why humans are compelled by their neotenic proclivities to be curious and to solicit attention.

Children Of Sodom And Gomorrah: A Critical Reflection, Virginia Madsen

RadioDoc Review

This essay is an exploration and critical sounding of the multi-award winning radio feature Children of Sodom and Gomorrah: why young Africans flee to Europe (ARD 2009/ABC 2011) by the Berlin radio author/journalist and director Jens Jarisch. The reviewer, Virginia Madsen, finds something close to a dialectic approach in this unforgettable and searing ‘radio film’, but also the resonances of what she explores as ‘allegorical thinking’. Jarisch, even if unconsciously, appears to have dug down deep into the modern-day ruins of Sodom and Gomorrah, a ‘no place’ in Accra, Ghana where children eke out a living, forfeiting their childhoods and …

Children Of Sodom And Gomorrah: Review 1, Alan Hall

RadioDoc Review

Nothing in Children of Sodom and Gomorrah happens by accident. It is an exquisite – if, from the opening montage, uncomfortable – sound experience. The production – both Jarisch’s own origination in German and Sharon Davis’ re-versioning – is impeccable. It is thoroughly wrought. An artefact to admire. The famous scene in the manager’s office unveils a damning denouement with the flourish of a radio master: surreptitious recording, an artful ‘echo’ voice that draws attention to key statements and carefully scripted narration mesh tellingly to deliver the reporter’s verdict. The same care in production is evident throughout the program: beautiful …

The Hospital Always Wins: Review 2, Michelle Boyd

RadioDoc Review

This documentary raises crucial questions about our definitions of mental health and healing as well as the meaning of forgiveness. It also illustrates how an individual’s ability to extract themselves from the grip of institutional power is highly dependent on luck and money and privilege. Perhaps most importantly, this piece gives voice, in a complex, respectful manner, to Ibrahim and other schizophrenics whose struggles remain buried and ignored. One element that is missing from this story is an account of how race complicates this unequal power dynamic. Ibrahim is black… “Hospital’s” impact might have been even wider had …

The Hospital Always Wins: Review 1, Sharon Davis

RadioDoc Review

This documentary gives a graphic and challenging insight into the thinking of a schizophrenic mind. But whose story is it, producer Laura Starecheski’s or mental inpatient Issa Ibrahim’s? The process of recording a documentary over such a long period of time (ten years) is tough and always difficult to negotiate. What starts out as a journalistic exercise becomes something very different as your relationship develops over time with the people you are recording. Here, it’s the narrator who drives the story on, weaving in and out of the interviews and actuality, and it’s the strength of the writing that compels …

Norman Corwin's The Lonesome Train (Decca Recording) 1944, David K. Dunaway

RadioDoc Review

The Lonesome Train, the cantata for radio with words by Millard Lampell, music by Earl Robinson, and directed by Norman Corwin, probably originated in a dilapidated brownstone on lower Sixth Avenue in Manhattan: The Almanac House, a radical commune for music organisers in Greenwich Village, including Pete Seeger and Woody Guthrie. Corwin is widely regarded as a guru of thoughtful radio producers, a poet-laureate of radio. From 1936, when he helped create WQXR-FM in New York City (later, voice of the New York Times) to his death 75 years later, Norman Corwin managed to be simultaneously commercial, popular, …

Poetry, Texas: A Critical Reflection, Kyla Brettle

RadioDoc Review

Poetry, Texas is a lyrical work in which an ensemble of voices, snatches of actuality and compelling narration is woven into a meditation on a fading way of life and beauty within the ordinary. It's a piece in which style and substance figure as enamoured equals engaged in a delightful dance. Malinovski's journey into the heart of the Texan town of Poetry is the central narrative frame of this work. An ensemble cast of fourteen characters including a cowboy called Rooster, Don Strictland, the undeclared mayor of Poetry, schoolchildren, various religious leaders and the local historian gives voice to the …

Poetry, Texas: Review 1, Seán Street

RadioDoc Review

Documentaries and features are about stories, but although they share much common ground, they often occupy very different worlds. In many radio cultures a documentary is a journalistic framework for seeking answers to questions, whereas a feature may often be an impressionistic hybrid that can contain drama, music and poetry, moving often towards not necessarily answers, but more questions. A documentary CAN be a feature, when it documents the maker's journey as they seek a way through their subject, asking questions of themselves as much as their chosen story, often through evocation rather than exposition. Poetry, Texas is just such …