Radio Narratives: Summer Sounds

Level: Graduate

Division: The New School for Public Engagement

School: School of Media Studies

Department: Media Studies

Course Number: NMDS 5534

Course Format: Studio

Location: Online

Permission Required: No

Topics:

• Sound
• Media Studies

Description:
Summer offers a rich tapestry of sound as we fling open the windows (in most geographies) and eliminate the barriers between indoors and the cacophonous soundscape outside. Whether students are located in the traffic-laden city or the bird-twittering country, there's a range of stories to be consumed, collected and shared. We'll step out into those summer sounds to produce hot and humid, foggy and chilly or searing stories under the punishing sun. This course offers a space to workshop a fully produced narrative work suitable for radio broadcast. Several short productions invite students to collect stories on outdoor sound walks, explore seasonally specific characters, and experiment with form and narrative subjects before tackling their semester-long projects. Class critiques will enable students to carefully polish their individual productions. We'll listen to a range of narrative styles in order to understand production possibilities--from singular voices to complex layers of sound that create an impressionistic autobiography; to stylistic innovations in documenting cultural and political issues; to hybrids of interviews immersed in poetic aurality. We'll consider work broadcast in many outlets, including public radio's familiar "This American Life," radio programs in Australia, Europe and Canada, and community and podcast radio that take risks to air less-conventionally constructed stories.

Course Pre/Co-requisites:
The class is designed for students with basic audio production skills and access to tools (on-site at New School labs or via their own computer/audio set-up). Recommended: Digital editing experience or audio/radio production classes. Required: Access to recording and editing/mixing tools

Restrictions:

Level

Open to Graduate students.

Major

Open to Documentary Media Studies students.

Open to Liberal Arts students.

Open to Media Studies students.

Open to Media Management students.

Open to Media Management students.

Open to Musical Theatre students.