What is Salt?

You should all check out the Third Coast Blog on Transom.org. On this blog, short doc award winner, David Maxon, tries to answer the question we've all asked outselves at one time or another: What is Salt?

Also: Who's this guy?

Radio Heaven

This weekend comes as a much-needed relief for (many, if not all of) the radio kids, who are in the throes of script-writing mania: Third Coast Audio Festival, woo! The majority of us are headed out to Chicago for the next few days to simmer in the company of radio aficionados, and, with any luck, absorb some of the talent and skills of the Greats we so admire...

So simmer we shall.

I'm hoping Third Coast will help me navigate some murky genre waters— namely, the ambiguous line between sound art vs. documentaries. Is it OK to bend some rules if it makes the piece more artistically catchy? Can we create a sound to supplement for something that is "soundless," as we know it (i.e.,dreams, flashbacks, etc)? To what extent can tape be sonically manipulated before the meaning of the original content is lost, making our story "misleading?" This conversation has arisen more than once both inside and outside the classroom, so it'll be interesting to discover the approaches of other producers... Especially since some of us are itching to dive into sound art... One radio undertaking at a time, though.

But lately I've been second-guessing my decision to participate in this conference. After all, it'll be my first foray into the larger radio society, and I'd like to do it with poise and grace. I hope I'll be able to suppress my urge to behave like a 13 year-old girl at a Backstreet Boys, but my fear is that my giddiness will render me a simpering idiot... Will it be too much to ask to meet Davia Nelson and Nikki Silva in person (!!!) and leave with some integrity still intact?

I guess we'll find out.

Boo!

Yeah, yeah, it's Halloween today. Candy, costumes, soaping windows, hiding rotten eggs in my roommates' bedrooms...same old, same old. But for the radio kids, today is the beginning of a much more exciting holiday: Third Coast Eve. This is a time when we pack up all our best minidiscs, forget about the last two weeks of script rough drafts, and jump on a plane to Chicago for the annual Third Coast International Audio Festival. It's better than a bag full of those rock hard orange and black Mary Jane candies. And it's much cooler than that really humiliating picture you'd get of you in a cat costume with your arm around some guy wearing a refrigerator box that's supposed to serve as some witty double entendre, but really just looks like a dude wearing a refrigerator box. Not that I'm speaking from experience.

Some of us are headed to Third Coast to pitch our stories to the big names. Others have audio doctoring sessions with some of radio's heavy hitters. A few of us are hoping to get a better handle on what this whole industry is like. All of us will be listening to sessions on how to make our documentaries better. I'm just praying I win the free audio equipment from this year's raffle.

This comes for our group at a great time—I think we're all a little burnt out on our stories, and we all need some new scenery and fresh air (no pun intended. Ok, a little bit intended). So I can't wait to see what happens. Maybe it'll inspire me to make my story a whole lot better. Maybe I'll make some cool friends. If nothing else, this conference will keep me from eating way too much Halloween candy and dressing like a character from Lord of the Rings. And that's really all I can ask for.