Claudio Sanchez  On Sound


NATURAL SOUND EXAMPLE FROM A SCHOOL YARD

I like to use a little bit of sound, usually, at the very top of my story, when I think it's called for. I'll give you an example. We did a story on a very complicated, very abstract issue of values once. And the way we used sound in that story, of getting, because this was so graphic to me. Because there were no images, but to me, being there at the school, doing the story about values, about how kids were stabbing each other in the hallways, fighting, I mean, it was just rampant violence in the junior high school. It was amazing, that the school bus had to park at five feet away from the entrance to the school, so that kids wouldn't spill out into the playground and end up fighting. So, this bus would come by, and park right in front of their school so that they would all be shuttled into the school bus. And the way I started the story was with the school bus idling. And describing exactly what I was seeing. And saying, "Here they've got security guards on both sides of this bus, so that kids won't spill out anywhere, and have them just get onto this bus, and out of this part of the community, anyway, where there have been hostilities, and where neighbors were just outraged by the level of violence, to prevent or hopefully to preempt more violence." And the story began with that.

With that very graphic, very visual scene of a school bus idling, and kids being shuttled into this bus. And it was a way to get people interested, and a way to then expand on that issue. Why is this happening? Why is this so extraordinary, why such an extraordinary measure to get to the issue of violence in the hallways, violence in these kids' lives, and how so often, schools and teachers are incapable, other than through great weird methods, of controlling these children. It was a really good story. And the first sentence, of course, for that story was, "A school bus, in the afternoon, parks no more than five feet away from the school entrance. It's the only way teachers can keep kids from fighting and harming themselves." And then a security guard comes in very quickly and says, "These kids are evil. That's all there is to it."

SOUND ADVICE

I'll relate this, certainly this stuff is just my experience. When I talk about the preoccupation with sound for a reporter, keep in mind that a reporter goes out with equipment and has a rule of thumb. You record at least two minutes of sound everywhere you go. Doesn't matter if you're in an office, especially if you're in an office, with an air conditioner full blast. If you're out in a playground, certainly, covering a school, or any part of the community, a shopping center. It's a good rule of thumb, because it allows engineers and producers to segue. And to give NPR that sound of quality production that it's known for. But when I came here, having certainly worked with community radio and public radio for years, since 1980, I found myself being too preoccupied with sound. Sometimes at the expense of looking for detail that I could write about. I've always taken copious notes everywhere I go, to find ways to tell with the words what people aren't able to see, and obviously to use tape better, to write into interviews or into excerpts of interviews better. Because detail gives people a very wonderful image usually of a very complex issue, or allows us to get to know that character, that person that they're hearing. Know them a little bit better because of how we've described them. Maybe even the facial expressions that they make.

The extreme case of production, or at least of sound, is when you use it gratuitously. When you, just for the heck of it, use playground sound. With no purpose in the story. And I caught myself, often, just for the sake of introducing a piece with sound, playing just very generic, you know, kids on swings, kids on the playground. And I found myself really struggling with, "Well, if I come in just with a sentence that really gets people's attention, isn't that enough?" Now there is no argument that you need sound to tell a story for radio. But sometimes it's not there. So you have to, I should say, make up for it, but you have to, in a way, find better ways to get your audience interested, by just describing things. By using words and phrases intelligently in your story. The other aspect of this is that I've always thought that it's the people that make the story, not so much the reporter. So if there was a ratio of sorts, I'd say that for every one minute of copy that I'm reading, I try and get at least two to three minutes of interview tape. Certainly of people not just blabbing on or just being wordy, but rather, getting really meaningful things that they need to express.

Now that gets us into how do we get that wonderful tape? How do we get those people to really express what they think is an issue, what gets them very passionate about a particular story, a particular debate, controversy? And that's the trick certainly that all reporters, print or broadcast, have. That's the real challenge. And I think that you could go for endless numbers of hours interviewing someone who's interesting, and only get maybe 30, 40 seconds of tape. I've always had mixed feelings, well, what they call "news bites" as being you know, the rule more than the exception these days in any broadcast medium. But the fact is that people do say wonderful things in those 40, 30 seconds. Because I know that when I hear long pieces of tape, in my stories, they really drop off. And it's only when you get that real high energy delivery of a person saying something that means something about it. And there we get a story to mean something to someone else.