I choose my grandmother because she is someone that has always been the storyteller of my family. During holidays and other family gatherings, she is always capturing the attention of everyone in the room with her stories of the past or her made-up fairytales to enchant me and my cousins. She oftentimes reminisces about her time growing up on our family’s homestead.  My lineage on her side of the family was one of the first families to settle in midcoastal Maine. The farm she grew up on has a rich history and oftentimes has led to spooky ghost stories being told around the campfire.  Stories that I hope to emerge from this interview are to dig deeper into her childhood growing up on the farm and what it was like living with no electricity and running the farm and moving among logging camps. Another avenue I think this interview could go is the drastic lifestyle change she experienced when she married my Papa. Contrasting to the way my Gram grew up, my Papa was raised in the inner city of Detroit, Michigan. When they got married, they moved between Detroit and Maine before finally settling down in Maine once my mom and aunts reached high school. This time was a very uncertain but adventurous time in her life because it was different from anything she had ever grown up knowing. These stories also heavily tie into my mom’s childhood as she is the oldest child my grandparents had, in which she spent the most time growing up in Detroit through her neighborhood and schooling.  Vivid memories my Gram frequently talks about from her time in Detroit are her neighbors and the close relationship she had with them. These people became a second family to her and oftentimes is where she found comfort in such uncertain times. The overarching theme in both of these pathways to a story is my Gram’s resilience, adaptability, and overall need for adventure. 

Interview Questions: 

1.     Where did you grow up, who did you grow up with, and can you paint a visual picture of what the farm looked like when you grew up there? 

2.     How has the farmhouse changed since you lived there when growing up and when you moved back to Maine mom and my aunts? 

3.     What was it like growing up with your siblings? Did you all have different roles and jobs on the farm, what were they? 

4.     I know you love learning about our family’s history and lineage, did you ever go up in the attic of the farmhouse to learn more about our family? Why or why not?  

5.     Did you guys leave the farm often? Where was your favorite place to go either on or off the farm growing up?

6.     What was it like growing up so immersed in nature and living off of the land? 

7.     Did you ever wish to explore the city prior to meeting Papa or was that something that was just a part of the adventure in your relationship? 

8.     What were some of your favorite memories from Detroit?

9.     How was adjusting to the city for you? Where did you find comfort in uncertainty? 

10.  Where was your favorite place to live, Detroit or Alna? And why? 

Script: 

Intro Music (3-5 seconds) 

Intro: Introduce myself, who I’m interviewing, and where I am (10-20 seconds) 

Interview (6-13 minutes)

Outro: Thank listeners, credit music (10 seconds)

1. What do you notice about the importance of the audience in the questions? Try to put what Alison Macadam writes about the audience in your own terms. Add something that you think might be missing or that helps you keep your own focus on the audience (300 words, minimum!).

The audience is the driving force behind each question you ask. In the case of defining your story’s driving question, you need to think about what kind of experience your audience is going to have when listening to the story. In order to keep your audience on the same page as you, it is suggested that you pick one question to ask and answer that one question really well. The article states that if you have more than one question, you probably have more than one storyline, which can be hard to follow for a listener or make for a less compelling story if you’re jumping between ideas. In conjunction with this concept, it is important to remind yourself that you cannot cover an entire topic in one episode or storyline. With that being said, you will need to leave things out to create a compelling and comprehensive story. When thinking about your driving question think about what angles you want to tell the story from so you can better paint the picture for your audience. In storytelling, the goal is to capture and maintain the audience’s attention, so when brainstorming how you will tell your story, it is important to think about how the audience will be perceiving it. When diving into what makes a story memorable to an audience member, we oftentimes forget that they will not remember every detail of the story we are telling. Instead, we need to turn our attention to the main points, memorable quotes, and themes and articulate those high points in the story. In thinking about these high points in the story, we should also be analyzing how we want our audience to feel after the story and what we want them to remember. In doing so we can articulate the main points of the story effectively so the audience has a compelling experience listening to the story and takes something memorable away from it. 

2. Revisit your first Interview Podcast (Peer) and listen to it at least one more time. Go back to the raw interview audio you collected and write about what got left out. Your published story was not about what got omitted. Write about at least two omissions that helped you make your podcast more focused (300 words, minimum!).

In full length, my raw interview was closer to 5 minutes long as Allie and I were talking in a conversational manner. Overall, in the raw interview there were two overarching storylines to tell but ultimately led me to choose her most memorable childhood memory to pursue in the podcast because I felt like it was a more compelling story. The storyline I left out was regarding where she was from and what she did over Winter break, in which she works at a Carhart store and talks about meeting customers’ dogs that came in. In omitting this story it helped make the story more focused on who Allie is personality-wise. In this assignment, we were telling a story to get to know the person better. While I feel that her job in her hometown is a piece of who Allie is, I wanted to articulate a storyline that I felt accentuated her interests and passions as well as hear her personality shine through the story, which was more evident in her childhood memory. In addition, I also omitted parts of why she was in the course so that the intro was shorter and we could jump into the story quicker. Reflecting on the episode I am unsure if it made for a better listening experience. I think adding in a few more seconds of audio to give more context as to who Allie is would have been helpful for the listener.

1. Describe at least two ways in which you think the “medium” (the audio, the video, the two combined) affects how you make sense of the content. Be sure to provide evidence from the videos to support the meaning carried by the medium.

Marshall McLuhan is known for his ideology that “The Medium is the Message” which greatly speaks true to today’s society and how we communicate ideas and stories. One example given by Luhan is the combination of senses when communication methods evolved. Throughout history, we have shared information through speech which was perceptive through your ears. However, advancements in technology have now integrated other senses into the medium. For example, the television which you are perceiving the message with both your eyes and ears. This combination of senses creates a completely different experience of the message in contrast to if you were just hearing the message verbally. Secondly, McLuhan says, “If you don’t understand the media, you don’t understand the message”. He goes on further to relate this to technology advancements and creating a global community. McLuhan is correct in this statement in a simple invention of the printing press changed books from hand-written intimate pieces to a mass media industry. Through advancements in the medium (cell phones and the internet), the medium has created a completely different experience than a hand-written book. With hand written books, there is limited information with no visuals, whereas a cell phone has unlimited information and graphics, creating a lack of privacy and secrecy. 

2. Let’s consider podcasting with the two videos and the old FCC document in mind. Write 250-400 words to explain what you take to be the “message” in the medium of audio storytelling or podcasting. You might take the opportunity to consider that message within the larger context of “radio.”

I think the message within the medium of radio is podcasting is creating a sense of intimacy that has been lost in other forms of communication medium. By eliminating the visuals (in most cases) the messages feel more private and as if you are having a conversation with the medium. Within the larger context of radio, having a large number of frequencies creates a place for many different ideas and concepts to be shared which creates many small niche groups of people sharing ideas. These groups, because they are niche feels intimate in my mind and more personal versus joining a Facebook group which creates a feeling of exposure because the information posted is visual but also more public because it is posted on the internet. In podcasting, some podcasts only have audio and some include visuals which both provide very different experiences for the viewer. I listen to a nature adventure podcast that only uses audio. This medium makes me feel more connected to the host and guests on the station, it is more conversational, as if I was hiking alongside them as I am listening to their stories. Eliminating the visuals within the medium creates a sense of mystery but also personalization because every listener has a different picture in their mind about what they are listening to. In contrast, I listen to a podcast about life advice, dating, and experiences celebrities have within these topics, where the message feels a lot different because it has visuals included in it. Because it is filmed this podcast feels as though I am on the set of a show that is being filmed. It feels like a more outsider view and feels versus if I were to listen to it without watching the visuals. While this still feels more intimate than scrolling through TikTok or other social media platforms, it still takes a step back from the conversational feel of just audio recording.