“Nameless Monster” Podcast Rationale

After reading Shipka and Mckee’s article, the first thing that came to my mind was audio children story books. This kind of children story book has a speaker right at the front bottom of the book. It senses every page you flip and play the audio pre-recorded according to the content on the page. This kind of children story books enable children to also hear the atmosphere of the story rather than just reading the words and images. As Mckee stated, “Without the soundtrack, the images and text don’t convey the full message (Mckee).” This idea is also widely used in role playing video games where each character in the game has its own voice. Having this idea in mind, I decided to record my podcast based on a children story. However, I do not want to record something that is commonly presented. Therefore, I decided use a children stories from a Japanese Manga, “Monster”.

“Monster” is a Japanese comic story created by Naoki Urasawa. Unlike the U.S. comic, Japanese manga often present serious storyline in which it is made for adult. Just a brief summary of the storyline, in the beginning of the story, a Japanese surgeon in Germany saves a child’s life. While the Japanese surgeon does not know, that child is actually trained by the East Germany to become the second Hitler after Germany lost in WWII. Then the storyline takes off from there to reveal the methods that East Germany at that time used to train spy at their early childhood. The children stories that I take out from the manga are stories that used to manipulate children psychologically and to destroy their system of emotion reactant in order to make them the perfect spy. The three stories I used were “Nameless Monster”, “God of Peace”, and “Mr. Big Eye and Mr. Big mouth”. I made a little twist in all of those stories so I can combine all three different stories into one single story.

The original version of the story is in Japanese. The version of manga I read was in Chinese. Therefore, when I translate the story into English, so words might not be exactly the same but I tried to keep the original meaning and metaphor of the story. After translating the story script into English, I started to record my podcast. I intentionally use a rather clam voice to take the role narrator. I believed that “meaning is carried not solely by the verbal content but, as oral performers and oral readers continually show, also by the vocal qualities (Mckee).” Thus, I believe I can convey audience that this is not the fairy tale type children story by using a colder tone of voice. When speaking lines from character, I tried not to be too emotional or exciting because it will ruin the grooving of the cold and dark children story. However, I also tried to present the mood of the characters by speaking their lines slightly different from the narration.

Since “use of music to establish tone and atmosphere (Mckee)” is very significant, I carefully considered my choice of music. I used the same classical background music throughout the whole story except for the very end. By using this classical background music, I hope to create an atmosphere of mystery, sad, and dark. Another advantage of using the same background music throughout the whole story is that the background music will tend to blend into the story telling itself soon after audience get used to hear that music with the words speaking. This tied to Glenn McDonald’s idea: “oftentimes the mark of superior sound design is that you don’t consciously notice it at all. Instead, it goes to work on you subconsciously-heightening tension, manipulating the mood (Mckee).”

After putting in the background music, the general atmosphere was established. In order to add gradation to the story, I start to put in some sound effects. Mckee stated four main purpose of sound effect in the reading, sound effect can “provide information about a scene”, “serve as a cue reference”, “help in mood creation”, and “act as emotional stimulus (Mckee).” I used sound effect in my podcast for all of those purposes. In every location transition, I provide a sound effect that tells where we are at to help audience have some knowledge about the atmosphere. I also add in sound effects like foot stepping, door opening and closing in order to cue the action of the characters in the story. When something is about to happen, I use a heart pumping, scary sound effect to act an emotional stimulus that prepares a mood for audience.

The last thing is the use of silence. I did not leave too many silence moment in my podcast since it is a straight forward story telling podcast rather than a drama. I believe that leaving too many silence moment in the podcast will ruin the grooving and emotion build up that created by the compact and tight feeling I intended to create using my voice, background music, and sound effect. However, I did leave few silence moment in my podcast. They occurred in the transition of the story. I want audience to have a second to process what happens in the previous plot. According to Mckee, “listening to silence is complicated because it involves listening for an absence presence, what is there and not there (Mckee).” Therefore, by leaving silence right at the transition, it is like making a mini conclusion while the narrator does not actually concluding anything.

After making my podcast, I now understand how Shipka’s students feel about their interest based assignment. “Feature sound and demonstrate a kind of conceptual, material, and rhetorical soundness resulting from their producers thinking carefully and critically about the impact of the various choices they made throughout the process of composing (Shipka).” As the result, I understand more about the meaning of those children stories than just reading it from the original manga. All elements used in the podcast are vital important. However, as shown in John Berger’s video, I learned how powerful background music is even when it stands alone. I personally think that the background music is the main element that shapes the overall emotion of the podcast while the voice quality delivery is the second most important. The same story being told, it can be a happy fairy tale children story when inserting happy and twinkling background music. It can also be a sad, cold, and dark children story when inserting rather mysterious background music.

 

 

Reference

McKee Heidi, Sound matters: Notes toward the analysis and design of sound in multimodal

webtexts, Computers and Composition, Volume 23, Issue 3, 2006, Pages 335-354,

ISSN 8755-4615, 10.1016/j.compcom.2006.06.003.

Shipka Jody, Sound engineering: Toward a theory of multimodal soundness, Computers and
               Composition, Volume 23, Issue 3, 2006, Pages 355-373, ISSN 8755-4615,
               10.1016/j.compcom.2006.05.003.