Our Towns

Placecasting with Jeff Jones, Pt. 2

We're back with the second and last installment of the Q&A Jeff Jones. He works as a public radio producer and blogs about place-based audio at Placecasting, lately reporting on 3-D renderings from National Parks on Google Earth. (Don't look at the digitized Mount Rushmore for too long. It may keep you up at night.)

In this installment, Jeff talks about how to launch your own audio projects, tools to embrace and pitfalls to avoid when putting a tour together, and bolsters the case for a visit to Ellis Island.

Enjoy! Comments always welcome.

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OT: Any resources or communities, online or otherwise?

JJ: I'm seeking these out every chance I get. Freesound.org and Open Sound New Orleans both have great sound-mapping projects going on, though they're not storytelling in the same way I'm talking about. Audiophiles and radio producers have communities to talk about audio gear and recording techniques. There are a ton of tutorials for how to create podcasts. Museum and historic site interpreters discuss audio tours in their own forums, but I haven't found an active community for people just placecasting on their own. So if you find one, let me know!

OT: What are the elements of a successful audio tour?

JJ: Here are some of the qualities of a good placecast:

- takes advantage of location by directing the user's senses ("look at the building in the distance", "notice the patterns in the artwork", "turn around and notice how the forest changes")

- fits information into a larger narrative ("the story of the Minneapolis riverfront is the story of the power of wheat", "the uneven, rocky terrain around you is another reason this battle would claim so many lives")

- keeps explanations brief, but interesting (respect the user's time)

- puts numbers and statistics in perspective ("the river here is 1.5 miles across -- that's the widest at any point before the delta", "the clocktower is five stories tall, which made it the tallest building in town for nearly 80 years")

- is written for voice (just reading text from a brochure or guidebook into a microphone is hard to listen to because it's not written to be spoken -- and understood -- out loud)

- is narrated with energy and authenticity (no need to crack jokes or take on a phony persona ... let the story grab the audience)

- uses music and sound effects deliberately and sparingly (remember the listener is already there, so you may not need to set a mood with music)

- uses oral histories, either with real voices on tape or as read by actors

- gives clear, easy instructions for what to do next ("Now press pause and walk three blocks south. Stop for a crepe at one of the street vendors if you like. Then, when you see the cathedral on your left, go to the next track.")

- directs users to more information ("there is a visitor center in the first floor of the brown building across the plaza", "the tower's Web site features a time-lapse video of it's remarkable construction process", "english-speaking guides are often available for hire near the front of the cathedral -- but make sure they have an official badge")


OT: How important are production and storytelling?

JJ: Storytelling is the key to making memorable audio whether you are broadcasting, podcasting or placecasting. As a radio producer, I've edited a thousand one-on-one interviews ... leaving long rambling answers on the cutting room floor and highlighting moments of tension, surprise and delight that will make the interview memorable and enlightening. A successful audio tour takes advantage of the audio medium by embracing voice, story, pacing, music and even silence. It's easy to try to cram a lot of factoids and superlatives into an audio tour, but the best way to make information stick in the listener's brain is to make it part of a narrative they can connect with on a deeper level.

Production is therefore secondary to story. Crummy production (poor audio quality, inconsistent audio levels, bad editing, etc.) can distract listeners from the story they're hearing and negate a lot of good writing and storytelling. BUT, a super-slick, sound-intense work of audio art can also distract from the real-world experience you mean to enhance.


OT: Could you describe a great audio tour you've been on?

JJ: In 2000, I visited Ellis Island in New York Harbor. I knew as much about the place as anyone who's been through public school in this country...it was the place European immigrants passed through sometime in the past before they became our ancestors. That's about it. At the entrance, there was the option to buy an audio tour narrated by Tom Brokaw. I honestly may not have chosen it but not for the reputation of that name. I'm so glad I did.

At the time, as I remember it, the huge entrance building on Ellis Island was intact, but barely furnished. Some rooms held exhibits, but mostly room after room was old and empty. Still, in room after room, the stories I heard on the audio tour filled the place with life. There were oral histories from former employees describing conditions in the infirmary, and from immigrants describing the entrance interview process, and from people who passed through as children describing their fear and excitement (I remember these voices more than anything Brokaw said, come to think of it.)

The audio tour mentioned facts and statistics, to be sure, but its goal was to make visitors FEEL that immigrant experience. I remember looking down at the huge entrance hall as the tour directed me to look at one part of the room and then another. It knew where I was and pointed out aspects of the place I never would have noticed on my own. I don't remember if there was music on the tour, though I imagine there was. What I know is I left feeling a connection to the place I never would have felt otherwise.


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Jeff Jones is a producer for Minnesota Public Radio News in St. Paul. He blogs about audio tours and place-based media in his free time. He loves to travel and discover new places from small towns, to national parks to grand cityscapes all over the world. Jeff grew up near Chicago and graduated from Macalester College in St. Paul in 2001 with a degree in Urban Studies. He's also worked for The News Hour with Jim Lehrer on PBS and for Twin Cities Public Television.

Labels: audio tours, ellis island, jeff jones, placecasting

posted by Matt @ 6:00 AM 0 Comments

Placecasting with Jeff Jones, Pt. 1

Have you ever surveyed the land around you, and the spot you're standing on, and asked, "Who was here before me? What were their lives like? What motivated them, hurt them, drove them from another place to be here, in this place above all others?"

Jeff Jones has, does and will continue to ask these questions. As a public radio producer and a blogger at Placecasting, he's constantly thinking about with how best we can connect and understand place through audio recording and documentation.

The following Q&A took place over email and will be split over two posts. While Jeff told me he appreciated the value of an editor, I couldn't bring myself to make cuts. There was just too much good, interesting material to share.

Today's post will deal with the "what" of placecasting and audio tours -- how are they defined now, and how has technology changed the form. Tomorrow Jeff digs deeper into the "how" angle, offering practical advice on creating audio, and what makes it great.

Enjoy! Comments are very welcome.


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OT: Can you explain a little bit about Placecasting?

JJ: Broadly, Placecasting is digital media that is created specifically to be consumed at a particular location. More specifically, I see placecasting as a new medium for helping people make sense of their world, while they're standing in that world. Anyone curious about the culture, history, nature or architecture around them can benefit from a placecast that answers simple questions like "why is that there?", "why does it look like that?", "how is it related to the landscape around me?", and "what was here before?" In my opinion, audio is the most logical medium for effective placecasting because it allows the rest of our senses to keep experiencing the real world around us. The advantage of knowing exactly where your audience is standing is that you don't have to put pictures or video in front of them.


OT: Is it part of a long tradition, or a fairly new phenomenon?

JJ: Audio tour guides have been around for a long time; I remember my family buying a cassette tape to guide us around the Gettysburg battlefield when I was a kid. It came with a little map. The voices of park rangers and historians were laid over battlefield sounds and period music to make the quiet landscape come alive...and to help us make sense of what we were seeing. Tour creators have mostly been museums, historic sites, chambers of commerce -- any institution wanting to help visitors understand the stories their particular place has to tell. But the fact is most places in our world don't have organizations advocating for them or spending money creating media about them. That doesn't make those places any less curious to visitors or residents alike...in fact, it can often make them more so.

This is where the new phenomenon comes in. There's a remarkable convergence of key technologies taking place that is unlocking the potential of placecasting both for consumers and creators. For example: my cell phone now knows exactly where I am (not to mention which direction I'm pointed in and how fast I'm travelling in that direction.) Not only that, my cell phone also has high-speed access to the most complete reference library ever created, the Internet. Not only THAT, but my cell phone also has speakers attached to my ears. The potential exists for a device in my pocket to cross-reference my location with my interests and deliver useful, interesting information about what I'm seeing...and to do it all with minimal distraction to me, the user, experiencing the world.

In short, the convergence of GPS, the geospacial Web (Google Maps, etc.) and handheld computing is increasingly making place-based interpretation available to anyone, anywhere. The qualities of audio storytelling haven't really changed much in the digital era. What has changed the most is the technology for receiving and playing it back. Programs like Garage Band also allow producers to include photos, graphics and video along with their podcast, which can be handy enhancements to the placecast experience. Now all we have to do is create the content.


OT: Who is the true audience for audio tours: residents or tourists, or both?

JJ: This is a great question. The institutions that have traditionally created audio tours would say their placecasts are for the visitor...no matter where that visitor comes from. When we expand the medium beyond the walls of these institutions, the concept of "visitor" gets trickier. Is someone who exercises by riding their bike through Grant Park a tourist? If I commute by bus down Broadway, am I a visitor? If your summer home is on Lake Tahoe, are you a resident? The answer shouldn't really matter as long as all three people want to know more about what they're seeing on their ride, their commute or their vacation. The successful placecast, using effective storytelling, will respond to the curiosity of the user, not to their status as newcomer or native.

Indeed, tourism is a HUGE market for placecasts -- and understandably so. But too many of the ones I've heard amount to an actor reading a guidebook into a microphone...with very little thought put into the user experience and even less into telling compelling stories.

I think placecasting holds amazing potential for community-building. People LOVE learning new information about their neighborhoods, and often the more they learn the more connected they feel to the places and people around them. I think neighborhood arts and culture organizations will be the next group to really embrace placecasting to enrich the residents around them (as well as any visitors who just happen to catch wind of a good walking tour.)



Check back tomorrow for Pt. 2 and learn how to placecast in six easy steps!

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Jeff Jones is a producer for Minnesota Public Radio News in St. Paul. He blogs about audio tours and place-based media in his free time. He loves to travel and discover new places from small towns, to national parks to grand cityscapes all over the world. Jeff grew up near Chicago and graduated from Macalester College in St. Paul in 2001 with a degree in Urban Studies. He's also worked for The News Hour with Jim Lehrer on PBS and for Twin Cities Public Television.

Labels: audio tours, gettysburg, gps, jeff jones, placecasting

posted by Matt @ 10:28 AM 0 Comments