When reflecting on Ira Glasses video series on storytelling, specifically parts 1 and 2, there were several nuggets that really grabbed my attention. One of those included his discussion on building a story, in that he said that it takes longer to actually find a worthwhile story over the actual production process for said story. This stood out to me because I can relate to the feeling of having a lot of ideas for a story, but having to shift through them, almost like a trial and error, to decide which one is the strongest. Connecting this to audio, on of the examples Ira Glass used to describe this was an interview, and how certain people can freeze up during them or simply are bad at interviews as they don't add much emotion, making the editing process difficult to come off as engaging. However, as Ira Glass states, you cannot simply ignore that someone is a "bad speaker" because everyone has a story to tell. It's in those moments that editing can really be your friend to help amplify someone's story.
The second nugget that struck me was this idea of having bait within a story that can raise questions and build onto the tension of a story. Even when a story is super boring, the tone in which is it told can change someone's perception of the story itself. This is something that I constantly am noticing in traditional TV's show, because they demonstrate this concept in their episodes. There are many shows that have horrible rising actions that are filled with plot holes, yet the way someone communicates them can make a story or clip that much more engaging. One example I found of this was in the show Severance, as the lines being delivered are rather basic, yet the audio and tensions created make it more engaging. Furthermore, this all helped me to better understand audio storytelling and it's key concepts.
After watching both part's 1 and 2 of this video series, I was able to really understand that audio storytelling is not only about the actual sound effects or editing of audio tapes, but that is actually about the power of the spoken world and the stories it can help tell. When you edit a piece of audio, it can take away the intimacy of the persons actual voice by altering to make it more appealing. However, as Ira Glass harps on, it is important to preserve the natural human emotions when editing and producing a piece of audio, so that It doesn't sound super robotic or overly edited to perfection. Therefore, Ira Glass argues that the nature of this human voice makes storytelling more compelling and natural. Using this nuanced understanding of audio storytelling, it will help me to apply these concepts and ideas to my work.