Podcast
Features
Comments
February 1st, 2003 | Produced by Liane Bonin
 |
Though I learned the basics of editing sound while working for an
entertainment news radio syndicate a few years back, this is the first piece
I’ve produced from start to finish. I had wanted to write about Iris and her
weird, funny-sad story for years, but hadn’t been able to find the right
angle — I seemed to get stuck in a gear somewhere between boring and
cloying, which, let’s face it, is not a fun place to be. It was only when I
started interviewing my friends and family did Iris’ story start to gel. I
was pleasantly surprised by not only what people remembered about Iris
(“That creepy, scaly tail!” was a common refrain) but how much time they
were willing to spend musing about the long-term emotional impact of an
animal that was only slightly more intelligent than a cashmere sweater.
Equipment
I used a Sony MD (MZ-R37) and a Sony microphone (ECM-MS957), then downloaded
the audio to my creaky Fujitsu Lifebook. When I worked in radio I used a
Sony DAT machine which broke down constantly (okay, that may have had
something to do with my dropping it constantly), but I’ve been really
pleased with my MiniDiscman — it’s sturdier (okay, I’ve dropped it a lot,
too) and the sound quality is just as clear as the DAT. I edited the piece
on CoolEdit 2000, which is a great program considering the price, but it has
its limitations — fine edits can be a little tricky, and there are limited
filtering options on this version. The only real glitch I came across in
putting this piece together was in recording my phone interviews. I used a
Dynametrics telephone recorder and a Radio Shack phone, and the results were
abysmal (many thanks to the Transom team for improving my sound).
From a Xmas Card |
I’ve worked as a print journalist for over a decade. I primarily write about
entertainment, but I’ve taken detours into articles about cult
deprogramming, teen dating, payola and spying on your cheating man. My work
has appeared in The Los Angeles Times, Entertainment Weekly, Flaunt, Detour,
Mademoiselle, Daily Variety, Filmmaker, and others. I’m currently a senior
writer for Entertainment Weekly Online.
Additional Support for this work provided by
with funding from the
and
The National Endowment for the Arts
Before Valentine’s Day gets too far behind us and our attention turns more to war and away from love, listen to this sweet handmade remembrance from first-time producer Liane Bonin.
You can tell it’s handmade partly by the sound quality which includes some pretty rough phoners, but in an age of slick and packaged media, there’s something increasingly refreshing about a rough and real finish.
I love the use of similes all the way through this story. It left me with a compulsion to adopt some possums of my own. Of course this is exactly why I chose an apartment that doesn’t allow pets
The phone audio was painful at times (particularly the high-pitched squawks), but worth it.
This was fun to listen to. It’s great to hear a piece created just because somebody had something to say. Have you tried to get it on the air?
Have you thought about re-doing those phone calls with better equipment? (I like not understanding every word, but it could be a problem for radio stations.) What would you do if you were asked the cut the piece down to eight minutes? Or four?
I liked the writing enough to want to hear a 3-minute commentary version on All Things Considered. [I just heard an Elissa Ely (spelling?) piece and this reminds me of her essays: the story of how an encounter with someone "lesser" reveals how stupidly we, the more intelligent (or more adjusted, or more powerful) people act. A "you and me against the world" experience you have to share.]
The wildlife advocate added enough additional information, humor and personality to make me want to hear 3 or more additional minutes.
I wonder whether the phone sections are necessary. Initally I liked the craziness of the phone sound enough to imagine a collage of crazy voices. But then I realized I wasn’t listening to what they said. You’d already made a collage of sorts in your description of the Christmas party.
Maybe the phoners are there because YOU learned from them. But as a good writer you’d already processed almost everything you got from them, even if not all the details
the more important other "characters" are the people you met along the way, like at the party, at the vets. You managed to conjur up those voices here without taping them.[I'm guessing the veterinarian was covering for his own embarrassment that he couldn't handle a wild animal (best defense is a good offensive comment)]
the description of you saving your little one and feeling her relax against you reminded me absolutely of motherhood
the biggest pang for me came when you said the cremation guy "didn’t mind that she wasn’t a REAL pet.
It was real love; a real pet. A Valentines piece.
the fact that it’s here reminds that transom is good for variety.
thank you!
Thanks! I definitely thought about rerecording the phone interviews, but I questioned whether I could get the same spontaneous responses again — I talked to some of these people at great length, and I think revisiting the subject of possums anytime in the next few years would almost be more than they could bear. Cutting it down to four or eight minutes would be a challenge, but I think pulling the vet story out and letting it stand alone with a brief intro could almost work. I wouldn’t be adverse to dropping the interviews, since the sound quality is so rough. I haven’t tried to get it on the air — I just sent it straight to Transom. I’m pretty much at a loss in that category.
Great story, thanks, never thought such a creature a vehicle for a story, ferret maybe, but I hear they smell bad.
Thoughts: The ending narration after the death seems a bit much, at least in length. A natural story conclusion comes with the death, and, at least I, feel like things are going to be wraped up soon (no pun). Music?
I kept listening for music too… in the beginning. Then, I learned to appreciate the pauses, the beats, which existed without the accentuation that music provides. I really liked your narrative style, and thought the humor was so perfect because– especially with something like the line about possums lapping up anti-freeze– it was true, and reflected our general, umm, irreverence for these animals (i.e. they’re dumb enough that two most likely causes of death are vehicular possumslaughter and anti-freeze), but you balanced that with the centerpiece of the story, which was your pet that you loved.
Maybe the possums lap up the anti-freeze out of desperation. A tonic, in lieu of finding the love and affection they crave but can’t seem to garnish from *most* of us.
Great story…
Chris
I didn’t notice the lack of music till well into the piece. Liane created a gentle wave-lapping kind of rhythm that carried me right along. I appreciated the silent beats.
As jake warga said, this felt like it could have ended sooner. i almost resented hearing about sparky, like hey, this is Iris’ story — I felt so loyal to Iris. And since my only close-possum intersection was on the bottom step of a Chicago backyard staircase, (I ceded, noisily, to the possum) it came as a surprise, this loyal feeling. but the ending felt like something Liane needed to hear herself say, and it worked just fine. the tone and writing throughout delicious….
is it true, that line about the lifesaver-sized brain?
I have no experience of audio editing, at all, but I am an inveterate listener to talk radio–CBC and NPR–, and it didn’t sound rough to me. Of course, as an audience member, I’m focussed on content and over-all effect, not technique.
But my very strong feeling about this piece is that it efficiently encapsulates in a few minutes the emotional and philosophical growth that the producer experienced over a period of years and made it (I’m guessing here, but it’s an experienced guess) unforgettable.
You can’t ask for much more than that, can you?
No. I think ‘breath-mint’ was nearer the mark.
I love this piece. I’ve listened to it many, many times and I never lose interest.
Here, at Transom, we tried to clean up the phoners and in doing so we had all the audio to work with. I’ m amazed at how much great audio Liane had to work with and was fascinated by her choices. It gave me an even greater appreciation for what a wonderful story teller and editor she is.
I’m not sure what purpose music would serve. The phoners/interviews work as transitions and the mood and tone is fully established by Liane’s voice and writing. Possum, in terms of production, is so simple. It would probably be as effective in print. And this leaves me wondering why does this piece work so well for radio?
The Possum Lady says that domesticated possums never make a peep, except when they want to express affection for their owners. So, maybe that’s why this works so well. We had to hear you, hear you express your affection for Iris.
Thank you for sharing Possum. It’s great.
Thank you Chelsea! I felt SO guilty for sending you my hours and hours and HOURS of interviews, so I’m glad you found them interesting (and could tolerate all my uhming and stuttering). I had considered working in music at one point, but was a little intimidated — I wasn’t quite sure how to loop the sound smoothly and was equally unsure what music to use. I was hoping that I might get a general concensus here as to what people wanted to hear, if anything — and also get an idea of what rules to follow when incorporating music. But I’m glad you enjoyed it just the way it is — in a way, I guess it makes sense for this to be a quiet piece, in keeping with that Iris sensibility.
A touching love letter to a marsupial. This is a beautifully written piece; its flourishes are refreshing. Bonin’s figurative language is vivid, especially descriptors like “bottomless black eyes” and “soft, mealy earthworm of a thing.” The similes (“like Stuart Little,” “like when a man walks out of your life…”) are not quite as strong. The discrete anecdotes, like the party scene, the guy taking Iris away for cremation and especially the rescue from the vet’s office, are especially satisfying.
Some of the tape is great as well. The “Possum Lady’s” fake possum noises are priceless. Generally, though, I think that for such a long piece (15 minutes), some other sounds, ambience or music would have moved things along much better. The middle third in particular starts to drag a bit. Some ideas for sound might include sounds of the vet’s office, sounds of Sparky (new dog), traffic or road sounds (when describing the roadkill element of so many possum stories), etc. Music would do the trick, too. I see in the previous comments that Bonin was a bit reluctant about working music into the piece; I just think it would have given more of a forward spin to the longer portions of script, and punctuated some of her zingers a bit more.
Obviously, some of the production is a bit rough. Not to take an obvious hit, but as others have noted, the phone sound is really jarring. Also, Bonin’s tracks seem to have more of a background hiss than her interviews, which is a bit odd.
All in all, this is a lovely piece, which could be a bit shorter. Less phone sound and more actuality might justify a longer piece. But the writing is what carries it, and it’s hard to quibble with most Bonin’s narrative choices. She has made these beastly little creatures seem lovable, perhaps even transformative. Quite an accomplishment.
Liane—
Thank you so much for this story about Iris. I have to admit, it brought on a few tears. I have been re-habbing possums for Wildlife Rescue 13 years now and your comments about other peoples’ reactions to them are so familiar to me. They are one of the most misunderstood creatures around. I have taken in close to 200 of them over the years, and I had a few that that were non-releasable. I kept these for the duration of their very short lives. I can say without a doubt, they do get attached to people. My husband and I grew very attached to one in particular, a tiny one we named BigBig. She never got very big, in spite of her name. She loved nothing more than to crawl up into our laps while watching tv, slip under my husband’s or my sweatshirt, and go to sleep. I bought a fanny pack for her, and she would go on hikes in the mountains with us, sometimes sitting on my shoulder. I can honestly say I’ve never had a more loving and sweet pet.
I hope your story will help to change peoples’ prejudices against these guys. They are native to this country and in the "beneficial" category. When I tell people they like to eat roaches and rattlesnakes in the wild, people are surprised and usually start to think that maybe they are ok after all!
Dana Mardaga.
Thank you for the wonderful story about Iris.
I must say that, though I agree with Mr. Spitzer on all of his praise and some of his criticisms – I think there were a couple of audible edits and the phone sound(esp. when Mom and Dad were talking on the same line) was jarring – I enjoyed the piece at its current length.
Part of the reason for this, I believe, is your success in bringing so many samples of culture to the listener through the story of you and Iris – your mother being afraid you were turning into "that old possum lady," the idea that some things just happen to you like "a bad perm," sometimes when people walk out of your life they do "drag you soul on the bottom of their shoe," and my favorite was when you used the possum lady actuality to provide a possible definition for love.
These elements, combined with a flawless delivery and great visuals (Iris could "skin a grape with her tongue") expanded what could have been a simple commentary on a pet into a deeper account of the way you experience life – and I felt you really brought me there.
– Sarah Neal
Here in Europe we do great things with elaborate sound, phone-ins, studio debates – radio here is quite vital. But you rarely hear the kind of intimate, unselfconscious, seemingly under-produced stuff you do with tape in America. Thanks for the possum piece.
Ronan Kelly,
RTE Radio,
Dublin,
Ireland.
I was very touched by this story, especially the part where you go to the vet to pick Iris up from the vet.
We have a number of fruit trees in our yard, which seem to attract the occasional ‘possum. Sometimes, we’re lucky to glimpse one. One day, I lay on the floor near the sliding glass door and watched one hunkered on the other side of the glass, an inch or two from my face. We stared at each other for about 5 minutes until the ‘possum waddled off and climbed down the wisteria back into our yard. Wonderful creatures….
Thanks for telling us about Iris. It struck a chord in me as well – I’ve always had a soft spot for animals like that. If my cats weren’t so protective and territorial, I’d be tempted to do the same.
I found this story funny, moving, and poignant. Thanks so much for posting it! I listened then played it for my husband. I live in the city, but one possum is a regular nightly vacuum cleaner on my patio beneath the bird feeder, eating up what the birds in their wanton haste have knocked to the ground. After listening to your story, I find myself having even more affection for my nightly visitor.
Where I used to live possums were often around; we were far off the road so it was pretty safe for them. The most bold might come in thru the cat door and eat, but was never obnoxious about it like the raccoons. One female raised her babies in my neighbor’s garage and we’d get to see them sometimes. I thought they were as beautiful as all other animals, but was concerned about their brainpower. Everyone needs as much of that as they can get these days. I did not know you could keep them as pets and that they don’t bite, or any of this info on them and appreciate learning it. That so many people don’t see them as real–sadly, this is no surprise. That they love and that you can fall in love with them–that’s not a surprise, either. That’s a wonder and a blessing which this lucky storyteller got to experience. The work, the long patience, the harsh opinions of other people, it’s all worth it to feel that unique bond. And of course, it doesn’t last forever–nowhere long enough.