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Intro by Jay Allison
This is a strange one. When it came into our office, our auditioners were disturbed, unsettled. What is it? Where did it come from? Is it TRUE? It is by no means finished, but when many pieces crossing the Transom do not command attention, this one did, which makes it worth hearing and discussing. It was recorded and mixed in a few hours by Chris Layton, his first radio piece, in progress.
From the Producer
I was on the farm for a day and a half, and was handed a coffee and
Baileys when I got out of my truck on the first morning, my arrival. My buddy Rick who lives on the farm, suggested we should check
out the pigs. From that point on, I carried the microphone and recorder
around stuffed in my jeans pocket, and turned it on and off periodically
throughout the weekend.
I’ve come to consider the most important part of this whole piece, is that
none of it was staged. I think for me, the challenge was to take real
memories and turn them into something new, with narration and the timely
placement of audio footage gathered on the farm. So, I’m not saying this is
a new genre or anything, but it’s different from the Documentary. Maybe
it’s a Nocumentary…
Tech Notes
RECORDING: I used a Sony MS907 microphone with a Sony
MZ-G750 recorder. I’ve gotten into a habit of displaying the mic openly at times,
concealing it at others– not out of hopes of getting something
embarrassing or revealing on tape, but simply in an effort to keep people
from being uncomfortable. They’re my friends, and I know they wouldn’t
mind anyway.
EDITING: I dumped the audio to my PC using Sound Forge, a single track
editor. From there, I imported the files to “Internet Audio Mix
1.34,” a program I downloaded for free from the internet, with a 30
day trial period and then I think a $25 fee to purchase. My trial
has officially run out now, and I haven’t purchased it– not sure
what my next step is going to be. The program is appropriately
crude, and all mixing can be done with ‘point and click’ and it took
me about 10 minutes to figure it out and then two hours to put
together the piece once I had all the sound dumped onto the computer.
I’m not that technical, but I do alright.
70 minutes of material collected over 2 days.
2 hrs of editing.
Christopher Layton |
I’m currently an attorney in Charlotte, North Carolina, and the only
other creative product worth mentioning that I’ve introduced into the world
is a video documentary entitled “Waiting For A Miracle,” which is the account
of two waiters in Wilmington, North Carolina.
We weren’t sure what to do with this when it came in.
Call the police?
We should say a few words up front. Transom deals with both process and product. Sometimes one gets in the way of the other. The performance mandate of the latter impedes the educational value of the former. This is a process piece. It’s not done. It’s a sketch.
You may find the content disturbing, inexplicable even. We did.
But once the piece started, we kept listening. It didn’t strike the usual chords. The tone and rhythms were different. The narrative was choppy, disjointed. The whole thing seemed to come from broken cassette discovered in a wooded area beside the interstate. We kept listening.
Chris is interested in your comments and suggestions. This is his first attempt at radio (the assembly and mix took him two hours) and he’s feeling his way along. He and I actually developed a revised version of this piece, with a little more intention and resolution. But it wasn’t as compelling.
So, we’re giving you the same experience we had.
I liked it.
I’m inspired to try the same sort of thing. I think a lot of fun might be possible with this production method.
One thing I’d like to know is what that African tribe sound was. Is that edited sound? And if not, gosh, what were people doing?
Is this piece in bad taste? I think it’s too strange to be in bad taste.
Is it good enough to stand as it is by itself? Well, I hesitate, but I vote yes.
I’m going to go through the trouble to make a copy of it for my friend Ray. There’s a good chance this piece will make him smile and/or make him raise his eyebrows. I think too much to know for sure if anything is really good. Ray doesn’t think. He’ll tell me.
yes, yes. thank you for giving me the unshakeable creeps. i loved this. it was mesmerizing.
praise, too, from the sweatpants. they say this piece reminds them of their big australian arena tour in ’89. i asked for further explanation and they got very tight-lipped.
I got those too. Here in the transom office, I was checking that the url worked, before circulating the piece for review, so I was at my desk, headphones on, thinking "great pig sounds, hmmm music seems a good fit", then the narration started and it got to the murder bit, and I had to stop it, and put it over the speakers as it all seemed too real to go directly into my ears.
My email to the team was full of dark forboding, and I must confess to worrying that transom might be unknowingly involved in the portrayal of a real gruesome murder of poor ashley!…… so I overreacted!
anyway it grabbed everyone, immediately and that is something that doesn’t happen too often.
Nice one Chris.
Well, I just wanted to say hello to anyone who has checked out the piece and am thrilled (and relieved?) to see the responses so far.
Jay and I are really hoping for a bit of discussion regarding possible changes, or, what you WANTED to hear or discover about the narrator or anything else in the piece, but which you felt the piece came up empty on in the end. The goal there being to maybe do a revision– as Jay said, I took a stab at it one time and we felt like I ended up with less than what I had before I started.
Anyway, I’m certainly tuning in to the discussion and am eager to hear critiques, and I’m certainly appreciative of the enthusiasm expressed thus far. I think mostly I’m glad I could contribute to what I think is a pretty classic website.
Chris Layton
Chris, did I gather correctly that the pig was taped to a tree and used as a firing range target? Somehow, early on, I got the impression that this was going more towards a, um, Deliverance ending.
Too strange to be in bad taste?
Is strangeness what we’re aiming for?
Isn’t strangeness a relatively easy target, in the art world?
Been reading this website, reverently, for months, enjoy learning more each visit. Love the shows, have tremendous respect for the work done here. I have zip production experience myself…
Why is there confusion between bitches and pigs?
What I heard: A woman gets taped to a tree, gang-raped, then repeatedly shot by men with rifles.
Anybody else got a problem with that?
Just for the usual reasons?
Shock value is limited. In the end, I felt this evocative piece came up long on character, empty on heart. Even if unshakeably creepy, and original… definitely not ("by no means") finished. But then, I’m just a hayseed who walked out on Pulp Fiction. Please tell me, clue me in, on what it is that I just don’t get.
Just to clear up the questions asked thus far:
1) The tribal sounds were taken from a Smithsonian disc called Mbuti Pygmies of the Rainforest. I picked it up about 10 years ago for a dollar and I used it as an excuse to develop the story b/c it provided a chance to create a scene for which I did not have audio.
2) The girl was tied to the tree. The pig was not.
3) The girl was not raped in this piece– I meant to create the image of her being wrestled to the ground, resisting the efforts of the group to tie her to the tree. Perhaps I failed at that.
For those wondering, in reality, a milkjug with a picture of Brittany Spears taped to it was sitting on a log, and that’s what we were shooting at. This accounts for the dialogue regarding where she was shot, whether she was hit, etc. None of the people on the recording, including myself, had any idea at the time that I would use the footage to create this piece.
CL
Kate,
Certainly there’s too much violence in commercial media. People tell me I need to get cable so I can watch the Sopranos, but after seeing the first season on DVD I thought the violence was sickening.
In the film Casino, there was terrible violence but there was a thrill factor there.
With the Sopranos and Casino and Pulp Fiction, we just have a modern version of the gore of the Roman Colosseum. It’s not art. It’s slowing down to look at a traffic accident. But The Farm, for me, wasn’t like that. There was violence but no thrill.
I have practically no tolerance for violence in the media which makes it damn interesting to me that I like this piece and want to make copies for friends.
Kate, I hear what you saying, but my reaction, for a reason I don’t quite understand, was much different.
Chris, as far as it being finished or unfinished, it would fit right in as a complete segment in a Joe Frank piece.
I didn’t really get it. What was the point? If it is meant to have no deeper message than what is on the surface, then I guess it works. I think it could be finished by giving it an ending–it just seems to fade out in the middle as it is now. What happens after she is dead? Did you get the pig pregnant and make it to the cover of the Weekly World News? Do you have to consider killing someone else who is going to break down and go to the police?
Why did you choose the strange and thankfully passe drug PCP? PCP does not make you calm or mellow, but instead makes a person more like a bebelligerent drunk on speed.
I’m not sure there was/is a deeper message. I’m usually bugged by deeper messages. And I don’t mean to discredit your post. In fact, I agree that answering questions or raising concerns like "What happens if someone else goes to the police?" can/could serve to carry the piece through the ending. My attempts at coming up with such a device have failed b/c it begins to lose that creepiness, and sounds contrived. So, if I’m clinging to that aspect of the piece, then perhaps my intention in large part was to create a creepy piece– a narrative which seems too horrible to be non-fiction, but audio which is too ‘real sounding’ to have been faked. Something to catch the listener off-guard, the way Blair Witch meant to, for lack of a better comparison?
PCP was actually thrown in there because during the weekend some discussion of it came about, and one or two people at the farm had tried it years before. Their reports were that contrary to the middle-school films and commercials that depicted people on PCP diving through glass windows and running head-on into traffic, PCP actually made them comatose. Perhaps it has different effects on different folks, the way that while marijuana relaxes one man at the end of the work day, it drives another to endless paranoia: I think as opposed to using another drug, I used PCP in the piece because I thought that anyone who was there that weekend, upon hearing the piece, would remember that it was discussed and get a kick out of what happened to the narrator while he was on PCP. It also seemed a strong enough drug that it would make sense for the narrator now to be confused in his recollection.
Chris
I’m very understanding of Kate’s problems with the piece and even think she should get a t-shirt for raising them. We’d been waiting for someone to do it.
Here’s the reason we featured this piece. Transom isn’t just about things that are totally finished. It is also interested in the intersection, and sometimes the disconnection, between style and content. "The Farm" sounds different. It is arresting. Why? That’s worth talking about. Yes, the ending may not work yet, may not justify the violence of the content. But the beginning sure works. Why?
Have you seen the movies "River’s Edge" or "The Bully"? They deal with this kind of offhand, drugged out, nihilistic, gratuitous violence. They are depressing because they are so real-seeming. This piece put me in mind of them and I think, with some more work, could come to saying something important.
I like the way this piece makes you listen. It feels "real." Handmade. Found. I can imagine a version where it is framed as a tape made for someone, a confession. Maybe even someone walks in the room and the narrator has to hide the microphone, and we overhear that muffled conversation. Maybe the details of the weekend are obscured, but occasionally very clear, like snuff radio, and we lean in to hear what happened, we REALLY want to know what happened. Then, at the end, our interest in the violence, our wish to hear it, becomes the point.
I think it’s worth drawing the distinction b/w efforts to justify the violence, and efforts to make the piece more cohesive or ‘finished.’ On the former, I think we’re getting a look at an individual who does not have the standard regrets society would dictate he have. I don’t think that should change. Instead, I think more effort should be made to convince the listener that this person exists, flaws intact– and perhaps the more human he becomes, the less we’ll look for a tidy moral ending or standard resolution.
Regarding changes which would make the framing of the piece more complete– an audio journal to a friend, someone bursting into the room during recording, etc– I think there is tons of room for this, and a need for it. This is an area where I’d really like input from listeners, because there’s SOMETHING, perhaps as small as one line of dialogue, perhaps larger (framing it as an audio letter) that exists out there, which would smooth the edges that leave some listeners dissatisfied.
If you have an idea, what is it?
If you think this type of change would be a mistake… why?
Chris
Chris -
I didn’t know what the heck I was listening to, but I was a tad freaked out from the beginning, knowing that there was stuff "yet to come". The one thing I thought you could play with is the narration. It was all a bit well thought out, especially for how ‘rough’ the tape sounded. Unlike Blair Witch (I know, sorry about the comparison) the narration was post, not during. This was no ‘found tape’ because it had obviously been thought out enough to give foreshadowing. Who are you talking to, would be my first question. If it IS indeed ‘produced’, narration added, music added – even a bit of ironic flavor with the music ala DELIVERANCE – who is this supposed to be geared to? Maybe it could be more confessional, dark, taboo. And since the tape sounds rough, maybe so should all that narration.
Just some thoughts.
After proclaiming with certainty that this piece needs something more, it’s crazy how much that guy on PCP at the farm has occupied my thoughts.
It’s such an effective work, really convincing.. The idea Jay mentioned about turning it on the listener, having it be about how interested in the violence the listener becomes, struck a chord for me, me being a perfect example of that– first objecting to the violence and then making a few of my friends listen to it whether they cared to or not.
I agree that inserting any kind of moral agenda would undermine the power of this piece, by taking away from the character. It’s the character who draws us in, that and his reference to murder early on.
It bears repeating that there are equally powerful, disturbing representations of this side of humanity on tv, in the movies and in literature. On the radio, not so much– not presented without apology, anyway. Part of me thinks, what a great job, leave it as is, but that’s only because it’s here on this fabulous site where it’s being discussed.
I would love to hear it on the radio preceded or followed by something contrary to it (also as fictional narrative or radio theater), or maybe with some singular humane thought within the piece as it is, somewhere. His psycho (in this case wildly mysogenist) lawnchair thing could perhaps be interrupted by someone asking him for a cigarette or where’s the outhouse or something, pulling him back to a mundane (i.e. not-shooting-at-Ashley) reality. A little more interaction, more dialogue with other people there, would fill him out a little, and if that dialogue could work its way around to at least acknowledging his violence (justifying it is too far a leap), at least one listener would be happy.
Even though i see a distinction needs to be made, maybe the cohesion of the piece relies upon addressing its use of violence.
I liked it that the narrative sounded careful. That we have no idea who the tape is for, or why he’s taping, doesn’t seem significant to me.
This method of creating audio fiction really appeals to me; must’ve been a lot of fun working on it, choosing sections of tape and hearing it come together as a story. I understand what’s hard about trying to further humanize this piece but hope the effort doesn’t get dropped.
oh: after listening the second time, I realized there isn’t any question about rape happening–my mistake…it’s pretty clear!
Can you email me at info@transom.org
Thanks
Helen
It’s a sick and twisted piece of work. I was shocked, too shocked for comment when I heard it. Since then it’s been like a nightmare I wish didn’t have. So that’s interesting, I guess. On film it wouldn’t be that big of deal, but on radio it just freaks me out man.
Why? Because it was from the killer’s point of view. It would be hard to do that in a film.
this piece was made by someone who’s never had the pleasure of a weekend on PCP. you couldn’t hit an elephant at 40yards on the stuff, never mind someone’s face. i suggest to improve his work, he simply needs to get more and better drugs.
i don’t think this piece is coherent. i think you can be experimental and coherent and this isn’t there yet.
I think the narrating doesn’t fit the rest of the tape — it feels too contrived given the rest of it. I think it’d work a lot better if it was a conversation — or even half a conversation (other person cut out, but obviously cut out).
Record an interview/confession about "what happened last weekend" — maybe in a bar, or on a busy street or in some other public place — and then use *that* tape to narrate the piece. "Dude, you’re not going to believe what happened. We got all hopped up on drugs and …"
But it’s a good piece.
Just a thought.
Ben
PS: I agree with Barrett, but challenge him to find a producer for whom that *wouldn’t* be true …
chris-
we love that piece. would like to use a bit of it on one of our shows. come visit if you’re in town.
neda
writer/edit.
chris-
that’s our show. check it out on line at wnyc.org.
Has anybody else here read — and re-read — Confederates in the Attic? It’s been almost a month since anybody commented here, but then, the Civil War ended almost 138 years ago and there are those who think it still isn’t over. Chris, you’ve had a lot to respond to and you have done so nobly. I’m glad it was Brittany taped to a milk can and not Ashley duct-taped to a tree. So, here’s what I think. Southern Lit — and I don’t mean that old bitty on Morning Edition — has discovered audio. There are transitions I would fix — a longer crossfade between the beer/weed/PCP/rifle/murder monologue and the next scene, for instance. Too rough by half. I would ditch the Mbuti — nice people, btw, who discovered the power of steel pipe to give voice to the forest — and run some of your party tape backward. Reverb and slapback echo can convey a nice drugged out sensation as well. It would be interesting to see the divide between Northern and Southern responses here. My sense is that we northerners have been sucker-punched yet again.
Well, I was checking out the latest show on Transom and figured it was maybe my *responsibility* to make sure there wasn’t a response to The Farm that needed tending to, and I saw your post, Jackson.
I think your comments on the editing are valid, and I like the idea of ditching the Mbuti’s for scrambled party sounds, though maybe I avoided it b/c I wasn’t adept with the software at the time. I’m still not. And the transition you mentioned– while I am happy with most others in the piece– gives an uneasy feeling as is, so I agree.
As far as Southern Audio is concerned, maybe you’re on to something. I’m working on a piece about a death which stems from a fight over a biscuit recipe, so I can’t argue with you there. But, I should come clean and tell you I grew up in Maryland, and while Marylanders fancy themselves the most northern southerners, southerners tend to see it the other way around. Hell, down here in North Carolina, even Virginians are suspect. But, so, I must ask YOU… ever go by the nickname ‘Stonewall?’
C
Decided, after all my trying to deal with this piece somehow, I just agree with Scott Carrier’s comments way back in January. And not because it was Scott Carrier who wrote them.
Transom is great. Thank you so much for the tee shirt, I love it.
No, I’ve never been "Stonewall" — but then again, apart from an overnight in the Cowboy Motel in Amarillo, TX (run, ironically, by the Indians from that province of India who own half the budget motels in this country), I haven’t spent more than a day or two south of the Mason-Dixon Line. "Jacksonian" has been my moniker more than once.
In a strange way, I think there has to be a whole bunch of pieces like this, delivered all at the same time, more or less. I suggest that this might be a foundation stone of a whole new genre of radio — Southern Radio, Lynnard Skynnard (sp?) meets Terry Gross — but a single work doesn’t define a genre; a bunch of pieces do.
Chris, you may be from Maryland, but they do have cities of the dead in Baltimore, don’t they? As a New Englander by geography if not by place of birth, I rest my case.
Kate Rich, if I may, where are you from? Scott, out there (I believe) in Utah, where would you have been in the Missouri Compromise?
Grew up in small town, western massachusetts, but have lived here in alaska 22 years.
OK, with all this t-shirt talk I have to sound off and say I never got mine! I got a phone call from someone at Transom telling me to expect a t-shirt in the mail (which I had not known I would be receiving) but then never got it.
I’m trying to imagine what it looks like. Maybe I’d go running in it, or get coffee in it. How many times would I have to wear it (and where) before that odd guy in the indie section at the video store comes up and points and says– "Are You Odd Todd?!"
I’m a Large, in t-shirt speak.
Chris
the tshirt fairy has been misbehaving; itll be in the mail very soon. like today
For those of you who are OS X users running Safari Beta, don’t worry. Just because you can’t read your very own postings to Transom, that doesn’t mean they aren’t there!
Which ties in nicely to the stuff of "The Farm." We’ve gone ’round the real vs. unreal in this piece, but given what you’ve heard so far, Chris, what do you feel you’ve had to explain that you felt you shouldn’t have to? Where were the no-brainers that hit us folks without brains?
I don’t mean this in a mugging sense, but there are things we always take for granted. And then when others don’t take the very same things for granted, the first — and most logical — question is: What gives?
To put it another way, what surprised you about the response to The Farm? I’ve got an office pool running that says Northerners and Southerners — that Maryland jive doesn’t wash with me — don’t tell the same stories.
OK. When I’m at my most objective, I give everybody the benefit of the doubt (as I also enjoy getting from everyone) and I take nearly every suggestion into consideration, and I say to myself yeah, that could’ve been more clear, or oh, i didn’t mean to give THAT impression.
And when I have about three beers in me and I’m loosening up I say to myself…
1. Raped? This F*ing girl isn’t getting raped here. I don’t even have to go back and listen to it to be sure it doesn’t sound like anybody’s getting raped, because I have some internal sensor that keeps me from even creating something from which a rape could be insinuated, without my knowledge of that (reasonable) potential insinuation, upon listening myself.
2. Complaining about PCP as the drug choice? Somebody is really looking that hard for a reason to bitch about this piece that they’re going to criticize the choice of drugs because I didn’t follow the stereotypical side effects of PCP and likely outcomes as dictated by old Kirk Cameron educational movies and flyers passed out at my old high school?
3. A different (i.e. more tidy) ending? F%#@ tidy endings. Everybody complains about them until they experience something without one, and then all the sudden it’s "Hmm.. I liked it, but the ending, yeah…"
4. The t-shirt is in the mail?! How many times have I heard THAT!?
I think my favorite post was an early one, where someone said they were going to let their friend listen to the piece, because he’d know if it was good or not. Reason being that this friend did not ‘think’ as much as the person making the post, and he’d give a pure answer. I didn’t even care if the friend would like or not like the piece, but I realized that in experiencing things like books, movies, and audio, that’s what I strive for, to be like that friend.
I’ll give everybody the benefit of the doubt right now (and once again expect it to be given to me) and assume that this post will be taken the right way, as well: off the cuff, without any harm intended, and some sort of stab at getting to something good…
CL
Chris, when I was young and innocent — to quote a singer/songwriter even longer in the tooth than I — I embraced the critique. Yeah, as you might have guessed, I was more of a critiquer than a critiquee, but it takes courage to send little children — even as Southern and twisted as yours — out upon the anatomy and dissection tables of the likes of Transom. And really, Transom users everywhere, we need more roadkill like Chris’s. As our government proves day after day, there are not many intelligent people in our country willing to posit new, intriguing possibilities before the nation’s ear. And as our government — and Chris — prove day after day, we Americans are chronically devoid of humor. Chris, I would be interested in seeing how you pursue the likes of religion, the war, taxes. Not that you shouldn’t pursue fictional pursuits, but don’t you feel that fact is even stranger than the things you might imagine?
i would like that somone would tell me hoe to start with my life and what to do, i don’t know what to do.
if someone wants to help me you can write to me to:
isoscelesr@hotmail.com
i hope your ansewers.
good bye
I was listening to an old Steve Martin album clip this evening and someone booed a joke he made and he stops, hisses and yells "Hey, comedy isn’t PRETTY!"
On fact and fiction, I’m torn. Two stories which are ‘equal’ outside the condition that one is fact and the other is fiction, yeah, i guess the factual story is more chilling or touching or just *more* in general. And, along that same line, I suppose a good A&E Biography on a serial killer beats a Monday night stalker movie any day.
Ramon, you have made me quite nervous with your post.
it’s kinda dumb, poser-ish, teenager-y, pretend-theatre, with the pretend-nasty, ghoulishness.
Kinda like de Sade, sorta 7th-grader attempts to gross-out….
Whatever…..
I just re-listened and having been struk dumb then and after reading the posts now, had to say something.
The piece definitely gave me the heebie jeebies and reminded me of Donna Tartt’s "Secret History" as an almost conscious exercise in losing it that goes too far. As a result I thought the narration was perfect — sober next morning self-awareness with that peculiar sense of drama (and a kind of pride) in the f***ed-upness of which one is capable. It grounded such crazy audio.
I wish I had wicked insight on the ending: it did seem to trail off and that’s unsatisfying but then doesn’t that also work as it’s so much of what makes it eerie and stick in your head?
On a related note about the fiction/fact divide: knowing that it was a cut-out Britney vs a real Ashley, talking about PCP vs actually taking it, made me feel better but made the story recede. Not much you can do about that I suppose.
Which is a long way of saying: I liked it enough to still be thinking about it.
I appreciate the post (and the thoughts). I haven’t visited the discussion in quite some time, but when I did today, I found the above post– a most recent one. I suppose I came back to the discussion for two reasons: 1) I feel some sort of responsibility to answer questions that may or may not have been posted, and more importantly 2) I myself have problems with the piece and never truly came to terms with it– the narration, the purpose, the effect on the listener.
Jay Allison and I went back and forth on whether to revise, and my only attempt at it failed, so we stuck with what we (I) had in the beginning. I guess for me personally I’m still quibbling with myself over whether it’s done, or whether I got lazy.
Chris