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Notes From Elena Oxman
I started working on the piece when Kmart declared bankruptcy in the winter of 2002, so it began as a sort of ‘in memoriam.’ I grew up thinking of Kmart as a permanent American fixture. It must have been one of the first American institutions I became aware of – probably neck and neck with the Constitution and baseball. I wanted to write about Kmart, not just because of the way it intersects with my own experiences growing up in a CT suburb, but because of the way in which Kmart is just as much an ‘idea‘ as it is a place. In the mythology that surrounds Kmart as much as in its physicality, it’s the mingling of hope, humor, and regret that I find compelling.
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Equipment
In its original form, the piece is digital video with voice over. I wrote the text first with visuals in mind, which made the shooting process very quick and easy. I shot over the course of 3 days with a Sony hand held mini-dv camera, and recorded the voice over on mini-disc with a cheap radio shack microphone. I used sound studio to import the audio into i-movie, where I edited the audio and visuals together. I-movie is a really basic program and not great for fine-tune edits, but it does the job. The originally music is by Matt Whyte. I recorded him on mini-disc with the same cheap microphone in my garage.
After graduating from Yale University in 1999 with a degree in American Studies, I was awarded an Emerging Artist Fellowhip at the Yale Digital Media Center for the Arts. There, I produced two documentaries with classmate Elihu Rubin, which subsequently aired on Connecticut Public Television. Elihu and I went on to found a production company, American Beat, which continues to operate out of New Haven, CT (see www.americanbeat.org for a list of our films). I am currently pursuing a graduate degree in English and Cultural Studies at UNC-Chapel Hill. I remain involved with American Beat, and continue to make audio and video documentaries from my new home in Carrboro, NC.
At Transom we find a lot of potential public radio talent making work for the Internet instead, where text and pictures and video reside along with the audio… but generally, it’s still the audio that drives the story. In the past, we’ve featured pieces with slide show or cartoon accompaniments. Our new show, "Kmart Confidential" from Elena Oxman of American Beat, is produced with a dreamy soundtrack and DV-Cam images, but the spoken words are the point. "That’s a Martha Stewart trash can, by the way."
Can the words sustain without the pictures? Can a quiet social commentary sustain without a story? Maybe. Should public radio pay attention to the work being done by young producers for the truly public medium of the Internet. We think so.
The first time I listened to this I didn’t look at my monitor and I loved it without the visuals. At times the pairing of visual and audio seemed a little too literal. Without the visuals the thesis/story is very fleshed out and it progresses, there really is a sense of moving forward. But with the visuals it’s dreamlike and the piece sort-of circles onto itself. And it is kind of onomatopoetic as that’s what shopping at KMART is like: returning to each aisle numerous times, certain that Kathy Ireland argyle socks, Ashley Taylor flannel pajamas and free samples of Russel Stover peanut clusters have previously eluded you…….
The writing is so strong and KMART is such a universal reference that the audio alone is amazingly visual. With the video I almost felt confined to her vision of KMART–as generic as KMART is–as universal as the experience is– we all probably picture it in slightly different ways.
i also think this story holds up well without the visuals, but have to admit there are a few
images used that i think were in some ways very quietly valuable to the narrative, but i don’t think would have registered had i just been listening. a couple examples: one was the transition from one building (woolworths, i think?) to a kmart building by way of a full moon above each structure…the other: the two images of elena herself, which gave me just a bit better sense of _her_ in the context of the story, through the older photos. not that her voice and word choice didn’t, but the photos told me a little bit more – even in the just couple seconds they were on the screen.
these both struck me because i’ve been thinking a lot (and listening to) transitions in documentaries – and i’ve become very aware of the different ways producers choose to signal scene changes. (and somehow wish there was more risk taken with transitions, overall.)
what would the full moon sound like?
I am a 14 year old girl from minnesota who is addicted to NPR. I live in a really rural town that has very conservative views and i feel like i really don’t fit in. i really liked this piece alot because i felt like i had a connection with the narrator. i feel like there are lots of awesome ways to experience life and i can’t wait to get out of this little town. i think that the author really inspires me to want to do work like this. how do you get started?
I’m an NPR and PRI addict too, living happily now in Los angeles. Grew up in Mississippi – small conservative town. Now at the tender age of 31, I have one insight into those small towns – they are packed with people as bored and frustrated as you. When people get bored, they get interesting. It’s a strange phenomenon, but if you’re ever trapped in an elevator with someone – or like I often was, held in detention for hours and hours with someone you barely know — you find out about all the wierdness going on under the surface. With practivce you can get this weirdness out of almost anybody in about 10 minutes or less.
Who wouldn’t spend 10 minutes to extract some wierdness from someone you barely know. (answer – lazy or timid people, but that’s getting side-tracked)
Go out and record them. You’ll be surprised. You don’t have to agree with the opinions of the folks in you town to make great radio from them, or for that matter to learn from them. And people like me like me here in LA like to hear stories from people not in LA. Even people we don’t agree with. Or even like.
The narrative holds this piece together almost seemlessly, I thought. After having seen it in its intended format, with video, I thought that the writing was KMART Confidential’s most compelling element, and I would encourage the writer to continue working within the limits of a radio/audio-only medium. The visual works well with the music soundtrack to pillow the narrative with an eerie and haunting foundation. It’s definitely not what I would have expected, but the music and video work together in a refreshingly dark way. After all, the only thing more creepy than a Kmart store is a neglected Kmart store!
I found this piece compelling, and identified with it as well. During college, against everything I had been taught about sweatshops and prison labor, my friends and I would take trips to the SuperK a half hour drive down the highway. Just as Oxman described, we would get lost in messy isles, under fluorescent lights, filling carts with nothing we truly needed. Being in that kind of environment conditions you to want to buy things, a lot of things, afterwards I often felt stuffed with my purchases, as if just having finished buffet dinner, where you know the last two trips were a big mistake. I liked the video to compliment the audio, especially moving through the isles in the basket of the cart. Sometimes I thought the pacing was a little slow though, I would have liked a little more variation. I think it might have been nice to use some natural sound of Kmart, not necessarily actual dialogue but the music and self promotion in those big stores is often really creepy and part of the whole experience. Overall really well done.
Isn’t anyone else bothered when something presented on Transom becomes a love fest?
Not that I agree entirely with the piece. One of these curious things about all the video in K-mart is that there is no one else to be seen. We never see people anywhere in this piece; we never hear them, either. Part of that could be an aspect of the 24/7-ness of it all, of course. You seemed to catch the 24/7 between 12am and 7am.
I would offer a different take. Way back when, before Ames (another discount department store) took the Chapter 11 plunge, Paul Solomon (sp?) of The News Hour did a story about the weirdness of Ames. Here was a store that specialized in ubersize and polyester — antichic, in other words. And if the chain hadn’t gone bust, you’d think, "Ah! Niche!"
I admire K-mart Confidential — I agree with the things others are saying here — but it’s missing something, and my sense is that Oxman has missed out on the *other* people who shop at K-Mart. Why not consider the otherness of the Banana Republic clientele? Are "Gap Kids" special in ways we haven’t imagined?
You see where this is going. My sense is that Oxman needs to bring in other voices to give this piece depth.
What great advice! Producers of all ages should heed it.
"Guest User in LA" has good advice for you. Just start writing or recording. Your life and the life around you is perhaps richer and more interesting than you realize. document it and look at it from different angles. Let us know if you don’t find everything you need at Transom.
I spent a couple of years in a tiny town of 200 in Montana when I was aliftig’s age. They were my high school years. There was no cable. The TV was ghosty, the audio inaudible. There was no Internet (gasp!). There were no stores. There was no public library. It was boring, but if I’d thought to do it, walking around and talking to the people there would have been a treasure trove of great stories and audio. It was a horrible place to live, but the stories would have been good. The team nickname was the Bats, I could start there. Or the school (enrollment: 43) janitor, who probably is still there. Or the superintendent who beat up an old guy because the old guy’s dogs bit one of his kids. Or the old guy who then shot the superintendent’s dogs. Or the kid who couldn’t see out his windshield after being splashed with mud by a big truck and then guessed where the turnoff to his rural farm road was (He ended up in his beat field). Or the kid so addicted to Copenhagen he put a dip in before bed else he couldn’t sleep. These people were interesting, though very crazy. If only I’d seen it then.
Hans
I guess the subtext of a K-mart Confidential is a certain kind of otherness — except, of course, that the thing *we* see as otherness is the proverbial mainstream. For those old enough to remember the Nixon administration, there was this thing called "The Silent Majority" — does anybody remember what they were silent about? Part of the challenge with what Oxman has produced is the question of who is the "other"? In one sense, it is the person who is *not* holding the floor, or the radio or the monitor. Oxman, you went to Yale. (IS THERE ANY OTHER REASON TO BE IN NEW HAVEN IF YOU WEREN’T BORN THERE?). Feel free to throw crumbs at the hungry masses. Whose "otherness" is, in fact, "other"?
I too thought the piece was great.
Also, the visuals are cool. Cool. But not necessary. Works just fine without.
Only question:
Did anyone else think that the speed of the narration was a little fast? I’m not talking about the pace of the piece (which I liked), I’m talking about the actual speed of the reading. You know it’s being read. Which you always do, I guess. But the speed of the reading drew attention to it. The music, the text, the structure, all great… I just wonder about a slightly slower reading. Then it’s easier for me to do my suspension of disbelief, i.e., here’s this super-articulate person just giving me their thoughts (on K-mart), which just so happen to come to a nice perfect conclusion.
Anyway, it was really enjoyable and the thing should be on the air.
I’m a sucker for twilight shots, esp. on a Rte. 1 / Rte. 7 kind of stretch where the failing sunlight and the first blast of neon meet. That’s cheating — like waving a white flag and then suddenly offering up a side of Saddam and an AK-47.
Now that I think about it, there is something fundamentally cheap about visuals. The problem with K-Mart is that they are there the season after — imagine the discount on Xmas items now. They’re there even as we speak.
And maybe that’s the problem: Oxman is trying to hit the side of a barn with a shot gun.
Overlooking or ignoring these people is what made Bush president. You need to look, you need to feel. We can point the way, but what is Oxman missing here?
i really appreciate all the comments about the piece… i think that those who have said it could benefit from more voices have a good point. when i first started thinking about the piece i actually did conduct some interviews both in the store and on the phone with people (they included: the founder of the activist-group ‘sprawl- busters,’ shoppers in the store; a conceptual artist who makes pieces about mega-stores; some friends..) i guess in the end it was just the volume and range of perspectives that overwhelmed me… i couldnt find a coherent narrative, or a way to insert my own voice in some way other than a perfunctory, cheesy voice-over-ish one, forcedly linking all the other voices together… at which point i decided to make it an entirely personal perspective, and so it remains. A failure of imagination, or perserverence maybe; but at the same time it would have been a very different kind of piece, i think, had i included those interviews… would have lost something and gained something both. but i appreciate the comments b/c they remind me of those other voices in their absence, and remind me of the limits of personal narrative when it comes to talking about places as shared and contested as kmart.
(in retrospect i may have cut the "historical" section on kmart… maybe it promises a more holistic take on kmart than i go on to offer… )
i was happy and surprised to hear people say that the piece might work without the visuals…as i said in my statement, i wrote first and then shot the video, which may explain why the visuals sometimes come off as merely illustrative rather than evocative in thier own right… probably part of conceiving the piece in this way was a worry that the voice-over alone might not sustain interest. but im glad to hear that for some people it does.
As for speaking too fast, its a constant problem, one well noted among family and friends. recording this i actually thought i was speaking ridiculously slowly!! maybe i need to take a few shots before recording next time.. though that could lead to other, arguably worse problems.
anyway, thanks for the feedback. i’ll check back in and am happy to respond to more comments/questions.
Interesting possibility — the "sprawl busters" people. Did anyone else notice how dewy-eyed NPR got with the demise of Woolworth’s?
One of the things I am gradually realizing is that the less narration a piece requires, the more the piece itself has to say. You’ve already identified much of the K-Mart clientele — there are people who work in the electronics department, the home improvement section, the foundation garments dept. Somewhere between all these people you will find people saying things you would (and have) said yourself. Up here, the local K-Mart is staffed by Indians (from India) and Russians. Asking help involves measures of aural whiplash that could only happen nowadays at K-Mart.
There are many-people projects and there are small projects. K-Mart is a many-people project — I wouldn’t just depend on the clientele, I would ask the staff questions. For some, working at K-Mart is a step up, a step out., a way in. You were right to become drawn by K-Mart. K-Mart is an anomaly in an increasingly stratospherically defined world of shopping — the place that still tries to appeal to everybody.
Have you exhausted yourself on this, or would you be willing to go out and get more sound?
Super work – hits home. Neat package, wish there was more!
Wow – I live outside of Kingston NY – there was a Kmart in the mall, with a Kmart cafeteria, where once my brother and I had our pictures that we colored in from a contest hanging up – we were so proud, we’d look at them as if they were hanging up in an art gallery. My brother used to work at the old mall Kmart – he was in a Kmart fashion show. I got lost in Kmart once and my across the street neighbors found me.
Once the old Kmart moved to the new Super K, I didn’t really shop at the new one – everything the movie said, I noticed years ago as well, way before Martha and everything else. Also my theory is this: once they got rid of the blue light, the magic was gone. They brought it back for a while, but it was too hip, too Madison Ave, not like the old blue light. A large blue light bulb on a pole, screwed into a cabinet with wheels.
The stores were dirty and fell into complete disarray, the workers always fighting amongst each other in their angry red polo shirts. The store was built next to the landfill, yet had panoramic views of the Catskill Mountains, and no real windows facing them to take in this awe inspiring view – none of the stores do it – to me a real shame. Even though it’s a big corporation, you do feel a sense of sadness. IBM used to be in the same area, that is gone too. Plus, they are knocking down the old Montgomery Wards. There were two Woolworth’s, the older one Uptown had a lunch counter, 1950′s pea green tile and Formica, where just like Elena Oxman, I sat with my dad and brother eating French fries probably with our new hamster. The movie really struck me, the similarities between her memories and thoughts about Kmart – I thought I was the only one “hanging out” in Kmart by myself at 3:47 am and looking at the shoes on the floor, the unfolded shirts, and ripped open bags of socks thinking – doesn’t anybody care?
Hi all-
Having started off working primarily with radio, strictly audio, and then trying to work in video, I sympathize with Elena’s way of working and the problems that can come up.
From my experience, it’s sometimes hard to make a video piece come together well when the visuals are so secondary. I think normally as viewers our instinct is to go to the visual first. This may be somewhat different with radio obsessives, but in general I think this is the case. We expect change and pacing in the visuals the same way we expect pacing and progression of the narration. I remember thinking as I watched this piece that the visuals were somewhat repetative. They were all shot from the same angle and in the same way, and all the clips lasted about the same amount of time.
However, I liked the comment someone made about how the repetition of the visuals is apporpriate for the underlying theme of the piece. That made me think about and appreciate the visuals more (where as before they seemed secondary) maybe because it seemed more of a conscious decision. (was it? Maybe it doesn’t matter.) I also think that despite the repetition of the visuals, they worked because the pacing was very good. There was a lot of movement, between the shopping carts and the cars and the lights changing and then the carnival scene, so that there was enough to hold our attention for a while before we went back to listening to the audio.
Of course, the audio is obviously the backbone of this piece. Which is cool. Even though I thought the visuals could use some work, I like that the piece is audio driven (like I said, I sympathiz). I think it’s pretty unique for video, which usually completely controlled by the visual to the detriment of the overlooked audio. It’s like a role reversal.
I think the strongest moments of the piece are the ones where the audio and video come together the most, like the short trashcan bit, and the final carnival scene. Very eerie and beautiful. You got lucky finding that tape, Elena!
Jay, I’m really glad you guys are putting video up here too. I think that we all have a lot to learn from each other and the more things we have to look at and share the better. It’s a different way of working, but the connections are there. thanks.
i just listened to this piece (i guess i’m a late bloomer)
i really enjoyed it, good work and congrats!
i have to say i chuckled out loud over the dickies-urban outfitters comment. *sigh* many youthful dreams of mine were shattered when i found that what i thought was hip and original was now being mass produced and sold at urban outfitters
c’est la vie i suppose…
That was great. It almost makes me re-examine my opinion that any store that ends with -Mart is a tool of the evil and should be avoided. I agree with someone who said that the pacing seemed a bit fast in parts (I didn’t watch the video portion, so it may be matched with that), but overall it was a great piece.
Tony