Moving deeper into the enthralling labyrinth that is creating audio; my latest task requires an analysis of past students attempts of creating engaging stories through sound.
After listening to close to a dozen different stories I found myself most impressed with “her place within pages” by Ashleigh Field. The overarching theme of this piece focused on the breathtaking power books have to transport you to other places.
This theme was achieved in the very first 12 seconds of the piece through the speaker’s references to a character who marked on a map places he’d been in the world.
I thoroughly admired the author’s use of sound. It encapsulated the notion that ‘less is more’ by keeping the ambient sound to a minimum- simply employing only what she felt necessary to propel the story forward: The noise of traffic & crashing waves representative of the world around you contrasted to the glaring silence that surrounds you when you’re completely wrapt in a novel.
The accompanying song, Big Big Love by Foals, had a dreamy and wistful sound to it that only served to concrete the imaginative nature of this piece further.
The use of sound was so effective, in fact, that I often found myself focusing more on the ambience than what the speaker actually had to say- which is probably this audio’s biggest (and frankly only) defining flaw.
Overall the author has created a well balanced and simple piece that is powerful in the fact that it surely resonates with anybody that has delved into the deep pool of imagination that a good book offers.
The way the world looks 