Third Coast's Julie Shapiro
Julie Shapiro is the creator of the most creative public radio gatherings, The Third Coast International Audio Festival in Chicago. The sixth annual conference is in Evanston, IL this year, and even if you miss the festivities, you can still listen to many nominees of the Third Coast competion on PRX. We spoke with Julie over the phone to ask her what we can expect this year.
Julie Shapiro:
The thing I am most proud about this year is that "99 Ways To Tell A Radio Story" project, because we totally took a chance on it.
I just did not know if people would contribute work. But really, in those last couple of weeks (of the competition) they just started rolling in from all over the world. Thirteen countries are represented. Now we have 72 of them up (on the Third Coast web site), so we are trying to hit the 99 mark by the end of the year.
That, to me, shows Third Coast at its best, too, where it is willing to take a chance, and we were able to encourage new people to pick up the microphone, maybe for the first time, but also maybe to encourage other producers to try new things.
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PRX:
What kinds of audio are you hearing now that you weren't when you started the conference five years ago?
Julie Shapiro:
Over the course of the years it does feel we are hearing a lot more younger producers?I would say that producers with not as much experience behind them are trying more interesting and innovative techniques in using sound in their stories.
Julie Shapiro:
It just has a slightly less confined feel, like people are pushing a little bit in their own ways, and maybe it's pushing for them but it's something that another person would have done ten years ago.
PRX:
When you're trying to pick out the best of the best in the competition, what kind of criteria do you use?
Julie Shapiro:
Well, we have 24 judges involved in the process of judging the competition, and the guidelines that we give them are basically to choose the pieces that succeed in what they're trying to do. Then you think, well, is what it's trying to do merit-able something we should recognize to begin with? We go through a first round where over 100 entries get drawn down to about 15.
Then that second round?The judges will start talking about technical quality, innovation in idea, has the story been told before, or has it been told differently before.
So it starts getting...well, completely subjective to some degree. And there are a lot of conversations about what matters.
I think the things we ask people to think about are, literally, story idea, technical quality, delivery, narration, writing, use of sound, use of the medium why is this story a radio piece and not a print piece? How does it take advantage of the fact that it's going to be broadcast on the air? Are the sounds literal? Are they metaphorical? Do they work well? How is music used? All of these decisions we leave up to our trusty judges.
PRX:
I don't envy them.
Julie Shapiro:
No. It's like one of the most intense.... For me, it might be my favorite time of the year actually, besides the conference week.
That's one thing that we really wish we could encourage more of a culture of listening and critiquing. Critiquing doesn't necessarily mean shooting a piece down. It means understanding flaws inherent and strengths in a piece, too. And there's not a real vocabulary in American radio culture for really listening and understanding, and trying to sort of deconstruct pieces. This happens very intensely during the judging period, and it's just fascinating.
I just don't think American producers, or independents, certainly, working on their own, have that opportunity to be involved in a dialogue about what they're hearing; and about what they're making, for sure.
PRX:
Except at Third Coast, of course.
Julie Shapiro:
Yeah. I mean, our proudest moments are when we hear from someone... we hear an actual radio piece that was a collaboration that came about from two people who met at Third Coast. That's when we feel like we're really, really doing our job, because these producers have found each other, and they've made radio that the public's going to hear. It's like, that's the point. That's really the point.
PRX:
With all the time that you are spending listening to radio, do you ever get a chance to actually produce some yourself?
Julie Shapiro:
[laughs] I do actually make a couple of pieces every year, by hook or crook. Sometimes they end up on the radio, sometimes they are more installation-based or soundscape-y pieces.
PRX:
I'm sure that the most frequent question you get is, "What's your favorite piece you've ever heard?" But I want to ask you something else. What is absolutely the worst piece you've ever heard?
Julie Shapiro:
[laughs] Well, without going into detail, I can tell you that we had an entry this year that I was livid about.
PRX:
Why?
Julie Shapiro:
I felt like it hit every cliche known to man or woman in the radio production business. It was a personal story about a relative who was elderly, and that is as detailed as I'm going to get. It was just dripping with this over-sentimentality that I think is poisoning a lot of radio. I think it's getting over-sentimental and less good.
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PRX:
Do you think that sentimentality is something that's relatively new?
Julie Shapiro:
I think people are pushing it further than they ever have before. Some of the best stories you have ever heard are very personal, don't get me wrong, those can be great stories. But when you get someone who is a little bit less experienced with storytelling and writing and crafting an actual story from start to finish you can get into a real danger zone because you have to really wonder who is going to be interested in your story.
This is my drum to beat this year that the personal stories are becoming commonplace, tiresome and just overly done.
PRX:
So your main advice would be to pull back as much as possible?
Julie Shapiro:
My main advice would be to think long and hard about why you are going to tell a personal story and who you want to hear it, and then when you decide to go ahead and do it to think really hard about how are you can tell it in a way where it's relevant to all listeners. That comes down to the craft of the storytelling.
© 2006, The Public Radio Exchange
