Q&A with Producer Aaron Henkin
"I have four cats, all of whom are total bastards."
PRX:
What was the genesis for The Signal?
AH:
Let me put it this way: Before I moved to Baltimore, I used to watch John Waters' movies and marvel at the guy's insanely bizarre artistic vision. I mean, how can you make up a neighborhood that's as weird as the one in 'Pecker'? Well, unbeknownst to me, I ended up moving into a row house a block away from where they shot that movie, and I soon realized that Baltimore really is as absolutely bizarre as it appears in the movies. I fell in love with this town and coincidentally ended up landing a job at the local public radio affiliate, WYPR. I spent a few years producing the daily call-in show and doing news stories. During these years, my friend and co-producer Lisa Morgan and I spent many after-work happy-hours together, and we kept talking about how cool it would be if one day the station would give us an hour to devote to long-form audio-biographies about all of these real-life characters we had met around town. We eventually asked the station if we could do it, they said ‘sure,'and the rest is history. The one-hour special was really well-received by listeners, so it became a monthly thing, and finally about a year ago, they agreed to let us put the show on every week. Since then, Lisa and I have had to pretty much work around the clock on the show to get on the air every Friday. It's like having a huge term-paper due every week, but it's also the coolest job I could ever imagine having. We keep saying to each other, "I can't believe they're letting us do this!"
PRX:
When you first started putting together stories for the radio, what was the most egregious sin you committed?
AH:
Man, where to begin . . . I used to fall so in love with all the audio I collected. I couldn't bear to make cuts. So my stories dragged, big-time. (My candid peers here at PRX have pointed this out to me on a few occasions!) So I'm very self-conscious of pacing now. I also used to be really nervous about narrating, so my stories oftentimes ended up feeling a little rudderless. It was an important realization that a well-placed sentence or two from the narrator could really keep a listener from spacing out. The fastest route to making your story better is to force people you trust to sit down and listen to it. Then, while they're listening, study them like a hawk. Make a mental note any time they fidget or stare at your bookshelves or sigh or look at their watch --- you should probably cut out that part of your story.
PRX:
Do you find stories that are driven by personalities or by information more compelling?
AH:
I doubt that there are many radio producers who'd be able to tell you with a straight face that they think information is more important than personalities in a story. That's why we make radio stories! A couple of years ago at the Third Coast Audio Festival, I heard a guy say it so beautifully. He said something like, "The simple fact is that you can get much more information about any given topic if you read a newspaper article versus hearing about it on the radio… Or can you? There may be more facts in a newspaper article, but no printed quote can give you the sort of human information that's conveyed in the angry or coy or exalted or jealous tone of someone's voice. That's unquantifiable information that's unique to radio."
PRX:
When it comes to the world of public radio, in your view, who rocks the hardest?
AH:
David Schulman, and I'll tell you why. David not only has great story-making talent, as is evidenced by his award-winning "Musicians in Their Own Words" series, but this guy HUSTLES. I've got the great privilege of a full-time radio job. I can only imagine the angst of the aspiring freelancer. If you're in this tough category, study what David has done. He memorizes the program clocks of NPR news magazine programs and custom-tailors his features depending who he's pitching them to. He's made stories about dozens of different musicians, and he's constantly scouring all their touring schedules and getting in touch with public radio stations in the towns where the musicians are going to be playing. He writes customized intros and back-announces accordingly. He gives radio stations a good reason to air his work, and he makes is easy for them to do so. He's also a really nice, humble, approachable guy who loves to talk about making radio. You should look up his PRX profile, listen to some of his pieces, and drop him an email.
PRX:
Has there ever been a time when you had a story idea you thought was gold, only to see it fall completely flat?
AH:
Desperation is the mother of invention, and on two occasions, I've tried to make audio experiments with real-life applications. One worked beautifully, and one was a complete failure. First, the story with the happy ending: An old co-worker called me up one day after I hadn't heard from him for a long time. He and his wife had had a baby, and he called me out of desperation because none of them were getting any sleep. The problem was, in order to get the baby to go to sleep, one of the parents had to sit next do the crib and continuously go, "shhhhh… shhhhhhh…" and the moment they stopped, the baby would wake up and start crying. So the guy called and asked me if I could make a CD of myself going "shhhh… shhhh…" for the baby. I did it, looped the recording to last the duration of the 80-minute CD, and the parents were finally able to take a nap. Now here's the disaster story: I have four cats, all of whom are total bastards. They wake me up every morning at 4:30 a.m. by clawing the bedroom door so I'll get up and get them breakfast. I throw pillows at the door, but nothing stops them until I get up. So one day I get a flash of inspiration. I remember that one of my digital audio editing programs came with a sound effects CD. I check out the CD and it has recordings of, among other things, dogs barking and lions roaring. So I pull up these audio files, loop them, stack them on top of each other numerous times, add a bunch of reverb, compress it and drop the pitch. It ends up sounding like the hounds of Hell. I burn it onto CD, go home that night, pop the CD into a boom box, shove the boom box speakers into the back of my closed bedroom door, and put the remote control on the pillow and go to sleep, looking forward to some sweet revenge. 4:30 rolls around and --- like clockwork --- the cats start scratching. I press 'play'on the remote and unleash my infernal audio cat-repellant. And then . . . sweet silence . . . for about five minutes. That's when the cats wise up and start scratching again. I've never been more disappointed with an audio project in my life.
PRX:
This is your opportunity to vent about anything you want. What gets under your skin these days?
AH:
I'm in no position to complain about anything. I just want to say thanks to everyone who's taken the time to review my stuff and thanks also to the stations who've found my stories interesting enough to license and broadcast to their listeners. To my fellow producers, feel free to send me an email sometime and let me know what's going on in your radio worlds. We're all here to share our thoughts and ideas with each other. Keep on making good stories, friends.
© 2005, The Public Radio Exchange
