Moving the Village

I love how Gabriel Spitzer delves into the various issues affected by the loss of the village. He packs a lot of information into this piece and uses the personal stories of villagers and natural sound to enhance the piece. Really interesting!

You can't move the Earth

The staff at the National Radio Project got together as a group and listened to Gabe's marvellous piece; this review is compiled from everyone's various comments.

"Moving the Village" is is about a native village that is slowly being destroyed by rising ocean levels caused by global warming, and how the people living there are struggling to cope. It's quite a masterpiece of storytelling and sound -- or, should we say, storytelling through sound. Throughout the half hour, it seems there's a bed of ambient sound the entire way. Case in point: rather than just hearing the narrator or some expert *tell *us that the village is disappearing, we actually hear the crash of the coastline as it crumbles into the sea. Simply brilliant. Journalists should always remember to "show, don't tell." Well, Gabe hasn't forgotten; he succeeds fabulously here.

Even in the middle section of the story, where we hear from the university eggheads, there's a bit of sound of one professor sorting through his filing cabinet. Nice touch in an otherwise sound-poor environment. The science behind the story is explained clearly through actualities and narration; it's just enough, and doesn't come off as wonky at all. The eggheads emerge as real people, too.

Gabe's writing is clear, concise, and conversational, and he does a superb job in voicing -- relaxed, yet illustrative and compelling. But again, it's the sound that really makes this piece, so well we all could actually visualize ourselves in Shishmaref, standing in two feet of water or getting hammered by a horizontal downpour -- something that rarely happens when listening to radio, unfortunately.

One minor nit is that the very first actuality is considerably difficult to understand; one has to strain to make out the meaning.

Other than that, though, it's an outstanding, compelling and unique piece of work. Besides appreciating the craft, we all felt that the story itself is an important one that needs to be heard. This people's entire culture, not just their village, is threatened by the careless commercialism of the industrialized world, particularly the United States. If it's so difficult to move just one village, what happens when we have to start thinking about moving the whole planet? Can't be done. Better change our stupid ways.

Review of Moving the Village

Gabriel Spitzer's "Moving the Village" is founded upon good writing – clear, explanatory journalism. The documentary benefits further from Spitzer's compelling narration, his voice conveying both authority and humanity. His on-the-ground (and -water) research and writing combine most crucially to explain the underlying science of climate change. In narrative and through well-selected interviews, Spitzer communicates scientific data clearly, without resorting either to oversimplification or jargon.

While maintaining a factually accurate portrayal, Spitzer does not lose hold of the requirements either of storytelling or of radio -- story illustrated with sound. "Moving the Village" follows a narrative arc that launches from the particular of Shishmaref's Inupiaq culture to more general human themes – Why are we where we are? Why is "sense of place" important – how does it resonate beyond the local to the universal? What sense of self does a place impart? In the words of one voice of Shishmaref, there's a change ahead, to being "mainlanders, not islanders".

The success of "Moving the Village" comes not from clinical journalism divorced from real people, but from the precise weave of research, writing, and audio. The ambience is never garish, but the sounds – of a caribou's internal organs being gutted, of huskies and four wheelers, of angry ocean – enhance the story like good punctuation or typography.

Without sacrificing objectivity, Spitzer helps humanize the story through his willingness to place himself in it, splashing through the storm surge.

This is 21st Century radio, where head and heart come together. Great documentary requires this marriage, and Spitzer celebrates it. He gives voice to villagers and also affords alternate views, including the theory that local activities such as building seawalls may provoke as many negative effects as global warming.

In "Moving the Village", producer Gabriel Spitzer deftly avoids the pitfalls and exploits the opportunities for a medium-form environmental documentary. This is great radio that speaks to every village in the public radio system. Get moving.