Turning the Seams Inside Out: Fun with Conspicuous Editing
Radio is both blessed and cursed with the ability to hide the editing process. Two phrases are joined together to seamlessly create new sentences; breaths rearranged to preserve a natural speaking rhythm. But in film, every editing decision is an integral and conspicuous part of the viewing experience. The editor becomes a character, an invisible yet apparent guiding hand.
In radio or audio work, the question becomes: “How can I apply that sense of the editor as character to an audio-only environment?” Using music, ambient audio, quick cuts, guttural sounds, and even flat out noise, blips, pops, van der Kolk lets the listener in on the process of editing.
Nick will be speaking about his own inspirations for his podcast Love and Radio: filmmakers like Errol Morris, who mastered the art of creating that invisible guiding hand as a persona in his series First Person by using very deliberate edits and cutting together bits and pieces of conversation in groundbreaking ways. Also, Nick will play radio pices from WFMU’s The Dusty Show–which has such a unique, intricate, quick-cut style, you can’t help but feel you’re there with the host in the editing booth.
In this evening of audio, Nick will deconstruct the editing process in both film and radio, and give producers a toolkit of techniques they can use to foster their own sense of editor’s voice, expanding the possibilities for creative expression in narrative storytelling.
About Nick van der Kolk:
Nick is the main brain behind Love & Radio, an experimental storytelling podcast distributed for two years by National Public Radio. He is also co-creator and co-director of Megapolis, an annual audio art and leftfield radio documentary festival the Boston Phoenix called “bad ass.” His radio career began as a DJ and later station manager of Bard College’s student-run station, WXBC. His worked has aired on Marketplace, Deutschlandradio Kultur, Chicago Public Radio’s Re:Sound, NPR’s Hearing Voices, WGBH Boston, KUOW Seattle, Connecticut Public Radio, and a small community station on an island in the middle of the Bering Sea. He currently lives in The Bronx.
