I’ve chosen to profile Obehi Janice’s professional profile website. Obehi’s website contains a few pages about her resent work,education, and community service. Obehi  Janice is a recent Georgetown Graduate who is currently acting, writing, and doing improve in Boston, Ma. She has trained with Shakespeare & Company and ImprovBoston. She has also been featured in various television, film and voice over roles. Obehi’s plays include RED DRINK, BLACK GIRL OGA, OLE WHITE SUGAH DADDY, and numerous others. Recently she was named by Improper Bostonian as “Boston’s Best Actress.” She has also directed, started, and wrote her own video, “Black Girl Yoga,”which  won AfroPunk’s Reel 13 competition. During her free time, Obehi guest speaks at youth summer programs for kid who are interested in pursuing a career in theatre. Obehi currently resided in Boston, Ma.

Her main page is very simple but yet catches the eye. The page is visually stimulating with professionally shot photos, and cheeky written into, “I’m a writer, actress and comedian with two first names.” With the click of a mouse,  Obehi has a subscribe bar where visitors can subscribe to her newsletter The best thing about the site is that everything is not on just one page. This works since it does not confuse visitors.

The website is designed into 5 tabs, Bio, Media, Speaking & teaching, What’s Good, and  Contact.  Simplicity continues throughout her website; there is not too much words/ pictures to confuse or distract people to what is important, the work she does.  She also has links to her instagram, facebook and twitter, which is a great way to promote her social media outlets. Her contact page brings a smile to a reader’s face.

Obehi’s overall tone is very friendly and comedic, which would make sense do to her profession,  anytime she can add her personality into her website she does.

She personalizes it with an adorable photo of her from her childhood and a short message to visitors,

“I used to model. Now I write e-mails

Thanks for visiting my site! Shoot me a message and I’ll get back to you in one business day.

All my best,

-Obehi”

My take way from Obehi’s site is that simplicity  is always best and to add your personality anyway you can to your website.

http://www.obehijanice.com/ 

An author that I strongly admire is James Patterson. His professional porfolio website is easy to navigate and eye catching. The wide array of photographs of himself in the top header of the page makes you laugh and realize he is more than just an author. By adding these photographs to the first page of the website he is showing the viewers that he has many sides that they may not know about. When you first enter his website you see a news section about his latest books and updates, as well as a side column for book reviews he has done. It also provides links to his newsletter and social media sites; giving the viewer many ways to learn about him and his books.

However, there is a lot more to his website than just the first page you are brought to. There are numerous sections such as “Books.” When you put your mouse over the tag, not clicking it, you are allowed to view all of his books, or books from a particular series you are interested in. I admire this because you are not forced to search through numerous pages to find something. The website provides an easy and user-friendly way to do so.

The language throughout the site is simple and engaging. It gives you enough information to undersrand things without throwing too much at you. There seem to be a lot of small little paragraohs and articles giving a sample, then if you wish you can link to a longer and more thorough explanation. James Patterson’s website gave me a few ideas for my own. I enjoy how he has everything broken down into parts so you can easily find exactly what you are looking for. However, for my sight I would try to attempt to lay mine out in a more modern way. Although I do enjoy Patterson’s, it does seem a little too simple and old fashion in a way.

One writer I admire is Jodi Picoult. When you first visit her website, it is a lot of different colors that catch your eye right away, like yellow, blues, greens and oranges. It also shows her book tour dates right on the top of the website. It has pictures of the books that she has written, and quotes on it from Newspapers and other writers that are complimenting her on her writing. Included on her website is an interview with CNN about one of her books. She has information about what some of her books are about, along with quotes from other people’s comments on that particular book. The information is organized very well, having all of the pictures of the books above all of the information about that book and the quotes complimenting it. She has the quotes of people praising herself as a writer outlining the entire website. Her name is bolded and bigger than everything else and is located on the top of the page. She has the most important and upcoming things at the very top, and each other thing goes in chronological order from newest to oldest. The tone is that she is very friendly and a great writer, and is inviting others to start reading her books. The language is all very simple yet intriguing. The thing that is most successful about this site is that it really catches the viewer’s attention, and makes them want to continue to read through the website and read about her books. By doing that, it will make the viewer of the website want to go out and read more of her books. What I can take away from this for my own website is to make sure to make it look organized and fun to catch the viewer’s attention long enough to have them want to continue to stay on my site.

Ira Glass describes two building blocks of storytelling, the first being the ‘anecdote,’ and the second being ‘the moment of reflection.’ Both of these components of storytelling are evident in Dan and Silvie’s segment of “24 Hours at the Golden Apple.” Glass explains that the anecdote is in lamens terms, “what happened.” He states that the anecdote is a string of events and thoughts in regard to those events which leads the reader, almost as if riding a train, towards a suspenseful moment or the ‘why’ of the story, “This happened and then this happened and then I said this…” continuing the string of actions and reactions to capture the attention of listeners or viewers. A key element to the anecdote is momentum, the momentum of the action, according to Glass, must raise a question from directly from the beginning of the story. He also notes that in good storytelling the resulting ‘answer‘ or destination of the anecdote is never boring. Such is the case in Dave and Silvie’s segment of “24 Hours at the Golden Apple.” The interviewer begins by expressing she was drawn to the middle-aged ‘couple.’ The most notable language and perhaps what makes this story interesting is the phrase ‘couple,’ used by the interviewer as audiences are introduced to Dave and Silvie. We soon find out that their relationship is anything but the usual and the events which they described absolutely come as a surprise or shock to the audience. The moment of reflection in this story comes both literally and figuratively as the listener learns that while the pair were once a couple, they are now, to the dismay of Dave, merely friends, and Silvie is actually engaged to be married. Dave and Silvie literally pause to reflect upon their relationship in silence and this is a tool purposely included by the interviewer to express the aforementioned reflection.  Glass depicts a good story as having a moment of action paired with someone’s verbal response in regard to the same. In the case of Dave and Silive, the interviewer describes Dave’s wandering eye and a discussion ensues as Silvie explains how hurtful this was to her in the past. Ira Glass wants artists to abandon ‘crap,’ to go straight to the stories that get to ‘the heart.’ Dave and Silvie’s story is certainly emotional and the listener can almost feel the couple’s own confusion, sadness, regretful nature yet hope for the future.

In the more technical sense of Ira Glass’ view of storytelling he states that an audience must be able to follow ‘what is being talked about’ and that an interviewer should be depicted interacting with other people and observing and commenting on interactions between human beings. Glass explains that even in an interview there needs to be characters to make some sort of drama. The interviewer in this case observed what she deemed to be a couple of characters and began to, herself, interact with the two people, ultimately finding an interesting and curious story they shared. Glass also says that a story should be able to be summed up in once sentence: “Two past lovers, whom now remain friends, ponder their friendship, their past, and what both of these things will mean for their futures.”

In the This American Life piece entitled Fear of Sleep, most of Ira Glass’s story telling techniques are used.  What worked for me was the use of what Glass calls the 2 building blocks. The first is to have an anecdote – a series of actions or events.  In the story, we are given the location of the story (Brooklyn, NY), a description of the furniture that is out on the curb for trash, then invited up into one of the apartments where the reporter described the roaches as, “everywhere; sauntering down the walls and in the drawers.”  The actual movement from curb to inside helped add to the series of actions.  

Another element that worked well and made for a better story, I think, was the use of music that was added to the interview post production.  When the second lady was interviewed, this time bedbugs being the culprit, a very creepy soundtrack that evoked movement, restlessness was laid over parts of the interview when the woman was describing the bugs and how they feed.

The reporter in this piece used her natural voice, I think, and asked questions or made requests during the interview like, “show me some bugs; did it hurt; what can you do about them?”  The reporter asking these types of questions during the interview used Glass’s second building block of a good story – a moment of reflection, where any question that is raised is answered.  Some questions were answered right away by the woman being interviewed and some were answered by the reporter post production.

The audio story I chose to analyze was Kindness of Strangers. Right from the beginning the narrator used scripted narration to begin telling his story. At the 45.30 mark, so thirty seconds in, the narrator says one of characters was singing Frank Sinatra which cued one of Frank’s song after he is finished saying his name. From that point on Frank Sinatra songs fill silent voids, play softly within background, or quietly come back in whenever the story referenced Frank Sinatra again. The story uses an interview of the main character that had sung those songs. Frank Sinatra songs would either be playing after he finished or as light background music for when the character was finishing a thought. In my opinion, these pieces work together in sync largely because from the beginning the music is a link to the story, which caught my attention. It gave me a feeling like I was in the story just because I had audio to that was relatable to the story.

What I took away from this piece that could help me with my own audio project are two things. The first one would be the use of music to build suspense or fill silent voids. The suspense can build for my story and can filter out less awkward silences or unnecessary over description.  The second would be filling with some sort of music or background sound that relate to the story. This can be helpful because I believe it is easier to build a mental picture for the listener. It can also grasp their attention more instead of having to rely on descriptive story telling.

Imagine living in a place where every night when you fall asleep you are literally attacked by insects that have infested your living space and made it their own.  Most of us can’t imagine such a horrific scenario, but for people like Ms. M and Stephanie this is a part of their daily routine.  This audio feature was in part good because of its subject matter, but also because of the tools used by the interviewer and editor to truly put it together into a piece that tells a story.  I was there with Ms. M when she had to go to the hospital and I could feel the bed bugs hopping around my body as Stephanie talks about how her blue polka dotted sheets used to feel as though they were crawling.

This feature does several things very well.  First and foremost the interviews themselves flow with a sense of purpose and are constantly driving us as listeners to the big WHY question.  Like Ira Glass said if you string along a bunch of steps in a story in a descriptive and interesting tone in order to get to the reflection you have a good story even with the most boring of subjects.  This subject matter was by no means boring on its own accord and was in fact made even more interesting and “hang on the edge of your seat” by the way the narrator spoke and the like ability of the interviewees.  Right at the beginning–22:20 to be exact–the interview gets us with the hook: ” Ms. M has some very bad nighttime experiences *pause, build suspense* with roaches.”  BOOM! Right away the listener is involved.

Another well used component is the noise used in the background during the interviews.  From 22:20 to 23:05 while Ms. M is discussing her roach infested apartment there is screeching in the background…the screeching of hungry roaches.  At 27 while Stephanie is describing how she sees bed bugs with “bellies full of blood” the hum of a fluorescent light punctuates the shocked silence that follows.  Each sound is used to remind the listener of the squalor these people live in…the pain they go through every night that to them is just a part of life.  The narrator says it all at the end of the piece “Stephanie had grown a colony if bed bugs, in an apartment of bed bugs, in a building of,bed bugs.”

So why tell these stories?  Why delve into these horrific living situations?  Again the reason comes at the end: the moment if reflection.  A week after the Stephanie’s story aired the landlord hired an exterminator and they are now bug free and happy.  This is the why: people need to know that other peop,e live every day in these conditions and nothing is being done so that something HAS to be done.

There are various reasons as to why this podcast works and is successful.  First of the way the interview style is engaging and flows extremely well.  The interview lack awkward stops or pauses.  At time 24:00 the reporter informers us about Brittney, the daughter of the women with numerous roach infestations, saying,”she told me she got a roach in her ear not once but” and then the Britney voice is inserted saying”twice! Got in my ear twice!” I really enjoyed then way she flowed into the conversation. It was exceutioned well and caused my ears to perk up for some reason.

There are certain points there the interview becomes cringe worthy., which was it’s goal. The description the mother daughter duo gives when describing the cockroaches entering their ear is so vivid I feel as though I am experiencing this gratuitous event.  It felt like my worse nightmare was taking place. The author did well with the descriptive narration.  Instead of saying there were cockroaches  everywhere she said, ” every sticky table has roaches on them waving their doomed autena “23;15. This is a clear example of showing verse telling in it’s best possible form.

The start and end of the post does have this soft somber sounds. When this plays we know that this song plays the segment is ending and another one might follow. The music gives cues  which is important and kind of signals the listen that a change is happening.(25;21)

Personally my takeaway from this will be to not have uncomfortable pauses and to ask the right questions that lead to having stories then yes or no answers

These interviews had excellent background noises that enhanced the suspense and amplify the emotion of the subjects being interviewed. The stories flowed seamlessly and showed rather than told. All of the sound effects give the interview a great sense of motion and make the listener feel involved. The music that follows moments of misfortune and moments of shear gravity such as when the woman says that they have had no choice but to live with hundreds of roaches or the scene of the woman discovering another colony of bedbugs in her couch gives the listener a moment to capture the emotion of both subjects.  The tambour and reporting style of this segment is very easy to listen to as all of the reporters are simply speaking without any grandiose accentuation’s. As Ira Glass said, it is important for the listener to listen to people talking, not underlining every third word and distracting them from the message of the story itself.

For my piece I want to capture a candid conversation with my subject.; a still shot of a moment through the prose of one another. My storytelling site is a noisy convenience store corner with many customers and movement.  I plan on using all of the natural ambient noise as it will help paint a picture of the true environment much like ” Sleeps Tiniest Enemies” did with the homes of the interviewees.