Everyone Has a Story

You don’t have to have traveled around the world or saved someone’s life to have an interesting story. You would be surprised how interesting the little stories you have are and how much they could affect someone. Before the break from school we had the first exhibition of the year. Normally in exhibitions everyone in the class would make an inquiry question then try to answer it by doing a project of some kind. If you would like to read more about past exhibitions you can go Here. In PLP this year our main focus is podcasts, so instead of answering a question we had to make Podcasts. If you don’t know, a podcast is an audio recording of someone talking about pretty much anything they want. There can be group discussion podcasts, storytelling podcasts, and many more. For this exhibition we had to make storytelling podcasts.

For this project everyone in my grade was paired up with a grade 12 is PLP. I was paired up with Anatolia which was nice because she is friends with my sister so I already knew her. The grade 12’s job was to produce our podcasts. They had to make sure we did everything correctly and handed them in on time. The idea for telling story podcast came from Storycorps. Storycorps is an organization that interviews people and tells their stories. I listened to a lot of their podcasts and the stories were normally 2-4 mins but they were so powerful. For the exhibition we had to create 2 podcasts before and one during the exhibition. To create the podcasts we had to interview people and get them to tell us a story. To do this you should never just ask someone to tell you a story because they won’t think they have a good enough story or they won’t be able to think of one under pressure. The trick is to ask them open questions about them and their life and a story will probably developed out of it. Before we did the interview we had to create a list of questions that could lead to someone telling a story. Once you have asked a question that started off a story it is important to ask lots of follow up questions. You have to really listen to your interviewees answers and ask questions that will lead the interview in an interesting direction. Here are some interviewing tips.

My first interview was with my grade 12 buddy. Anatolia knew the project and to make the first interview easier she already had a story and I based my questions around that story. There are many different styles that you can choose to edit your podcasts. You could leave the questions in but I chose to edit them out so it would flow better. I also edited out all of the ums, empty spaces, and extra information that didn’t add to the story. The goal was to let the stories stand alone in the podcast so I only added music in the intro and outro. Here is Anatolia’s story.

My second interview had to be with a family member. I chose to interview my mom because she lives a very interesting life and she tells me a new story almost every day. It was a little trickier to get a good story from my mom at first because she was trying to think of an amazing story and couldn’t come up with one. Once I started asking her the questions she mentioned something that had the possibility to be a good story so I followed up and it turned out very good. Once I was done the interview I edited it and handed it in. Here is my Mom’s story.

Finally it was time for the exhibition. If you have ever been to an exhibition then you know that there are lots of people there which was both good and bad for this project. It was good because we had many people to get story’s from but it was bad because it was very loud and hard to get good audio. To help that problem everyone had to get in small groups and transform a classroom into a recording studio. My group put two comfy chairs and small table in the classroom. We put plants and a lamp on the table to make it look nice. We also had snacks and drinks for our guests. When the exhibition started it was the grade 12’s job to find people for me to interview. I had to interview at least three different people so I would definitely have a good story. I was really nervous because talking to strangers scares me a little. When my grade 12 brought in my first interviewee I was very happy because he was my old soccer coach so I was comfortable talking to him. I asked him a few questions on my list and once he gave me an interesting answer I followed up on it. It started to get easier and easier and he told me a really good story. After my first interview was done, I was confident and ready for my next one. There were three people in my room so it was a little challenging making time for everyone and knowing when the next interview was going to be.

When Anatolia brought in my second interviewee I did not know him so I was a little more nervous, but he was a very nice man. When he walked in the room I saw something that reminded him of his childhood and started telling me a story before I even asked a question. The first story was a little short but it brought up another topic that I asked about. He then told me an amazing story about his life. After he left I only needed one more interview. The last interviewee answered all of my questions with very short answers which made it hard to get a good story out of. After the night was over I was very excited to edit my podcast.

It was really hard to decided which story to turn into my podcast because they were all so interesting and different. I edited the first two podcasts to see which one had a better story. The first one had a very good story but it was a little short and repetitive. The second story was perfect so I continued to editing it. I edited out all of the questions and tried to make it flow as smoothly as possible. I also edited the volume which was really hard because there was a ton of background noise. I handed in the first draft to Anatolia and she gave me back some critique. I edited it a little more then I handed it in again and I got no critique. Here is my exhibition podcast.

I loved doing this project so much. It pushed me out of my comfort zone a lot but it made me learn more about my self. I loved hearing everyone’s stories so much and after each interview I was excited to move onto the next one. I even found editing the podcasts fun because it was so cool to hear the stories come together. At the start of this project I thought it was going to be really nerve racking to get the interview and boring to edit them but I really enjoyed it. I can’t wait to do more podcasts.