A Family without a Home
The audio story I listened to was about a homeless family who lives in their car. The family includes a mom, a dad, their teenage daughter, her brother and their dog. This story intrigued me because by the looks of the mom and daughter in the featured picture, no one would suspect that they are homeless. They look like normal middle class people. The story itself does a good job of describing the difficulties they face and the feelings they have about their situation.
As an audio story, the editor did a great job of including both perspectives. The brevity of the story allows the listener to take in the situation and think about it. The bare facts were given but there is a lot the listener has to fill in. A good choice, in my opinion, was how the editor waited until the end of the story to add music. This lets the listener take in the dialogue in the beginning without the distraction of outside sounds. The music included fit well with what was said at the end. It added a somber tone to the mother’s concerns about their future, especially the future of her daughter.
The story begins in the middle of their situation. There is no backstory or information about why they’re homeless. All of the information given is about where they are now and where they’re going. A lot of the focus is on the daughter because she is at the age where she has to think about getting into a college. One quote I really enjoyed was when she said to her mom, “You tell me that I have my life ahead of me, but I think you do too.” This clip captures a moment where the daughter puts herself on the same level as her mother and shows hope in both of their situations. The choice of which clips to include is very important because the editor needs to use them to get his or her idea across and I think it was well done in this clip
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The story that you listened to was similar to mine in that the narrators or editors chose to not include any music until the very end of the piece. While music has its place, I think in these stories that are so personal and compelling it creates a more potent, emotional experience free from any distraction. The emotional pull of this story is strong even without the feeling that music may add and thus it would be extraneous to add it.
Both of our stories began in the middle. Maybe the middle part is more important for those who actually lived the experience we then listened to. In the case of this story, the end is uncertain, and there is no way of telling what will come in the next year, decade, or in any time at all. The middle holds the most meaning, even if starting at the middle doesn’t give the audience a complete, full-circle understanding of the situation. The story still provided enough detail to keep the listener intrigued, trying to piece together every part of the story.
I wonder why you chose to listen to this piece – it was very interesting and well-done, but very emotional and not necessarily light listening.
This story is incredible. Frankly, it is incredible because of how sad it is. Like you said, the picture displays quite an average looking, middle-class family. The mother sounds like any other mom from my neighborhood, and the daughter seems like your everyday teenage girl. Yet, they live in a car where the windows ice up during the winter.
The one thing about this piece that keeps me wondering, however, is the tone of the music used at the end. My audio story presents an uplifting guitar tone at the end to really solidify how these four men overcame blindness. On the other hand, the music from your audio story, like you said, gives off a somber tone. I wonder, what is the editor trying to make us think? Is that tone used to bring out feelings of sympathy, or ponderance? Is it supposed to make us feel bad, or wonder about how we should be preparing ourselves to not allow this to happen to us? Should we be sending these people to help them? The answer to these questions is unclear to me.
I agree with your point that the story balances both perspectives well. The mother and daughter were both facing hard times, with the mother worried about disappointing her daughter, and the daughter had to hide her true living situation from her peers. I thought that the editing of the story allowed both people to express how they were feeling and you could really hear the emotion in their voices. The most moving part of the story for me was when the mother said “…this is one thing as a mom I didn’t expect I’d have to try to fix. ” That moment encapsulated the pain the mother and daughter were in.