I chose Atherton Gardens as the location for my assignment as it was a place that had stuck in my head since I’d arrived from Brisbane in March. Huge towers like the Yarra community housing estates don’t exist so close to the city in Brisbane, where I have been brought up. The architectural style reminded me of buildings I had seen in Russia, stark, cold and uninviting. I think this is why the location has had such an impact on me and has intrigued me. This project was an opportunity to investigate the space further and maybe understand the reason they exist and the types of people who live there.
I did a reconnaissance mission to the location to let me formulate ideas. I took photos and began observing and recording atmospheric sounds. As I walked around the area I took the opportunity to talk to some of the residents and recorded some interviews, but failed to get personal release forms. I didn’t think much of it at the time but it meant all those interesting conversations were unusable. However, the many rejections I experienced gave me some confidence to approach people on my second visit and also influenced the opening montage.
I recorded the location sounds using a Zoom H4n and the narration using a Behringer sm57. The narration recordings turned out to be poor quality so I re- recorded them using a Behringer sm7 with a windsock to avoid blowing out the levels. After replacing the new recordings I felt that the piece had lots its emotiveness, I think the second recordings sounds too scripted so I decided to leave the ones I had. I also had to deal with strong winds during my location recordings.
Everything I had listen to in terms of the different approaches to exploring sound and the various inflections and texures of ‘voice’ were bouncing around my head throughout post-production. I think ‘Poetry Texas’ by Falling Tree Productions had the most significant influence on this piece. I loved the way he narrated the piece and I imagined his experience walking around the small town was similar to mine in Atherton gardens. In addition to this I think this piece ended up with quite an American style, much like Serial hosted by Sarah Koenig.
Overall I think I had an advantage in terms of story potential but was disadvantaged by my access to people and I my lack of journalistic ability. It wasn’t as easy as rocking up somewhere and sticking a microphone in front of people. I often questioned the moral implications of documenting participants as I didn’t want my questions to make these often quite vulnerable people feel ashamed to live on the estate. I didn’t want to ask questions that seemed patronizing or remove any sense of pride they had in the area. I resorted to asking quite simple questions and I think this is the main thing that could be improved on in this piece.