Hella Solutions blog: "Document. Share. Inspire."

If you’ve read my profile you will know that I am currently in the first graduating class of the newly establishing Social Documentation program at the University of California Santa Cruz. We graduate next week and the ‘screenings’ of work have begun.

Tonight our cohort had our first ‘screening’ of work to a much wider audience than we have had to date. We were all really nervous (for whatever reasons…we couldn’t figure it out). But all of our work was very well received. There are six of us, 4 doing video , 1 creative nonfiction, and myself doing audio. I think the best comment I got was from a woman who works for a Los Angeles radio station that said something to the effect of: “There are 3 rules that I am constantly telling radio producers not to break. 1) never use the Muslim announcement of prayer; 2) never use female gospel singers; 3) never use telephone conversations. Your use of a telephone conversation is the first time in 15 years that I have seen this work…you had me hooked…” Something like that. Anyway, it was quite a nice compliment and after sitting in front of my computer for umpteen hours and umpteen weeks putting this together it’s really great to get some feedback from people listening to it cold. And what kudos, eh?!

If you want to listen to what she’s talking about, head over to PRX and listen to the two minute teaser I have posted there. The url is: http://www.prx.org/pieces/18428.