Homecoming Response
Word count: 443
Overall,
I’m enjoying the story and appreciating this new form of storytelling that I haven’t
really been exposed to before. I’m excited to use what I’ve learned in these
podcasts about the use of sound effects in my own podcast.
I personally really enjoyed listening to the first few
episodes of Homecoming. I’ve listened to podcasts before where people sit and
talk about a specific topic, but I’ve never listened to a fictional podcast
that felt like a big production. It helped me realize that podcasts where your
telling a fictional story is way more thought out and detail oriented than I
expected.
The sound effects were really able to draw me into the
scenes and make me feel like I was there with the characters. The sound effects
that were included in the scenes in busy public places, like the cafeteria and
restaurant, made it feel as if I was in the same setting and just eavesdropping
on their conversation. At certain points, the sound effects make me feel like I
am a character in the story as it plays out.
The storyline itself is very intriguing. From the very first
episode that we listened to in class, I was hooked. I like that some scenes
seem irrelevant at first, especially in the beginning, and then as the story
unravels you begin to see their importance.
I think my favorite part of the story so far is the mystery
of why Heidi doesn’t remember her time at the Homecoming initiative. At first,
I thought she was lying to the man from the Department of Defense. Now, I think
she either was traumatized and blocked it out of her memory, or someone
literally erased her memories of her time at the Homecoming initiative (we don’t
really know anything about what’s going on behind the closed doors of the initiative
so someone developing technology to erase memories could be plausible, who
knows?).
Other aspects of the story that I’m excited to see play out
are the relationships that Heidi has with Walter Cruz and Colin. With Walter,
we realize that there may have been a deeper relationship than just counselor
and client, but I’m very curious to see how far that relationship goes and
where it ended (if it ended?). With Colin, I’m curious to see if there was a
breaking point. Heidi seems to be fed up with his intentions of the initiative
and his closed-mindedness. As he is the boss, I would like to see what role he
played exactly in her dismissal. Did he drive her to quitting? Did he fire her?
Is it bigger than just the two of them?
Yes, agreed that the writers do a very effective job of pulling us along as listeners; we're not sure what details may be important, and we have a lot of unanswered questions, so we're paying attention. The other thing to note is that the pacing of each episode is fairly fast. Most don't last more than 20 minutes, but that can include a total of between 6 and 8 scenes, bouncing back and forth between different time periods. The aural signal that sounds like something sliding is the way that we know we're changing scene, and we are also usually given another aural clue, like a phone ringing, or a tape recorder moving, or the sound of the dinner, or the sounds of other locations. Think about how you might use these same techniques in your podcast with Savannah--you all have much less time to tell your stories, so it will require somewhat tighter pacing or longer scenes.
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