Chris Watson: Whispering in the leaves
February 27th, 2008 by Bobbie JohnsonPerhaps I’m in danger of overloading you with Chris Watson, but the sound recordist is already a firm favourite with the Speechification crew, thanks to his emphasis on creating radio that not only tells a story but also captures the sounds of life.
He popped up again this morning on Midweek, in a too-brief 8-minute interview where he gives a glimpse of how and why he works. Ostensibly he’s talking about a new exhibition about tropical rainforests he’s got on at the Sunderland Museum called Whispering in the Leaves, but along the way he manages to describe capturing the sound of glaciers moving, Mexican railways and vultures gnawing away at zebra carcasses on the Masai Mara.
Fascinating stuff. It’s about 23 and a half minutes into this stream, or you can listen to the MP3
(Incidentally, I’ve always wondered about Radio 4’s propensity to take the same show - a gentle series of interviews with three or four interesting people - and slap a different presenter and a different name on it. You’ve got Start the Week, Midweek, Woman’s Hour and In Our Time are all essentially mild variants of the same concept. I hope they name a new show “just-over-halfway-through-the-week” for continuity purposes.)
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