The first story I listened to is “The next best thing could be around the corner” about a former child actor from Cuba turned refugee talking to his grandson about his journey. He had to flee Cuba during the revolution after being a very successful child actor, but his legacy lived on through his grandson, who is also an actor. The sound quality was good but I felt the grandfather was a little too close to the microphone as he sounded a lot louder than his grandson. He seems to just have a louder speaking voice than the other speaker, but it’s not that off putting. The pacing was very fast, it sounds like all the pauses in the conversation have been trimmed away to create a shorter story. I feel like there was a lot more to this story than we’re privy to on storyboard, but it was a good story anyway.
The second story I listened to was “We’re probably one of the military’s secret weapons” a story about two siblings, Alvy Powell and Yvonne Powell and how their singing inspired each other and their life choices. Alvy, inspired by his sister, went on to sing in the army in a chorus of great prestige. This story had a much slower pacing, it felt like the story traversed decades at its own pace, but never got boring. The siblings responded to each other which helped the flow of the story and the recording quality was excellent. This applies to not just the interview but the clips of Alvy singing in the army chorus as well. The way they wove that audio into the interview was seamless but not so seamless that it didn’t stand out. The flow here was perfect and I felt like I got to know more about the people and their story at this pace.