The Last Elevator Story starts with the introduction of two voices who are soon known as Michael Nester, Louise Thompson, and Richard Tyranny. These people were known as World Trade Center Buildings workers during 9/11. The interview starts out with a main narrator and the narrator goes onto tell the stories that which occurred on that day. He discusses that they rode in the last elevator down before the building was struck by Plane 11 at 8:46 that morning. The narrator introduces the topic of choice and lets the three people being interviewed have their time to describe the incident itself. They do it together in an effort to recall the memory together with more detail.
Notably, the interview continues from the beginning to have this piano music that goes on as the interviewees are discussing their memory. The three interviewees give their input one by one and describe their personal experiences and the others validate them as they go. The narrator then goes to finish off the overall incident’s story by addressing how all three ended up surviving from their turn in the elevator and basically concludes that they had a lucky encounter and concludes the overall storytelling bit. The piano music continues for a few seconds and then fades into the background and that concludes the first story.
The second story goes by a quote by the storyteller that says “He asked me ‘How many Jellybeans are in the Jar?'” It begins the interview with no introduction but only the the interviewee, Theresa Burroughs, beginning the story with passion in her voice, almost as if she is reliving the moment to which she had to deal with racial discrimination. She discusses the story with minimal cuts just by herself and there is no background music needed. The amplification in her voice brings about the remanence of the story itself and allows her to tell it fully without any limitations which makes it more being worth heard.
The two stories showcased a brilliant contrast in storytelling and how post production editing can enhance the overall feel of the story itself and how minimal cuts can create a more compelling story for the interviewee. There are a number of things you can do for a storyteller and I would assume it would also be important to try to understand where the storyteller is coming from and how they may want to be perceived on their end. As far as the pacing for the two examples, the pacing seems a little quicker in the second story and focuses more on her individual experience and the pacing for the first one seemed a bit slowed downs as there were more narrators for the story itself which could something to consider in post-production.