Way Over The Word Count - Moon Graffiti - The Truth Podcast

I'm trying a new thing here on the blog. It might not work or it might work wonderfully and you may be swallowed into an abyss of new writing. Don't hold me to it, this could be the first and last attempt at this we ever see on the internet. With a new year of university ahead and a new task of reviewing pieces of audio, we've hit the challenge that if you've been a reader of the blog for a while, you will know I struggle with... keeping things short and simple. I have never been able to stay under a word count in my life, so with the new challenge of 200-400 words of beautiful pieces of audio,  I face the task of not writing 1,000 words on each piece. So 'Way Over The Word Count' has been born, a place for me to write my full review on the pieces I have been tasked with listening to (aren't you lucky?). These are going to be extremely analytical and wordy compared to the usual writing over here so be warned! I'll stop rambling now and dive into it!!! There will be spoilers, I'm sure and completely by mistake so listen first if you don't want me to spoil it for you! For this radio show, I want you to shut yourself in a dark room, with a good pair of headphones or speakers and enjoy:

Our first listening task was an incredible piece called Moon Graffiti by The Truth Podcast. The radio piece is based around what would happen if the first moon landing had gone tragically wrong from the perspective of Buzz Aldrin and Neil Armstrong. From the word go it was incredibly engaging and the use of sound so pleasing to the listener. We begin in what can only be realised, after the narration, as the Eagle landing on the moon and everything going horrifically wrong. I enjoyed the introduction and the pace because it set the scene incredibly well, despite not really mentioning what was actually happening, or where we were. You knew you were listening to mission control, because of that crackly space communication that we are all so used to hearing (and pretending to replicate as kids with your hands over your mouth?). The use of language really helps bring this story to life, you get the "roger" and the "Houston" and you are suddenly immersed in where you are, you get the generic space language that we hear whenever we look at documentaries or films about space. We might not necessarily always understand the space jargon but I think that really helps in bringing the story to life. I enjoyed the use of actuality (background noises - close your eyes, what can you hear?) in the intro, the beeps of the spaceship, the crackles of the microphones as they talked. It really helped bring us into the ship with Neil and Buzz as they "landed" on the moon.

Something I really loved about this piece, is that it is set around the actual speech prepared for President Nixon in case everything went tragically wrong during the actual moon landing. The little snippets of the speech bring the story to life in such a dramatic and engaging way, that makes you want to keep listening. It's a devastating part of the drama, it grips you in and it's used later on with far more devastating useage (but I will come to that later!). I think that bringing the narrator in to explain the speech was incredibly helpful from a listener's perspective, it really helped carry the story along because he is building the story in front of your eyes. His voice is calming, yet the background music builds that tension and I found it almost was like being read a bedtime story. The little background noises with the narration were incredibly clever and pleasing to the ear, for instance the sound of the little rocket ship that shoots through our ears and crashes really took the story back from the narrator to the characters in a clever and entertaining way.

The Apollo 11 Moon Landing Crew 

So what would it have been like to crash on the moon? The Truth brings this story to life beautifully. I loved the personality between the characters, Buzz being a lot more manic and panicky, always needing to be reassured, almost childlike, whereas Neil is far more calm, collected and really there to get the job done, regardless of the situation they are in. Again the use of actuality for this scene was spectacular, I especially enjoyed the thuds to show them jumping across the moon; just that noise painted that picture of an astronaut moving slowly across the surface of the moon. There was so many little noises, like the camera clicking and the echo's that really brought the story to life and painted that picture for the listener.

 I enjoyed the background music for this piece, it built that tension and also helped show that isolation that they would have faced, but it also had a really nice space/techy undertone that really fit the scene well as it wasn't too in your face for the devastation of the scene. This admittedly is where I cried at least three of the times that I listened to the drama; when it started to get dramatic and emotional. It was beautifully written and some of the lines spoken by the astronauts gave me goosebumps. You root for the characters even though there is no hope and it hits you when Buzz tries to get the radios working desperately for "one last goodbye to the wife and kids", it was hard hitting and emotional and just pulled you in completely. The whole memorial scene to the Apollo 1 disaster is a heartbreaking to listen to, you can really only understand it if you knew what happened and who lost their lives, and admittedly I had to research the astronauts they spoke about before I had any real understanding about this piece of the scene. But the actors brought the emotion to this tribute superbly, it was like listening to Buzz and Neil paying their respect to their fellow astronauts. At times the conversations begun to go on for slightly too long, mainly the space-talk pieces but knowing that this is how it is actually done in space, helped bring the story to life.

I loved the countdown to this whole scene of the drama, Buzz and Neil are running are out of air, they have hours to live and the pace speeds up as we begin to reach the end. A bit I found really helped connect me as a listener to the characters was the footprints speech, when they're discussing how NASA can find their bodies by their footprints and how they will be there forever. It was brought beautifully together with Buzz connecting this to helping his neighbour concrete and their children writing something that will stay there forever. It was devastating to listen as they considered what to leave as their way to be remembered.

What I think was incredibly clever is how writer Jonathan Mitchell still managed to keep the final moments with Buzz and Neil light and somewhat funny. I couldn't help but laugh when the characters were discussing God and Buzz says "Do you think God will find us on the moon?", it showed an innocence and wonder to the situation that they were in. The scene continued to pick up pace and I liked the use of layered conversation to show Buzz starting to have a bit of a freak out, I thought that was a really clever way to bring that sense of overwhelming-ness to the listener.

The scene finishes and over the crackling of the helmets, the speech comes back to us. I really took this as the final moments of Buzz and Neil. As depressing as it sounds, the noise of the helmet microphones still cracking and no talking really gave me the impression that the characters had passed away. The actual speech written for President Nixon is incredibly moving and is read incredibly well John Ottavino. It is spoken clearly and perfectly in the style for that time period, the pauses are timed perfectly to produce that emotion in the listener and it feels almost as if we are listening to a real obituary. There is a roughly seven second pause between the end of the speech and the final music which I think is an incredible use of silence in radio. I really enjoyed that moment to think.

In conclusion, if you couldn't tell I really enjoyed the piece. It was not an overly complicated 10 minutes that was easy to follow. I liked that you could dip in and out of the drama and still know what was going on with the story. Overall I found Moon Graffiti by The Truth podcast incredibly gripping. As a listener I found myself hooked in and the time passed incredibly quickly. Acknowledgments must go to the incredible work of writer and producer Jonathan Mitchell, the wonderful editing of Hillary Frank and the voices of Matt Evans as Neil Armstrong, Ed Herbstman as Buzz Aldrin and John Ottavino as President Richard Nixon.