In The Age of AI Let’s Consider When Bad Tape Is Actually Good Tape...Often The Best Tape
Leaning into seven examples from four different series when the “bad tape” actually made the series: Outlaw Ocean, S-Town, Nightwalking, and Mandela: The Lost Tapes
Maybe it’s the dawning age of the age of AI and the threat to humanity that it poses, or the risk of us being fooled when good art becomes a deep fake. Both of these dystopian considerations have backed me into an antithetical corner to deeply consider the following question: What is bad tape good for?
I suppose it’s most efficient here to first define was “good tape” is, as the corollary. In no specific order, “good tape” is:
a strong idea with a strong character
something that’s well-recorded
professionally-sourced
created with high production quality by a skillful and organized interviewer and guest
From a listening perspective, “good tape” is free from such distractions as wind or microphone handling sounds, or distractions like ringers, sirens and appliance hums.
The speaker should be recorded at ~ -6db so that when the final piece is finished and broadcast-ready sound can comfortably range between -20 and -16 LUFS. The recording should have minimal “plosives” and “essing,” those are the ‘p’s and the ‘s’s that make you involuntarily jump when you hear them (to get past that, you often need a pop filter).
But here’s the rub: “Bad tape” often breaks one, or even all of the rules.
“Bad tape” might have the person being recorded so far off-mic that the narrator needs to repeat the content, or explain it outright. “Bad tape” is most often recorded out in the field, and likely has those annoying scrunchy sounds which is what happens when the microphone shifts in the hands of the recorder.
“Bad tape” often gets caught in the wind, or walks through a crowded city street full of chaos and calamity…or catches someone at an embarrassing or awkward moment.
One of the best examples of this that I still think about was from a decade ago, in the first episode of the first season of Startup, when Alex Blumberg awkwardly pitches his idea for Gimlet to Silicon Valley kingpin and billionaire Chris Sacca, on a street corner.
The whole series, in fact, was built on the premise of this piece of humiliating tape: the moment when a veteran radio producer forgets everything he knows about how to interview people, on a streetcorner, and botches not only the pitch but also the entire “streeter” scene, radio lingo for stopping someone on a street to ask them something, planned or unplanned. It’s a skill, I guarantee, that Blumberg had mastered already.
But this moment of “bad tape” becomes a moment where humanity opens the door for everything else to make a bit more sense. It’s mistakes like these humanize the host, and make the story work if it can also provide a structure.
The fumbles and bumbles create a believable and identifiable character and help to break the illusion that there’s a distance between the creator and the listener. It brings it in real close instead.
Let’s look at seven examples from four different series to zoom in on this idea
The Outlaw Ocean Podcast
1: Once-in-a-lifetime caught on tape
If you’ve listened to the Outlaw Ocean podcast, you know exactly what I mean by “bad tape.” The series, created by the veteran journalist, Pulitzer Prize-winning, Ian Urbina, opens with him describing this shocking piece of tape sent to him from a source at Interpol.
The tape was recorded on a random crappy cell phone camera with a bunch of men shouting, mostly inaudibly. Then you hear gunshots. And then more. Urbina describes the video, blood all over the water.
It’s a video that shows the murder of several men, on a small boat somewhere at sea. This was the beginning of what became an 8-year-long journey for Urbina, to find the killers, and try to identify the men killed.
The production technique used to explain and maneuver around this bad tape was that Urbina was recorded explaining the contents of the video (likely to another producer in the studio). We hear the sound of the video, at times it takes over the full audio channels, but only for brief glimpses of time. Mostly we hear Urbina, his adverse reaction to watching people be killed and his explanation of context. We hear just enough of the actual audio to know that it’s real, but not so much that you feel like you’re listening to a snuff video.
This “bad tape” clearly falls into that category of tape that’s good because it captures something truly awful and vanishingly rare. It’s the “document” inside the documentary, and it serves as the basis for the whole piece. And it’s bad by definition, which in this case, unfortunately, is what makes it good.
I covered The Outlaw Ocean months ago…and while I had a beef with it, mostly because what I thought I was getting when I subscribed to this podcast was a long and thorough analysis of what happened in this video, and then an interesting global chase to bring some cold-blooded killers to justice.
Instead, The Outlaw Ocean podcast followed the chapter outline of his previously published book, by the same name. Each episode was another equally shocking exposé of the crazy things that happen at sea that shouldn’t.
I will digress a moment here to say that the first episode, is absolutely brilliant. And it’s a case of bad tape that makes this series unforgettable.
2: Being there is the key, bad quality be dammed
There’s no substitute for reality…but capturing that moment is often ugly and raw and full of mistakes. All of the ugly can be forgiven if the tape is great. These are moments that documentarians and journalists live for. And this technique works both when the producer is there themself, or if they fill the role of investigator.
I remember seeing a film at SXSW in 2003 called “The Revolution Will Not Be Televised,” by Kim Bartley and Donnacha O'Briain. These filmmakers found themselves in Caraças, Venezuela, in 2002, at the exact moment of a failed coup d’état.
Somehow they managed to stick around the protest that was taking place outside the Presidential Palace, avoid the gunfire, and be there to film the incoming forces ‘storming the castle.’ Then they managed to sneak inside the palace during those chaotic moments of transition and even hung around for some of those 47 hours that Chavez was ousted from power.
Yes they filmed the whole experience, which is what makes this film great, but the camera work was another example of “bad tape.” It was filmed as they ran from gunshots, moved hastily around, and sometimes even put the camera down while they pretended they weren’t recording - which meant it was just an audio recording by a film camera.
This is a case of when the bad tape can take on a role of its own, becoming the centre of the story.
S-Town
3: The phone call is bad-sounding tape that’s still good
Empirically speaking, the audio of a phone call is not pleasant to listen to. It has a sound to it…how to describe it…that’s both higher in tone and fuzzy at the same time. For short stretches, fine. But for longform podcasts, it is typically used in moderation, because it’s hard on the ears in large amounts.
There are a few practical reasons why phone call audio is used. First, it’s very efficient, cheap and easy.
Another reason is that it has an iconic sound quality, ie all phone calls basically sound the same (whether it’s a cellphone, a landline a VOIP phone, etc). Because it’s iconic, everyone understands right away what it is. Shorthand. No need to explain what it is. And that’s helpful in narrative audio land, because it’s nice to just start doing something, without having to signpost what is happening.
The story of S-Town begins with a phone call, between the host Brian Reed and John B. McLemore. An interesting editorial choice was made here if you listen closely. Brian Reed’s voice is recorded separately at good quality, while John B.’s voice is recorded over the phone.
It’s possible a strategic choice was made: both voices could have been recorded as a “phone” voice…instead, only half of the conversation sounds like a phone call.
My best guess is that having two voices as “phone voice” is just too much to ask of the listener. The charming, rambling voice of John B. works in this medium; his initial “so this is what’s happening around here” anecdote runs almost seven minutes, with only minor interjections by Brian Reed to clarify some details.
In narrative audio terms, seven minutes is an eternity. It’s also a punishingly long time to listen to someone spool out a story over a phone line. But there’s something undeniable about this character. And the fact that he lives behind a telephone is exactly true to the story as it began.
Given the substantial resources of This American Life, and also given that the story was reported, in person, by Brian Reed, for long stretches after this, this recording had ample chances to be discarded. It could have been replaced with a well-recorded in-person interview when the experienced and skilled Brian Reed would have done all the right things to report the story and do so in a way that would surely have gathered what could definitely have been called “good tape.”
But it wasn’t. Because the “bad tape” of the phone call is what set the stage for a larger-than-life character to begin his part, in a work that’s also been described as the first “audio novel,” for its structure and cadence.
“Bad tape” is also made good because it sticks close to the facts of the story, how the story came to be. When it bad tape stays honest, it helps to make it good.
Nightwalking
4: Get what you get and don’t get upset
Recently I profiled the new season of Constellation Prize called Nightwalking, by Bianca Giaever. The series is wonderful for many reasons (including the sound design, which is also covered in that post with a mini-interview with John DeLore).
One of the other ways that audio producers get “good tape” is they are fastidious about how that tape is captured; how and where it’s recorded….with or without vocal training…employing techniques such as ‘writing for the ear.’
The whole premise of the series was built on two people writing letters to each other, after completing a night walk, and then recording themselves reading a letter to the other person. To wit: this was also made during the height of the pandemic, so the idea of getting together to record something in a windowless studio was just not in the cards.
But it also meant that Bianca had to give up a decent portion of her control, and just wait to see what the audio gods brought back to her. The other letter writer, the second subject, is Terry Tempest Williams, a thinker, writer, and scholar at the Harvard Divinity School. She’s a very accomplished woman….but she’s not an audio producer.
But it was this uncertainty that helped to create the magic…and the slight awkwardness of the letters comes through in this other sort of ‘found tape,’ that helps to create an inviting and relaxed atmosphere to the story.
5: Always Be Recording - ABR - The Ins and the Outs
When an audio producer is getting ready to record something in the field, one of the first lessons they must adhere to is the maxim: Always Be Recording. This means, that you hit record well before you need to, and you stop the recording a full minute after you’re sure everything has already happened, or you’ve left the room and gone down the hall and closed a second door behind you.
This is an old radio trick and it’s used in narrative podcasting to help set a scene. If you have the microphone in your hand and you’re awkwardly holding it because you’re also knocking on a door, or entering a new space, that handling noise will come through, the swish of some coat fabric against the foam, all of these bits are noises that don’t sound great. They are, technically speaking, bad tape. But they are all necessary.
These “bad tape” moments help to transition a scene. Without visuals, the audio world needs cues and clues to tell the listener exactly what’s about to happen. It’s like foreshadowing, except that there’s not much time between the sound and the event.
Bianca uses this technique throughout, the stepping out moment, the signpost of where she is, or what she’s about to do, those pauses between one event and the next. These are used sparingly, which is what makes it all very successful…and it’s then nestled into the backdrop of a superbly sound-designed narrative. Those little gems of reality are part of what makes this one shine.
Mandela: The Lost Tapes
6: Bring someone back from the dead
I’m excited to announce that an upcoming newsletter will feature a wider profile of the series Mandela: The Lost Tapes and include a fascinating interview with the creator of the series, Richard Stengel. But for now, I want to highlight two different ways that this series levered “bad tape” to make it all something new and fantastic.
We all know the story of Mandela: he spent 27 years in prison fighting for the rights of Black South Africans to vote…and then emerging, literally from prison, to win the vote of his country, to become president, in 1994. His best-selling autobiography, Long Walk To Freedom, also published in the year 1994, became an instant best seller.
What most people don’t know is that someone named Richard Stengel was hired to help him write this book. Not that Mandela could not write…more that he was incredibly busy getting ready to change history.
While researching the material to write the book, as many journalists do, Richard Stengel recorded the interviews with Mandela…visiting him at his ancestral home area of the Transkei, at his office in Johannesburg, at his sparse and organized home.
In total, Stengel recorded more than 70 hours of these tapes. But it’s not the sound-bite inspirational quote-speaking Mandela that the world got to know through the lens of the news. It was him, at his home, being himself.
These vintage recordings were restored from their original magnetic tape in order to be useable for this narrative podcast. Their immediacy and their ability to capture a moment that no one saw, the fact that he is a world figure, sitting down to chat over tea.
I say “bad tape” in a genuine sense: these recordings, captured by the built-in microphone of a Sony magnetic tape recorder, were never meant for the world to hear. But now that they have done the impossible and not only brought a man back from death…but also given him a new life.
7: Intimacy breaks down the fourth wall
In the last ten minutes of the ten-part series, more than eight hours into the story, I encountered one of the most interesting editorial choices I’ve seen recently in narrative podcasts.
Stengel has been narrating throughout, providing at various times a history lesson, a civics tutorial, a primer on world politics, and deep insights into a man he came to know and love: Mandela.
Stengel is a newsman through and through. He has worked in media for decades, including a long stretch as managing editor of Time magazine, written multiple books, and was under secretary of state for public diplomacy and public affairs during the Obama administration. He speaks with authority.
At this 11th-hour moment, as he’s wrapping up the series, Stengel’s voice cracks. His emotions arrest his speech as he’s recounting the moment he said goodbye to Mandela, the last time he gave him a hug. The text of the story is intense…and then the subtext is this very genuine emotion.
When he warbles, you hear a voice slightly off-mic, who asks: “Do you want to stop? Do you need a break?” And Stengel says: “No, no, I'm gonna carry on. And I'll just stick with it.”
It’s “bad tape” in the sense that it wasn’t supposed to be there. It was a flub, a stumble. Most of the time, these things are zipped out in the editing room.
But it was left in there…both the unnamed, disembodied producer in the background, and the narrator, whose voice begins to quaver.
But that’s the goods. That’s the bad stuff that makes it all good in the end.
