Listening Journal #2: Vegas's Hidden Tunnels

Title: "Sucked Into The Tunnels Beneath Las Vegas"
Narrator and producer: Adam Burke, 2008
Presented by: NPR's Day to Day, USA, 2010
Sound bites in the audio: Matthew O'Brien and workers Steve and Brian
Edited by: Jacob Conrad for NPR's Day to Day.
Duration: 8:32

Briefly describe the audio

• The audio titled "Sucked Into The Tunnels Beneath Las Vegas," produced by the Third Coast International Audio Festival, is an 8 minute and a half piece where Adam Burke takes us to explore one of Vegas's hidden and unfamiliar tunnels and the people who have been living there. 
• He uses people's experiences to tell us nice, relatively compelling stories of when they lived inside the hidden tunnels of Vegas. 

Was it interesting or not?

• Although the topic itself is a little boring, Burke still manages to describe things so well. This is evident when he first introduces the topic and uses beautiful nat sounds of slot machines and coins that make the listener much more able to visualize the atmosphere and the scenes he talks about. He talks about things that we can't see such as the "tourists," "cocktail waitresses" and "tiny outfits" all of which he uses to paint a full picture to the listener. 
• In addition, he succeeds at interviewing people with good stories to tell, which help make his topic somewhat a little interesting, and this clearly shows when we start hearing about Matthew O'Brien, who happens to be an author and an expert about tunnels in Vegas. We also start hearing about two workers in the tunnel, Steve and Brian who also tell us interesting stories about their job experiences, the facilities they have access to and how they survive living in such conditions. 
• Plus, O'Brien's description of the tunnels, events, people and the general atmosphere of Vegas underground give us proper account of what's happening there. His description, along with that of Burke's, is very detailed and sometimes informative to the listener, which helps in making the audio sound a little interesting than the topic itself. 

                                      Photo by: Nada Badawi

Audio quality and use of nat sounds

• He uses nice nat sounds from Vegas's casinos at the beginning which make us imagine poker and blackjack tables, coins, slot machines and video games. He also uses words such as "gravel", "graffiti lettering" and "trickling water" which compliment his description of the place. 
• At the beginning, the nat sounds are powerful making us feel that we're at Vegas already. However, they are not as exciting as I have imagined them to be especially that Burke talks about an interesting, entertaining place like Vegas. In addition, the nat sounds become repetitive and a little boring toward the end as all we get to hear is the echo coming from the tunnel as O'Brien speaks, the water inside the tunnel and few objects like the bucket. 
• We also hear some nat sounds above the tunnels such as the nat sound of the parking area that Burke ends up talking about. 
• In general, the nat sounds aren't at all distracting or getting in the way of the audio, but they're just not diverse and powerful enough. The production of the audio is of good quality. All in all, the audio sound is not distorted, nat sounds are clear and the narration and the delivery are all free of errors.

Quality of narrator's voice?

• Burke's approach is interesting as he grabs the listener's attention to what he's talking about, especially when he says that there's an elevator that could "take you to more vice and excess upstairs." Generally interesting and a nicely descriptive documentary.
• His narration is very pure and natural. He tries to be conversational and there are peaks and valleys in his voice and tone. At the beginning, he excites us when he says that you could go beyond what's familiar and move beyond the kitchen closets and luxurious lounges and instead see the "hidden matrix of tunnels." 
• His narration is clean, clear and not distorted which is what matters at the end, because what he is saying is mainly what the listener is interested to know and hear about for the first time.

Writing quality of the narrator?

• Initially, he doesn't tell us what's so special about the tunnel except that it's hidden and that almost no one knows about it. 
• The only part where it gets interesting is the fact that there are some art galleries that O'Brien finds and talks about while he's touring us into the unknown, almost two minutes after he talks about the fact that there are tunnels and that there are storm rains. 
• But Burke's writing quality in this audio is very nicely detailed, descriptive and helps the reader to easily visualize Vegas and the hidden tunnels. 

Was the documentary too long or too short?

• The documentary wasn't too long or too short. The total length of the audio was OK. 
• But because the topic and the nat sounds used were a little boring, I felt uninterested and that the documentary is a bit too long especially that there was nothing exciting to expect.

Does documentary end and begin strongly? why? why not?

• It begins very strongly as Burke succeeds in painting a good colorful picture to the listener about Vegas and what is there and what to expect. 
• But he ends his documentary very poorly as he says that people at Vegas will always be more interested to see Vegas rather than what's happening at the tunnels.