Introducing Armidale Diaries

One ABC National Radio programs that I really like is The Fitzroy Diaries: Dispatches from the inner-city suburbs of Melbourne. The ABC describes the program in this way:

Award-winning audio fiction series from the ABC. Walk the streets of Fitzroy, Melbourne, shaped by gangsters, migrants, Aboriginal activists, the working poor. Now, it’s fancy shops and hipster bars. Until you really look.

Now I'm not totally sure about the fiction part. I think that its more observations, imaginings and anecdotes that paint a vivid picture of life in Fitzroy. I find it fun. Having just moved back to Armidale, I thought that it might be fun to try the same thing here. I also thought that it might be a break from the historical or analytical stuff I normally write, something that would give me more freedom to experiment and roam.

The first episode, Armidale Diaries 1 the smoke rolls in, appeared yesterday on my personal blog. My old friend Noric Dilanchian wrote on my public face book page:

Jim’s mise en scène. The style works. Recalls quirky French rural townlife films of old, one from the 1980s that I recall by Claude Chabrol. Awaiting this style’s evolution. 

Stretch target, find a videography and music researcher to deliver audiovisual justice for the smoky scene you set.

Mise en scène literally means the arrangement of the scenery, props, etc. on the stage of a theatrical production or on the set of a film or, alternatively, the setting or surroundings of an event. That's not a bad definition, but I think of it in terms of the texture of life within a frame. 

I am going to try to run the series every Thursday. in terms of Noric's challenge, think of it as something like a script that audio can be added later.