Towns for Sale

I recorded location audio for this production exploring the niche market of entire towns available for purchase — a genuinely unusual real estate story with a strong visual and audio dimension.

Shooting in small, often semi-abandoned towns means working in environments where ambient sound does a lot of narrative work: the creak of an empty building, wind across a deserted main street, the quiet of a place with very few people. The documentary format calls for a combination of observational recording and structured interviews with buyers, sellers, and local characters. The acoustics of older buildings are unpredictable — I used a combination of boom work and wireless to ensure coverage in spaces with a lot of early reflections.