SoundWorks Collection Interview Series - Composer Mark Phillips

This week we spoke with Composer Mark Henry Phillips, who is responsible for the music and audio mix for the extremely popular podcast series Serial.

Serial is produced by WBEZ Chicago and the shows Host and Executive Producer Sarah Koenig unfolds one nonfiction story, week by week, over the course of a season.

We discuss with Mark how he became involved in this project and the incredibly tight production window he has to score and mix each hour long episode the night before it’s posted each week. This is an incredible example of a creative team who know exactly how to pull in an audience and make them listen a little bit closer. So close in fact that you can almost see yourself at the scene of the crime.

MUSIC FROM SERIAL:

ABOUT COMPOSER MARK PHILLIPS:

Mark bought his first four-track recorder when he was thirteen-years-old and quickly became obsessed with audio production and writing music. Soon after graduating NYU, he started working in public radio and put his Pro Tools skills to work each week by editing hour-long raw interviews into five-minute versions for broadcast. Mark worked as a producer, editor and reporter for various NPR and WNYC programs, reporting his own pieces for shows like Radiolab, All Things Considered, On the Media and Studio 360. As an on-staff producer for NPR’s On the Media I spent years editing interviews, which allowed him not only to perfect his dialogue editing skills but also to master the art of crafting good narrative by editing stories down to their essential elements. After editing sound on a few film projects, Mark quickly realized it was the perfect way for him to combine all of his skills with his life-long love for film.

ABOUT SERIAL PODCAST:

Serial is a podcast where we unfold one nonfiction story, week by week, over the course of a season. We’ll stay with each story for as long as it takes to get to the bottom of it.

We’ll release new episodes every Thursday morning. Listeners can subscribe for free to the Serial podcast on iTunes and other audio platforms, and can also listen here on this site. Serial, like This American Life, is a production of WBEZ Chicago, which also produces these podcasts.

ABOUT SERIAL SEASON ONE:

On January 13, 1999, a girl named Hae Min Lee, a senior at Woodlawn High School in Baltimore County, Maryland, disappeared. A month later, her body turned up in a city park. She’d been strangled. Her 17-year-old ex-boyfriend, Adnan Syed, was arrested for the crime, and within a year, he was convicted and sentenced to spend the rest of his life in prison. The case against him was largely based on the story of one witness, Adnan’s friend Jay, who testified that he helped Adnan bury Hae’s body. But Adnan has always maintained he had nothing to do with Hae’s death. Some people believe he’s telling the truth. Many others don’t.

Sarah Koenig, who hosts Serial, first learned about this case more than a year ago. In the months since, she’s been sorting through box after box (after box) of legal documents and investigators’ notes, listening to trial testimony and police interrogations, and talking to everyone she can find who remembers what happened between Adnan Syed and Hae Min Lee fifteen years ago. What she realized is that the trial covered up a far more complicated story, which neither the jury nor the public got to hear. The high school scene, the shifting statements to police, the prejudices, the sketchy alibis, the scant forensic evidence - all of it leads back to the most basic questions: How can you know a person’s character? How can you tell what they’re capable of? In Season One of Serial, she looks for answers.

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