I have experience writing host scripts (Create Together, Joseph Gordon Levitt hosting), narration (Chasing Flavor, Carla Hall hosting), and ADR/Voice Over scripting in post story producing. I am also experienced in narrative, marketing copy, and script writing for corporate clients (tutorial, company-wide update show, sketch comedy).
CHASING FLAVOR WITH CARLA HALL
HBO/MAX
HBO/MAX
Carla Hall's "Chasing Flavor" explores the origins of familiar cuisines around the US. I was brought in as a post production story producer and in my episode she determines how Shrimp and Grits became a staple of Southern cuisine.
The writing challenge here was to make uncomfortable history approachable, while also infusing the narration lines with Carla's well-known, bubbly personality.
In this part of the episode, after having shrimp and grits during an intriguing conversation with a couple of Charleston locals, the host examines how grits came to be a staple of southern cuisine:
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CARLA: So according to Sunn and Michelle, historically, where you live determines what you’re puttin’ on the grits. That got me thinking: if inland inhabitants consumed creek shrimp, and coastal folks used fish, when and why did the Gullah Gee Chee get started on this dynamic duo in the first place?
Buckle up, because it’s time for another hard facts deep dive with your Aunt Carla.
At this point, we know that the Gullah Gee Chee are descendants of enslaved West African people, and we know the Gullah people are pros at maintaining their deep rooted culture. Which, putting it lightly, was impacted pretty heavily by the, let’s say- “circumstances” here in America. I think we all know the story but just to refresh: once they passed through the Charleston Harbor, they were taken to plantations to be exploited for the skills and agricultural expertise they exhibited in their homeland.
Now, let’s skip to the food part - the people enslaving them fed them equally to or worse than the farm animals they were forced to care for. This meant meager rations dumped at their quarters in the form of scraps, which as it turns out, sometimes included… grits. Ah Ha!
But, grits alone cannot possibly sustain a person, so to supplement this corn porridge the enslaved people would sometimes sneak creek shrimp into their diet. Remember when I said soul food is rooted in using limited means? This is exactly what I was talking about!
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Later in the episode, we do a deep dive on shrimping in Charleston after a fun moment when the host struggles to peel the local shrimp:
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CARLA: Whoops, clearly Charleston shrimp were not on the syllabus at my culinary school! So I did a little self education to uncover why these shrimp are different from the ones I’m used to peeling.
Turns out Charleston’s brackish waters give this city a unique seafood offering (FYI - if you’ve never heard the word “brackish” it just means water that’s both salty and fresh, hey! kinda like me!) These waters inspired the local palate to create dishes like she crab soup, shrimp pie, frogmore stew, and - you guessed it - shrimp and grits.
Okay moving on, there are three types of seasonal shrimp crawling in the creek and swimming in the sea out here: white, brown, and pink - although pink are pretty rare so don’t count on it.
These little things start out in the estuaries of Charleston and when they grow up they move out into the open ocean where shrimp boats troll for them just a few miles offshore. Hot tip: creek shrimp are hometown heroes and never quite leave their brackish base, so local shrimpers hit the creeks to scoop them up.
Back on land, everyone has a “shrimp man” - a tradition that goes back to the 1800s when Gullah street vendors sang through the streets slanging shrimp with a smile.
And they legitimately did sing- so much so that at one point it became illegal to sing your shrimp songs too early in the morning. But, despite the vibe-killing ordinances, South Carolina does love its shrimpers and Mount Pleasant hosts an annual “Blessing of the Fleet'' ceremony right off the Charleston harbor to celebrate its local fishing community.
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And finally, in the episode conclusion, after traveling from Charleston to New York and eventually landing in Accra, Carla reflects in a heartfelt moment on all she has learned about the rich history behind grits.
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CARLA: As I'm sifting through this freshly ground corn, I'm imagining Sameka rinsing her grits like her Mama taught her. [sound up “I’m gonna listen to my elders!”] and, as Sunn would say, I’m communicating not through words, but with corn. [sound up, Sunn singing and dancing the Buzzard Lope]. And I can’t forget Fanerra, who, like many Fulani people, is Muslim [sound up “It feels good to be doing this”] and what we all have in common is that even though somewhere down the line our families started here, an ocean away, all of us are still practicing the culinary traditions they left to us. We might not always get it right, [sound up “I put the sugar on the grits!”] but we are doing the work to take the basics we were given, and make them our own.
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Still of Gloria Steinem from Talking Shop
MASTERCLASS: TALKING SHOP
GLORIA STEINEM ON BELLA ABZUG
GLORIA STEINEM ON BELLA ABZUG
In Gloria's MasterClass: Talking Shop episode, the story benefitted from ADR. As ADR sessions go, we didn't have much time with her so I wrote lines in her voice ahead of time to tie the segments together and create the arc required for story.
SAMPLE
INTV LINE BEFORE ADR: “The first thing that happened was lots of women calling me from other places where there were Playboy clubs because they had been threatened with violence if they complained saying, ‘I can’t believe you dared to do this..’”
GLORIA'S ADR INSERT: But I couldn’t believe that anyone dared to treat working women in this way. And that experience drove me to want to fight for the change we deserved… I just didn’t quite know how.
INTV LINE AFTER ADR: “…She not only identified with the person who was being unfairly treated, but tried to do something about it.”
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INTV LINE BEFORE ADR: “Bella’s style, I suppose, would be described as bombastic by most people because it was so unusual for a female speaker to be that forceful and that ‘un-lady-like’.”
GLORIA'S ADR INSERT: While Bella had plenty of critics, and many of them were harsh, she got them talking. And that’s really the first step to being an agent of change.
MOMENT AFTER ADR: Archival clip of Bella giving a rousing speech to a roaring crowd
Sac Actun Cenote
NARRATIVE
SAMPLE
Lights out while floating in the Sac Actun Pet Cemetery was like flipping the reset switch on my spiritual hard drive. Press and hold for five seconds, release, and reboot. Problems solved.
If I hadn’t done so much research on the remote Yucatan cenote, I might have worried that my taxi driver had gone rogue. The bumpy drive through the thick wilderness wound on for nearly half an hour before we reached our destination. Sac Actun, or “White Cave,” is a system of underwater caverns hidden beneath the jungle in Tulum, Mexico. The playfully named “Pet Cemetery” portion of the system houses the visible and untouched remains of long lost animals including giant sloth and now-extinct camel.
It was Christmas, and Rodrigo was a charming and knowledgeable 21-year-old college student who worked the caves between semesters. Serving as my mandatory guide, he knew the underground stalactites and stalagmites like the street corners and alleyways of his hometown. The 76-degree crystal clear mineral water that filled the cave was our all-access pass to the city of rock formations growing both above and below us. “Every 10cm of growth represents at least one thousand years,” he said, and suddenly I felt the small, weightless, insignificance of my human body before these ancient structures. We continued through to a shallow cavern with a circular opening at the top where a cenote, or sinkhole, had formed. The sun shone a spotlight onto a small island in the center of the water on which plant life soaked in the welcome rays. In deeper water, we used our snorkel gear to peek at the cave floor beneath us where the bones, remarkably, still lay unaltered on white sand. In the largest cave room, a wooden deck supported a singular ladder to another cenote opening. I wondered what it would be like to spend the night here.
After 45 minutes of exploration, we were nearing the end of our tour, but Rodrigo announced that he had a special cave to show our humble group, one that he reserved only for small, trustworthy travelers. Curious to know what existed beyond the invisible ropes of this living museum, I followed him toward a dark opening at the back of the cavern. There, stalactites hung so low that we had to sink our chins to water level to avoid coming in contact with the fragile formations. The rock points framed my face by an inch on all sides. Carefully, I bobbed my body through the maze until the cavern opened to a completely new room.
“Now, I want to show you this,” and with all the power of a man who knows something you don't, Rodrigo clicked his waterproof flashlight off. And there I was- floating in a silent, pitch-black cave; the secret womb beneath the Mexican jungle, where ageless rock formations, blind cavefish, sleeping bats, and hunting cave spiders lived in obscurity. And there I was- with every passing second losing my bearing, losing my sense of direction, losing my grip on my own reality. Processing my fear, my size, my vulnerability. This is the original sensory deprivation therapy, I realized. Just breathe - a recommendation from my inner therapist. Listen to the silence, suggested my explorer's heart. Try counting, said my chattering mind.
1...2...3...4...5...
Click.
And there I was.