Revisiting McNaughton's Disappearance: A Cold Case Podcast

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On June 12, 1972 Adrien McNaughton a five year old boy, vanished during a fishing trip with his family in the backwoods of Arnprior Eastern Ontario. Canadian filmmaker David Ridgen teams up with CBC to create Someone Knows Something, a podcast devoted to opening up cold cases and investigating them through journalistic measures. A cold case investigating podcast on Adrien McNaughton's disappearance hoping to give Adrian's parents Murray and Barb McNaughton some closure after more than 40 years without their son. David Ridgen is not new to cold cases, he has history of cold case podcast with the CBC prior. Ridgen grew up in Arnprior and is familiar with the McNaughton’s case. David ariased “Coming from Arnprior, this is one of those cases that …show more content…

In episode one the focus was more on the emotion from Adrien's family not as much the information we already knew about the McNaughton case. Adrien's mother said “Good things happen to little boys sometimes.” Episode two has more new information but is still repetitive of known information. Another ineffective component is Ridgens unrelated dialogue in the second episode. By having this sort of opening to a episode diminishes interest of the listener trying to focus on the details of this podcast. Throughout the first two episodes Ridgen use of sound really sets the mood of all being connected with one another in Adrien's town. The music during interviews was carefully chosen by Ridgen, the music is very effective in portraying the emotion of nostalgia tied into the conversation. The use of raw authentic sounds of Ridgen’s environment is effective. Even though the raw sounds of knocking on Adrien’s door and walking through the wooded area where Adrien was last seen help you understand that this is a real cold case, being done in real time, with real people, these sounds are a higher volume than the rest making them stand out a little too much and causing you to come back to reality when you are in that listening mode during a …show more content…

The use of voice overs in this podcast has more cons than pros. The voice overs did a great job of giving background information on the case and set a tone for the next interview or speaker, the voice over tend to cut in at unlikely times taking away from the conversation taking place. The voice overs at the beginning of the podcasts, usually about Ridgen weren’t effective or needed, but they did set a tone for that particular podcast but the time could have been more effectively used to express something relevant to the cold case of Adrien Mcnaughton. The use of interviews in this podcast was effective. During Ridgens interviews with Adrien’s family as well as Mr.Ring Ridgen is able to share each person's ideas and theories about Adrien's disappearance, these interview effectively give you background on Adrien's family town and events that happened that day in june. Hearing Adrien’s parents and sibling talk about him you get a great understanding of Adrien’s personally and makes you think about how strange a boy such as Adrien could vanish without a trace. I believe this podcast is a open style with real time interviews and events Ridgen takes you with him throughout his journey trying to solve this cold case. Using the format of always recording and open interviews give the listener little pieces of background to what the speaker is actually like and a reminder that

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