At what point does a noisy neighbor or the delivery trucks rolling through your town become less of an annoyance and more of a serious source of distress?
That鈥檚 one of the questions posed by The Quietest Year, a documentary that begins as one person鈥檚 journey to curb local noise pollution, but evolves into larger-scale discussions about the negative effects it can have on public health and the environment.
Experts say the harmful effects of noise can include heart disease, anxiety, sleep disruption and childhood hearing loss, among other things.
The film premieres on 开云体育's main TV channel at 8 p.m. on Thursday, Feb. 6, kicking off the 21st season of the Made Here series.
开云体育's Nathaniel Wilson spoke with Vermont-based filmmaker Karen Akins, who directed, produced and wrote The Quietest Year. Their conversation below has been edited and condensed for time and clarity. This interview was produced for the ear. We highly recommend listening to the audio. We鈥檝e also provided a transcript, which has been edited for length and clarity.
Nathaniel Wilson: Karen, I'm wondering if you would give listeners a brief backstory on how you started working on this film.
Karen Akins: I was in Stowe, Vermont during the pandemic. I started to experience extreme levels of noise in my home environment, and I started filming myself reacting to it and the cause of the noise itself, and I decided to do a little short film about noise. And it sort of became a bigger project at some point, because I realized the biggest problem with noise is that people really dismiss it, especially as a public health issue, and if I use my story and collected some stories of other people, then it could be a really useful tool to help people understand how noise is not just an annoyance, but it's actually a major public health issue.
Nathaniel Wilson: Karen, something that I thought was so interesting in the documentary was hearing different people give their own personal definitions of noise. I'm wondering what noise means to you.
Karen Akins: Well, noise is actually a very controversial concept. There are many different definitions of noise, but one definition that I like is that noise is unwanted and or harmful sound.
Nathaniel Wilson: I'm sure that some of our listeners would appreciate how sound-rich The Quietest Year is. Let's take a listen. [Church bells, beeping and other noise.] Karen, what went into collecting all of the different sounds that we hear throughout the film?
Karen Akins: Well, we actually worked with an acoustical engineer, Ethan Bordeaux, who's actually a Vermont native, and he went out into the field and recorded, for example, some of the F-35 noise that we use in the film.
Nathaniel Wilson: This state has been grappling with some very weighty issues for years now. For example, high levels of homelessness and a severe housing shortage and a lot of Vermonters dying from drug overdoses. I'm wondering how you would respond to people who view noise pollution as a somewhat trivial or even privileged thing to be able to worry about relative to those other issues.
Karen Akins: I think noise is never going to rise to the top of the most important issue that a community or state is grappling with. I definitely recognize those other issues you mentioned must take priority and be addressed, but noise can easily be addressed through regulation. So, why not go ahead and get this issue off of the table and just deal with it so that we can enjoy a healthy acoustic environment for everybody that lives in Vermont?
Nathaniel Wilson: Karen, how have you continued the fight against noise pollution since wrapping this film?
Karen Akins: Well, first of all, we are working with a group of people in Vermont to strengthen noise regulation, especially transportation exhaust noise. Vermont's got some of the weakest muffler laws in the country. So, a lot of times it's just bringing Vermont up to a standard where the rest of the country acknowledges that this is an appropriate level of regulation. So, that's something that's developing, it helps, people seeing the film and also just talking to others that were affected. I learned who were the people out there that were willing to lead the charge into changing some of our state laws.
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