{"id":4542,"date":"2019-07-10T20:57:18","date_gmt":"2019-07-10T20:57:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.freedomshillprimer.com\/institute\/?p=4542"},"modified":"2021-03-18T06:40:02","modified_gmt":"2021-03-18T06:40:02","slug":"learning-to-hear-the-chickens-voice-part-3-an-interview-with-dynestee-fields","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.freedomshillprimer.com\/institute\/2019\/07\/10\/learning-to-hear-the-chickens-voice-part-3-an-interview-with-dynestee-fields\/","title":{"rendered":"Learning to Hear the Chicken&#8217;s Voice Part 3: An Interview with Dynestee Fields"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>In the final part of my interview with recent Southern Wesleyan Honors graduate Dynestee Fields, we discuss the technical aspects of her documentary &#8220;The Voice of the Chicken&#8221; as well as what her next project will be.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-embed-youtube wp-block-embed is-type-video is-provider-youtube wp-embed-aspect-16-9 wp-has-aspect-ratio\"><div class=\"wp-block-embed__wrapper\">\n<iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"The Voice of the Chicken\" width=\"1170\" height=\"658\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/emKf9O_5B-4?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe>\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p>Here&#8217;s the rest of the interview: <a href=\"http:\/\/www.freedomshillprimer.com\/institute\/2019\/07\/06\/learning-to-hear-the-chickens-voice-part-1-dynestee-fields-honors-project\/\">Part 1<\/a> and <a href=\"http:\/\/www.freedomshillprimer.com\/institute\/2019\/07\/09\/learning-to-hear-the-chickens-voice-part-2-an-interview-with-dynestee-fields\/\">Part 2<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<!--more-->\n\n\n\n<p>Dr. Sircy: Is there anything in the documentary\u2014I\u2019m specifically thinking of your voiceover and what you provide\u2014that an expert could look at and say, \u201cI don\u2019t know about that!\u201d or was your point to give as close to a public consensus about the scientific view of chickens?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Dynestee Fields:\nThat was definitely my point. I studied my notes religiously throughout the\nentire thing, so if they attacked my voiceover they would actually be attacking\ntheir own research. It was just whatever they said. That was what the whole\ndocumentary was about. It was like, \u201cNobody\u2019s going to read a whole paper about\nthis, so let\u2019s just make a documentary about it and then people can watch it.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>DS: What are the\ngaps in chicken knowledge right now? What are the most fascinating yet\nscientifically unexplored facets of chicken life?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>DF: Out of all\nthe sources I looked at, I just haven\u2019t found an explanation for waltzing other\nthan it being like a courtship behavior, circling around.&nbsp; What is this? Why don\u2019t you have more\ninformation on this? I just haven\u2019t found anything, so that is definitely one\ngap. People have really taken to researching chickens.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>DS: So if that\u2019s\ntrue then the problem isn\u2019t knowing more about chickens. Is that sort of like\nyour insight? It\u2019s not like we need to know more about chickens. It\u2019s gotta be\nsomething else because we do know a whole lot about chickens and we\u2019re still\ntreating them badly. Is that kind of your subtle point you\u2019re making?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>DF: The public is not gonna read these papers: \u201cOh, we just discovered that chickens do this! Isn\u2019t that amazing?\u201d I made the documentary so people could watch it because people are more prone to watch something than to read it. At the end of this whole thing, that was a good idea path to explore. \u201cLet us just try to see if people knowing that chickens are more intelligent will help them.\u201d But I don\u2019t know. At the end, this may have some advantages like increased welfare, but I\u2019m not sure if that\u2019s going to dissuade people from eating chickens. I don\u2019t know.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-pullquote\"><blockquote><p>&#8220;I made the documentary so people could watch it because people are more prone to watch something than to read it. At the end of this whole thing, that was a good idea path to explore.&#8221;<\/p><\/blockquote><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p>DS: Was there a\nlonger version of this documentary?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>DF: This\ndocumentary probably could have been twenty minutes, but I knew that my\ntimeframe was fifteen minutes and the credits take up a lot. But I had this\nwhole thing where I went through each scientist and talk about the research\nthat was done on chickens. But that would have been way too long and drug this\nthing out.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>DS: Where did the music come from?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>DF: It came from random places on the internet, like these random musical sites. I had to purchase all these things, so, \u201cHey, it\u2019s not me just lifting something from the internet.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>DS: It was good!<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>DF: Thanks!<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>DS: What part of\nthe process of putting the documentary together did you like most?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>DF: Filming it. I\nloved filming it and liked writing it. Those were fun parts.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>DS: What were your least favorite parts?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>DF: Editing. I\ndid not like that part at all. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>DS: Why?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>DF: I had to edit it so many times! I had to go back and forth. I was just getting tired of watching that documentary. Then I would get feedback from people. My first voiceover was not very good. Apparently, I have a really strong southern accent that Dr. Knight says is southern and country-southern at that so I had to go back through and changed all of the voiceovers. Yeah. It\u2019s a good thing I\u2019m an English major too because writing a research paper and having to continuously re-draft really helped me with the organization and flow of this. That was an experience.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-pullquote\"><blockquote><p>&#8220;I\u2019m working on a lot of new projects. I\u2019m working on an animal sanctuary fifteen-minute documentary that tells people about animal sanctuaries, and then I\u2019m working on my paper with Dr. Stubblefield for an anthology put out by Lexington Books.&#8221;<\/p><\/blockquote><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p>DS: Are you\nworking on a new project? Are you filming something new now? <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>DF: I\u2019m working on a lot of new projects. I\u2019m working on an animal sanctuary fifteen-minute documentary that tells people about animal sanctuaries, and then I\u2019m working on my paper with Dr. Stubblefield for an anthology put out by Lexington Books. So that should be interesting! I\u2019m going to study that religious influence more and maybe that will lead to something else.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>DS: The film ends\nwith the question meant to be answered with human voices, the question about\nthe morality of eating chicken. You sort of make clear your answer. Can you not\njust give us your answer but also why you think that answer should be\nconvincing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>DF: I personally do not think that people should be mass-producing chickens. If people have to eat chicken to survive, there are other ways to do this. People did the same thing in the 1920s, but nobody was just mass-producing chickens. This was just something that people did for money, and the chickens are the ones that really suffer it. It\u2019s very unnatural and cruel what\u2019s happening to them. If people are gonna continue eating chicken then find another means to do it or you can always support other initiatives: the vegan movement, the vegetarian movement, and this cell-cultured meat which will be on the market next year where they have found a way to take a cluster of cells from different animals including chickens, put those cells in an environment that mimics the animal\u2019s body and grow it out to be meat without ever harming the animal. So that should be an interesting turn in this whole thing. I can\u2019t wait to see where that goes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-pullquote\"><blockquote><p>&#8220;I personally do not think that people should be mass-producing chickens. If people have to eat chicken to survive, there are other ways to do this.&#8221;<\/p><\/blockquote><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p>DS: Wow. Mind blown! Are you getting constant chicken news updates? Where does your chicken knowledge go from here? Is it going to be much more empiricist, you going out and continuing to observe chickens or talk with people who raise chickens or perhaps with other activists? If I wanted to go on from &#8220;The Voice of the Chicken&#8221; and learn more, where would I go?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>DF: First, I\nwould stick around with activists because they love to do protests outside\nchicken facilities. I went to one, and you can see the chickens stuffed on the\ntrucks. Maybe talk to some people who are farming chickens. I wouldn\u2019t say,\n\u201cHey, I\u2019m affiliated with anything that\u2019s anti-eat chicken.\u201d Pose as a\nfarmhand. Get in there some kind of way. There\u2019s a ton of books out there about\nchickens also, even more articles about chickens. Each article that you get\nleads you to like 100 other article which leads you to 100 others. There\u2019s\nplenty of stuff out there about chickens.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In the final part of my interview with recent Southern Wesleyan Honors graduate Dynestee Fields, we discuss the technical aspects of her documentary &#8220;The Voice of the Chicken&#8221; as well as what her next project will be.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":22,"featured_media":4537,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[342],"tags":[85,82,89,372,358],"class_list":["post-4542","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-media-studies","tag-animals","tag-conversations","tag-documentary","tag-media-projects","tag-video","clearfix"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.freedomshillprimer.com\/institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4542","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.freedomshillprimer.com\/institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.freedomshillprimer.com\/institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.freedomshillprimer.com\/institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/22"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.freedomshillprimer.com\/institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4542"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/www.freedomshillprimer.com\/institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4542\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4547,"href":"http:\/\/www.freedomshillprimer.com\/institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4542\/revisions\/4547"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.freedomshillprimer.com\/institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4537"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.freedomshillprimer.com\/institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4542"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.freedomshillprimer.com\/institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4542"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.freedomshillprimer.com\/institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4542"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}