This Must Be The Place Response

This series of videos makes me so excited to do the audio/visual piece!
I thought that the use of audio in these pieces was really expertly done.  The filmmakers did a great job of combining music, natural sounds, and speech to effectively tell a story.  I thought the audio in the Hill piece was particularly effective and I liked how at the beginning we heard the voice before we saw the speaker.  Like RadioLab, these pieces illustrate how powerful the voice of a subject can truly be.  Furthermore, the music made the transitions smoother and, overall, made the pieces more engaging and interesting.
The pacing of the four pieces is also something important to consider.  I think that with audiovisual the pace of a piece can afford to be slower than with just plain writing.  In Byun, for example, the filmmakers combine slow, long shots of the busy, cluttered room with more melodic music.  This effect works to make watchers less overwhelmed by the complete chaos of the artistic presentation.
However, while they work really well as audio/visual pieces, I have to wonder how well the text would work on its own.  As compelling at the text is, I do believe in these four videos the sounds and pictures are really quite complementary.  So complementary, in fact, that the text might seem a bit quite weak without them.  Thoughts?