Radio drama evaluation

A good experience. That's how I would sum up the radio drama assignment, its been a fun process and I have taken a lot from it. I have always been curious into how to create a radio drama as I listened to a lot when I was a kid, so to have the chance to compose my own was a good bonus. I had a good background on different radio dramas so when I had to choose two to analyse in a presentation I was already experienced enough.

it started off when we were in class and had to decide our groups, i had the idea to put everyone's names in a hat and then pull them out to determine the groups. Without cheating i picked George Woodward Georgie Mould and Tim Oates to be in my group, which was a coincidence as we had been together in the multi camera assignment. we threw around ideas, if i'm honest they weren't serious ones and Tim was suggesting ludicrous ideas. However i figured a radio drama would benefit from being ridiculous as it would help the listener to understand and be interested in the story more. so we did something ridiculous. we thought of doing a noir sin city in space kind of idea where there was an intergalactic 'Brothel War' going on, it was just stupid enough that it might work. we made up the main characters, The sheriff who is the tough experienced main character, Elin who is the maniac pimp who has a vendetta against the sheriff and whichanus who is the sheriffs daughter and the sort of damsel in distress.

the story was coming together very well but the group kept falling out mainly due to Georgie Mould's constant absence. we were struggling to write the script because she had a lot of the notes on her and would only show up occasionally. so one day me Tim and George decided that we should just get on with the pre-production and try get it finished in one day. George managed the sound effects, Tim booked everything and did some paper work and i wrote the script. at this time Georgie had gone on holiday to Amsterdam and taken her laptop with her, therefore i had to memorize the script as best i could. I actually managed to remember it very well mainly because i used to read out the previous one i did on georgie's laptop out loud to get the pacing right, i guess that payed off well. once all the pre production was finished we booked out the studio down in the music department and decided on actors. I was always set on playing Elin the antagonist and the sheriff but we had to make changes to Whichanus because Georgie was away so we got Claudia to fill in, Tim played another minor part to fill in the gap.

the recording process went very smoothly and we managed to get it done in just over an hour, George was in the studio recording the process and setting up the mics, he was always going to be the technical member of the group so we let him be. there were only a few mishaps during recording mainly because of me and Tim laughing during takes but there were only a couple of them. we wrapped up the recording and went straight to the computer to start our own individual edits.

the editing was brilliant. there is so much you can do by adding in wild tracks, music and sound effects to bring it to life. i was amazed how many loyalty free sound tracks were available to download which means you can be even more proud of your radio drama knowing its not ripping off anything else. It took a little while to getting used to the cutting tools on audition because they are slightly different to that of Premier Pro but it was fun to play around with the different effects you can put on tracks. there is so much you can do that you can give the impression your radio drama is the audio track to multi million pound blockbuster film Without spending a penny. the finished result was good and im proud of it, i like the fact i am both the main character and the main villain because its like im having a conversation with myself which is cool. It was nice to see everyone elses followed the same format which led me to believe the script i wrote was easily followable and that the audio was clear enough that people could understand the story. i enjoyed this project and it means i have something else to add to the growing number of good work I have.