GROUP COLLABORATION
CREATING AUDIO DRAMAS
- Create a production schedule
- Do lots of read throughs to figure out the character casting and portrayal
- Work on how to convey physical acting through voice acting, it can help to still do the physical movements in the studio
- Breathe!
SOUND EFFECTS
- Can be recorded before, after or during
- Choosing which play to work on creates an assignment to record sounds and how to incorporate them
- Mix natural sounds with downloaded effects
- Be creative and use what’s around you
LINDA SLADE
ROLE OF THE DIRECTOR
- Coming up with ideas for the scripts, working from a list of emotions
- The 5 Ws – Who, What, Where, Why, When
- Working with about 5 or 6 themes
- Working with different archetypes – heroes, villains, lovers etc.
- Use of improvisation
- Overall conflict as well as internal character conflict
- Overall decisions of what works and what doesn’t, needs to be objective
- See from the beginning of the story to the end overall
- Research – time period and subject material
- Conscious of rhythm – like music, what is the energy and how is it maintained?
- Map out the important words so that not every word is over emphasised
CASEY HALLAHAN
GETTING THE SCRIPT
- Read it through to get a sense of the challenges, general vibe and how to get that across
- Don’t divvy up the roles too quickly as audio is more flexible to swap and try different people as different characters
- Figure out whether your group would like to record quickly or spend more time exploring and researching first
- Have the whole production in mind even in the early stages
EDITING
- Editor should have a role from the very beginning
- Being experimental
- Spending time on it – not in the sense that it needs to be perfect but in the sense that you can play around with it and get a feel for what could work better
Different approaches to try:
- Roughly blocking it out first with the lines and sound effects then adding the ambience
- Work slowly from the beginning and build it outwards
- Editing each scene in reverse order
CHRIS CORNER
SOUNDSCAPES
Our listening weekend is set against the dramatic landscape of Tirana which reflects how a good audio drama should be set against a good soundscape
- Music, sound effects, drones, sound manipulation
- Suggesting vocation, mood/emotion, event/part of the plot
- Breaking up scenes and portraying lapses in time