For our organizing and filming of a live debate at St. Anselm’s School we all got to choose specific roles a week beforehand. I personally chose Camera Assistant as I would like more experience in the field as I’m still planning on being a filmmaker professionally, and also in my college work I’ve found a lack of camera work lately, and in practical tasks overall. At 9:00 in the morning we all had to be at the college before then bringing all of the equipment to St. Anselm’s School. I personally made sure to help with and take this equipment when asked and not simply wait till my colleagues came out of the class to then grab something. Then, even when one of my colleagues was told to hold a bag cause his hands were empty, despite me already holding a huge camera, I offered to carry another. I think one flaw in me doing this, was that maybe I could of initiated myself and maybe told whatever person that wasn’t pulling their weight, to do so.
Then, once we got there, we were ordered as a group to bring the rest of the heavy filming equipment out of the college van, and I also personally offered to do so as I’ve found in previous tasks I’ve had chances to put myself out there, take initiative and help in very overt ways, but have held back. But during this task at every turn I’ve attempted to really try and go above and beyond for my peers, and most importantly for myself.
Then, when it was time to set up, while I focused solely on setting up my camera (as I was promoted to a camera operator as one of them was late), and got a lot of advice and help from my peers and the teachers on this new equipment, again trying my best to use the methods that work best for me, which is if you don’t ask then you’ll never know. I had successfully set it up, through my teachers help, then I took the time to consult the director/producer many times to see if the shot I had lined up with the other camera operators so that everything was consistent with his vision. This was then great for me to have more practice with camera’s, especially the expensive TV camera’s that I was working with. These had much more updated and complex features that I could learn from greatly in the future: The zoom was operated by a lever so that the sound or image wouldn’t be tampered with Mid-Shot, and this had a much smoother effect that if I was to do it manually also.
Once my camera was set up and running, I made sure to go around the room and help everyone else with their tasks if needed, or at least try and ask. I then found that the leads needed sellotaping to the floor, for health and safety reasons and asked for some tap in order to do so. Then the director (Michael) had found the the front row seats were too close to the front, blocking our cameras and if people sat on them, it’ll block the shot too. I then saw that he was the only one picking them up and walked over to help and do the rest.
The only big problem that arose was not from my colleagues or the director but from our tutors, who’d regularly take his place and move or re-arrange a shot when the director had specifically told me not to move it as he’d given the same level of shot to every camera in order to keep a consistency in the final cut. I again took initiative in these moments and then when the tutor left I’d tell him that they’re changing or lifting/lowering the angle so that he can undo their changes. This then meant that we could get the shots that we wanted, and I tried my best so that everyone was on the same page. At one point both me and Dom (the other camera operator) were told to both do close-ups, and then only when I consulted him last minute that I realized I needed to only do a medium shot. This kind of punctuality, is something I will continue to do in future tasks as it misdirected a possible disaster.
Then for the filming itself, I didn’t need to do much, just make sure that I was recorded and stand watching through the camera to constantly check that the lighting and focus was all perfect. Then, once the debate itself was run through entirely I then put away my equipment, finding some small issues with it I again asked my tutors for help and they showed me the correct way how. I then put down miscellaneous mic stands and other camera tripods that needed to be done, and made sure to let everyone know that my help was there if needed. Then finally when it came to taking the equipment to the car, I asked if we could take it there, as everyone was standing around waiting to ask. In so doing, I then took two or three trips to bring equipment after the fact.
Of all the things I’ve learned during this task, I think the most valuable is the courage it has given me when it comes to really trying to incorporate myself in certain tasks, and make sure that I’m an active and effective member of the group. Instead of the passive one that I used to be, and then all of the small mistakes I did make in this task, I can then build on top of in all of the future tasks I will be perusing.
The first Radio Drama I looked at is ‘The Break-In’ by Navneet who is a student, making the project for his Creative Media Project. It is about some young criminals who plan to break into a woman’s house for her husbands assets, but when they do she shoots at them in self-defense, killing her husband as she then reveals that she will take all of his fortunes and then put the blame on the kids.
And the first aspect I’d like to talk about with this radio drama is the fact that it uses quite a bit of sound to get the action across, and to ramp up tension. Although sadly it has no sounds to set the scene itself, for instance we don’t know where the character’s are at the very beginning of the story. The scene could very well have been set in their car outside the house but I have no idea because they didn’t add any telling sounds to let us know, maybe just simply an engine revving. Another problem I have with the sound is the fact that it is not their original sounds, and that the sounds themselves feel completely removed from the situation and lo-fi.
The acting seems to be done by friends or family of the creator, and not competent actors from perhaps a drama department, and you can definitely tell. The lines aren’t delivered with a sense of empathy, emotion or realism, and sound like they’re being read verbatim without the performers adding any sense of wit or flavour. I understand that structure is key in these tasks, and keeping it short is essential, but just some conviction in general, or a good tone of voice can really ramp up a performance without any needless quirks or pieces of improvisation.
Sadly the story is even worse, it is presented as a tragedy but fails to make the story convincing enough for us to care or get too invested. Not only does it not use the quiet moments at the beginning to establish a bond between the two main characters or have some sort of jovial moments between the two so that we can establish a friendship, and then miss it just as our main character does when it’s gone. And then the plot-twist makes no sense and comes off as just a cheap way to flip the tables on the audience. Basically the woman who’s house gets robbed was anticipating the boys robbing her house so that she could then kill her husband and pin it on them, killing one in self defense. But this makes no sense and it isn’t established whether this is the case or she just took the opportunity when it arose and realized she didn’t love her husband THAT much so she killed him and got his riches, pinning it on them. Either way it doesn’t make much sense, and how she can later convince the police that he was shot with her gun and then she took it from them and shot one of the group is also more than unconvincing. If a group of people, one of them having a gun threatened her and did indeed kill her husband then she would simply be too frightened to attack one of them and steal his gun. Also only her finger prints would be on the gun, so this makes no sense either way.
I think of all the things I can learn from the ways that this drama piece fails is the fact that having great actors can make the worst, most contrived script seem believable if not just engaging. And also to not use cheap tricks to shock the audience into thinking the play is smarter than it actually is. Building character and making things believable is way more important than a flashy script or story, even if nothing happens you’ll care nonetheless.
Radio Drama 2:
The second radio drama I looked at was The Babysitter from David Vij, a media student at NWRC College. It is a simple story about girl babysitting who calls her friend and is then killed by an unknown assailant, ending in a news story about her.
This piece leaves way less room for error than the last one due to its short length and simplicity, as well as the lack of actors. The acting that does take place is very serviceable in comparison and you can tell that actual actors were used this time. The only part that isn’t convincing, unsurprisingly is the creator himself, who plays the news reporter and is by no means a professional or convincing actor, but the fact that most newsreaders need to be monotone helps soften the badness of it. And again the actress is quite convincing, an intro with no dialogue and a suspense moment without dialogue means that her appearance is short lived, so we aren’t given anything of a character from her. Even though she’s not at a professional standard, I would’ve liked this extra attention to detail so that we care.
The sound effects are also alot better, sounding much more lived in and natural, and not coming off as cheap and jarring like the last example. The sound effects, especially for the suspense moment are very effective in actually creating some form of anticipation. Although a better story surrounding it would’ve helped, and the scream from the actress is the only part that isn’t an original sound effect and sounds very unintentionally funny for a horror story.
The story is not special or by any means involving. The babysitter trope in horror is one of the oldest and most used, and this doesn’t flip it on it’s head in a clever or subversively scary way or even add much context or character in order for us to enjoy an outdated plot point despite this. This makes the story too much of a safe net for us to get too involved or truly scared. I think this is all chocked up to the fact that nowhere near enough time, care or personability was given to the story and characters.
So I think the main things I’ve learned from this story, just like the others is that character is key and without one in order for us to care about truly we are lost as an audience and the fact that the story is simply going through the motions and doesn’t reach any illuminating, new or profound themes or points isn’t any help either. But again the main thing that consistently lacks in this story, despite how sparse its constructs are, is the fact it doesn’t work as a horror story because we don’t care if the main character lives or dies, therefore there is no fear factor. It also doesn’t add enough lore or backstory to the killer or house at all in order to foreshadow the fate of our heroine, and everything just culminates in a boring blur of cliches.
Radio Drama 3:
The third and latest radio drama I found was much more professional and sophisticated than the previous radio play’s I’d listened to so far, it is a BBC 7 adaptation of H.P. Lovecraft’s “The Tomb”, by Ryan McCluskey. The story is about a young man named Jervas Dudley, a curious man who becomes obsessed with a mysterious mausoleum owned by a wealthy yet long gone family. One night he finds that a coffin inside the tomb has his last name on it, and yet again his curiosity gets the better of his judgement when he tries to investigate this mystery.
The acting of this story, or at least the reading of it, all by Ryan McCluskey is incredibly well read with vibrancy and conviction. He invests the listener, pulling them in with each word. The quality of his voice is beautifully well leveled, with zero distortion or popping of the microphone. This simple yet sophisticated production value by the BBC gives us a comfort blanket of the assured approach to the short.
There is hardly any sound design, despite some opening and closing classical music, again only emphasizing the classiness that the story is presenting with such effortlessness. Yet with this the story is intrinsically a horror story, so the lack of sound design and effects helps give across a haunting and desolate quality. The fact that the narrator is the only character in the story, and the only outlook that we get, this only put more importance and attention to how lonely he is. Also this can be perceived as him being the unreliable narrator, and all of these amazingly eerie happenings could be all in his head.
The story itself, being by H.P. Lovecraft is effortlessly descriptive, atmospheric and investing, although this is to be expected. The story is packed full of mystery, gorgeous descriptions of the scenery and a sense of isolation that you cannot shake off. Personally this has made me want to listen and or read much more of his works, as it is so infamous, investing and filled with addictive darkness.
The main thing I’ve learned from this story, is that sound design isn’t something you should put too much effort into, as if the core story and the actors are great enough to pull you in then flashy additions like sound effects are merely distractions to make the story itself seem much better than it really is. But if I do nail the story and performances as great as this story then instead of trying to better a shallow story, I will be elevating the material to even greater heights than previously thought of.
Making the Radio Drama:
For the radio drama, the class had to make or adapt a short story into a radio drama, no longer than five minutes, and the other being us as a class live broadcasting a series of Comedy skits related to Christmas in a big variety show or sorts. With us personally having the responsibility of which part would be written by who and what general tasks/roles each person is set.
For our radio drama we were first were given a briefing on how we should look at existing radio dramas, and analyze at least three before being given a tutorial what matters most when writing this, and how much importance character has to do with it. This really helped establish how much flawed character’s are a lot more interesting than the ones who are perfect and have no issues to work out. I then took this advice and immediately started working on my story right after. It went really well and was done in a matter of hours, I got big inspiration from Taxi Driver after hearing about how good a flawed protagonist or “Anti-Hero” would be, I then started on my story which was of a lonely taxi driver called “Llywen” who has a female passenger who he talks with and the more they talk, the more they unintentionally solve each others problems.
My biggest problem I’d encountered with this task was less-so writing it and getting it done in time, and more-so keeping within the confines of its 5 minute running time, and keeping all of the character development in the sharp, and quick dialogue and exchanges both characters have. This meant some small editing was needed, but also instead of me doing my own usual thing of writing a lot and having to considerably cut it all down afterwards. I learned through this task to almost edit the dialogue in my mind before transferring it to the page, and have some restraints in just how much I blurt out. This then meant that more subtlety could be used in my lines I wrote, then it became the case of “Less is more”, as I really came out with something I’m not only proud of, but something that I didn’t waste too much time on either.
Now that I’d finished my work, and exercised my writing skills in new ways, I decided to show it to my tutor Greg, who said while it was a really nice as a subtle and sweet character piece, but considering I was doing this task to showcase all of my skills in tension, horror, comedy and combining all of those elements he said I should make something much more mysterious, dark and possibly violent instead as he was a little disappointed in the ending being so nice. I then wen’t back, and started writing a much quicker paced, twisty and attention grabbing script instead. This didn’t take too long, but was quite a big challenge just to start transforming the script. But just in case this didn’t work out, and that I would lose my work for an experiment that wont work, I learned from previous tasks where I’ve changed a file and then wanted to use the original but haven’t saved it separately, and did just that. I even got advice from Greg that my original story could easily be turned into a big, sweet and theatrical story if more time was given, but for five minutes it doesn’t give these thoughtful character’s enough time to breathe or that they deserve.
I think unintentionally through re-writing this task to make it more of a noir-thriller it gave me a lot of practice in improvising and doing quick research. While I’d listened to enough radio drama’s, I realised I should probably check out some film-noir based radio drama’s, and then after doing so, I added more inner-monologues and added a more hard-boiled nature to it. I was then really happy with how it came out and am glad I have two versions and can now be much more flexible when it comes to nailing a certain tone, and keeping everything backed up at all times.
Before recording the short I had to cast the actors, and luckily this time I had help from the college and the media department worked closely with the drama department to make this process much easier. When we arrived at the department they’d even chose our actors and immediately once hearing their lines I liked all of their performances. The only small problem I had was that the first read-through was done in a typical British accent and the short is set in New York, with a 1940’s noir feel to it. Both actors took this and ran with it, one of them not being as well versed in noir as a genre or Taxi Driver so I explained to her very simply the loneliness and darkness these films represent. After this small tweak, I was able to get the performances I was happy with, and they were happy knowing exactly what tone they were nailing.
Then when it came to the recording process, the actors had already been successfully prepped for the role by one of my tutors, but this did not stop me from intersecting whenever necessary during a small few rehearsals before we started recording the real thing. We’d decided that the story has such a natural flow between both actors, and I was still as happy as ever with the delivery that we’d do the whole thing in three big chunks. Despite every group before almost doing each of their radio dramas in really small segments, a line a time, I’d opted to not go this route in order to keep authenticity and flow to the work. This worked out perfectly, and I only needed to do every take twice over just for a backup yet this wasn’t even needed as every take was perfect immediately. My tutor left the room for a while also which was great for me to independently direct the actors, tell them where they could improve and take control in general. All of which I feel I did well.
Then when it came to collecting sounds for the recording I’d found that it’d be hard to emulate a lot of the sounds needed: Gun Shot/Cocking, Driving, skidding and crashing a car, Running in rain etc. So I’d found that I would try and find the most effecting and pivotal sounds online first, and then any that I couldn’t find or found easy enough to emulate in real life I’d do so. Although the search for sounds, although a little arduous at times, really helped me narrow down searches for the future, and find key words to get the videos/researched materials I need. In the end I didn’t need to record a single thing cause I’d looked hard enough for a clear sound effect for everything. This attention to detail/trail and error during my research could now easily be adaptable in future tasks.
Then once it came to finally editing the finished product it came as a bit of a challenge to me, but equally didn’t take as long as it could’ve. The biggest problem with this was finding the right music, getting the right vocal effects and finding the most effective timing for certain moments. My first problem arose when every jazzy and noirish song I found was too short for the duration, I would dig deep into random jazz albums as a result until finally finding one that was perfectly murky for the tone I was trying to get. It sounded almost like a dead-ringer for the Taxi Driver soundtrack which also worked perfectly.
Then with getting right vocal effects I’d found this a problem as despite being well versed in Audacity, I still didn’t know all the tricks to make these performances sound lived-in and warm, with some moments needed to sound muffled as at one moment the girl “Joy” is behind the taxi window when she shouts. These small moments were helped by some good research as I found on a great video that the muffled, warm sound will come through a Low-Pass filter. This worked perfectly and then my last problem was cutting up and pacing out moments within the recordings to let moments breathe, as the actors were doing long takes, I could pace these out in post, without any of it sounding cut-up and giving me the freedom to do so. But the biggest problem with this was how tedious it was at times, while eventually coming out as a great result, I think the lack of a good “Scissors tool” in Audacity made it so I’d have to cut and paste the rest of the vocal track to then move it around. I will learn from this and possibly use Premier or another music editing software that’ll be a little more flexible in this department.
But despite all this, I love the outcome and am happy with the hard work that was put into it.
YouTube. (2017). CAR SOUND EFFECT, DRIVING SOUND, Car driving sound effect, driving sounds, Car ride slow and fast. [online] Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bb6o5c-Qik4 [Accessed 11 Dec. 2017].
YouTube. (2017). Night rain on a car – 10 hours video with soothing sounds for relaxation and sleep. [online] Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=guo8CHurCpY&t=10s [Accessed 11 Dec. 2017].
Kenny Fowler Media Production 