Friday, 31 May 2013

Portfolio Piece 1- Lively House Radio Drama

Available to listen to at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KJU1I3zSuBQ

My idea to create a radio drama stemmed from my love of supernaturally base cinematography. I felt that horror films regularly contained unnecessary amounts of violence and gore which would immediately ruin my ability to immerse myself as a watcher of the film. In my opinion; if written well a film could be just as gripping without a single drop of blood, in a way that Alfred Hitchcock was able to do so. A quote that particularly interested me when looking into writing a supernaturally based piece, referenced Alfred Hitchcock and his use of suspense. “There is a distinct difference between 'suspense' and 'surprise', and yet many pictures continually confuse the two” (Hitchcock, 2011, p27). So instead of creating a film with the aim of instantly scaring someone through surprise, I wanted to create something with suspense to keep the audiences attention. I thought this would be more of a challenge to do with audio only. I also felt that the age range for radio dramas sometimes excludes younger listeners, so I made this with a view to it appealing to a younger demographic. I wrote the script myself and utilised a feature I had read in Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet, of storyline guidance through a poetic description. The poem's throughout 'Lively House', functioned as a guide for the audience of the mood and tone for the each scene.

The key emotions I wanted to portray before embarking on the project were: Unnerving, Supernatural, Confusion/ Apprehension, Social Isolation/Rejection and Realism. Obviously in 11 minutes this was hard to encapsulate, and I actually felt that the story itself had real potential, and that it would be a shame to cut it short, so I decided to write the script as Part 1 of a series. For this individual project I have only made and am only submitting Part 1 (See Fig 1 for script breakdown example and organisational material used prior to recording).

Aside from the 4 actors I used for each character; in terms of organisation, I enlisted Scriptwriter Craig Busek and Composer Marina Ivanovic. Craig reviewed my script and advised me of changes that could be made. This was useful where the fluidity of sentence structure were concerned. Marina was then pivotal in helping my vision come to life. Her music helped me to aurally pinpoint changes in the tone of each scene. I gave her a very precise and detailed break down of the style of music I wanted for each scene and how long each should be, as it was to be broken down scene by scene. This was effective in guiding the suspense. (See Fig 2). After this had been done I was able to distribute all the scripts amongst the participating. Actors. I highlighted their individual parts and printed these off for the recording so that they had a better visual aid for their parts.

Using a sound proof studio for vocal recordings meant that the clarity of each character was sharp, therefore providing the perfect 'blank canvas' to place that character within the designated room per scene. Doing the majority of the foley myself was challenging because; unlike a film, I had no visual reference and despite creating an extensive SFX/Foley list per scene, often thought of new things that needed to be recorded! I tried to keep sound effect library usage to a minimum. The mono SE Electronics SEX1 microphone used, was an ideal condenser for vocals, as it's cardioid polar patten kept the chance of spill from any externals noises like people talking quietly in the studio, to an almost unnoticeable minimum. Foley/SFX recording with a Zoom H4n was necessary; as it needed to be done at home. Despite the light recorder noise; when in a room that was as acoustically dead as possible, it provided quite clean stereo audio that was ideal for foley and effects. Using a studio for foley would have been ideal but for this project I was limited to doing it at home. I don't think the piece suffered at all from having to do this and using a Zoom H4N was quite a practical way around having to rely on sound libraries.

I tried to keep plugin usage simple; as I wanted it to sound naturalistic to the location in the scene. Therefore I used different EQ and Reverb settings to take my 'blank canvas' audio and make it sound less like it had been recorded in a vocal booth! I took multiple takes of vocals so that I had a choice, I learnt from previously having made a Radio Drama of Dr Faustus, that recording multiple takes, gives you more options creatively. I was then able to swap and merge clips together which was good when a whole take wasn't said in a way that I wanted. When initially starting out, I recorded a guide track to estimate place markers for each scene and work out how long each musical segment needed to be. I then double checked this with a stop watch and collated a document for Marina to base her music around. This planning meant that when it was recorded everything was labelled and ready to be synced up to the guide track and Marina's music fit with each scene.

HITCHCOCK, Alfred., LEITCH, Thomas., POAGUE, Leland. (2011) A Companion to Alfred Hitchcock. 1st Edition. West Sussex UK. Blackwell Publishing Ltd. P27


Fig. 1
- Script 





- Plot Summary 


-  'Who was in each scene for recording day'
 - Recording Day Equipment 'Tick off'  Checklist


Fig. 2


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