Radio Drama Micro Elements

Voice: Due to our script being set in the style of Film Noir we decided that we would have to use American accents to ensure our radio drama sounded correct as if we had just used our typical English voices it would not all tie together as our story was set in Detroit. We did however acknowledge that this could have been a huge risk as it could take the seriousness away from the story line and turn it into a mockery... We still however went ahead with the decision and the outcome was relatively successful. We spent two sessions at the beginning of our assignment practicing our voices to ensure they were correct and level all the way through the recording, this was difficult as sometimes we let our voices slip as we went through our scripts whilst recording, eventually we achieved our goal and perfected our voices. Another problem we had whilst recording our voice was page turns whilst using our scripts and loud students outside of the recording room. The recording room was only sound proof on one side of the room and was next door to the bathrooms, so when somebody used the hand dryer in the bathroom we were forced to stop recording. We went through our script four times to ensure we had each scene complete for editing.

Silence: The main use of silence in our recording was to indicate the change between different scenes, Using a moment of silence between scenes was a good technique to indicate to listeners that the scene was changing, This was important for us as there was three different locations used in our episode that ranged from a back alley to a busy jazz bar. I played Chief Justice in the Radio Drama and during the second scene in the office where I was being grilled by my boss about spending to much time on the case I was told to go home and leave the case alone, to show that I wasn't happy about my boss's decision I used a pause between my dialect and said "Ok Chief...(Silence)... Cya Tomorrow" This was a good idea as it brought out my feelings and emotion on the subject. 

Music: The use of music in our recording was used in small amounts however still played an important role in perfecting our final piece, we used a short clip of music combined with sound effects as our theme tune to create a link between our "Previously" section of our recording and the current episode, this was important as it explained to the listener that the current episode was about to start if they were not interested in the brief catchup. we found our theme tune music in the royalty free music archive owned by our college. We also acquired a royalty free piece of jazz music from the college archive for our "La Boosh Bar" scene where the chief’s daughter and the Villain "Scooner" are making conversation. This was used to create a Jazz bar style atmosphere along with sound effects of people talking in a group over the top of the music.

Sound Effects: Collecting sound effects was one of the most time consuming tasks out of all the micro-elements of our drama recording, Thankfully the college radio editing rooms had a large library of sound effects and ambient sounds to browse through that were available to use. Some times we found it difficult to find a sound effect so we used a program for the mac called "Audio Hijack Pro" which aloud us to record streaming audio off of the Safari internet application, this meant we could record sound effects straight to .MP3 off of the web and import them into Soundtrack Pro for implementation into our recording. The last thing we had to do with sound effects was to record our own, we struggled to find a suitable matching "Door Open/Close" sound effect for our recording so we decided the only way to get the sound effect we wanted was to record it ourselves. Our college technicians provided the equipment and software we needed to record our sound effects. I believe we used our sound effects extremely effectively, they sounded realistic and were put in the right place at the right time, there were times in our recording where we thought our sound effects worked amazingly for instance in the first scene (Alley Way) we used a section of traffic with a siren driving by, we cut the effect up and turned the levels down so it sounded as if it was in the distance, we also used a doppler effect on the siren so it sounded as-if it was coming from one side of the street, past the characters and down the other side of the street. 

I felt we have mastered the techniques when using Micro Elements within audio, If we were to create another recording I think we should have focused more on recording our own sound effects to make a more unique sounding piece of work, overall I am happy with our outcome.

How Sound effects and Music built our Recording

As I have said in my previous posts, Sound Effects, Music and other Micro Elements are all needed to build up a radio recording, As we saved our recording after each session as we went along it was easy for me to go back and cut some clips out of what we have done and take a look at the importance of combining Micro Elements together when creating a recording. 

CLIP ONE: Beginning of Scene One, Lt. Justice has just pulled into the crime scene and is narrating his surroundings. 

This clip was taken from when we first imported our recording into Soundtrack Pro, If you listen to the clip you can see that it is hard to imagine what is going on in the story and where exactly the character is, even though Lt. Justice is explaining where he is there is still no background noise to aid the listener into imagining the scene. 

This clip was taken from half way through our editing stage, we had almost finished editing scene one. We decided to add the sound of cars going by as Lt. Justice had just pulled off the road into an alley way, we liked using this particular sound effect as it has a doppler effect where the cars seem to go from one side to the other, this is good as it sounds like the cars are traveling past our character. 

This clip was taken towards the end of our editing, we were almost finished but decided to go through to see if there were any parts we could improve on, we decided we could make this scene sound better by possibly adding more effects. We looked through the archive on Soundtrack Pro and found a sound effect of a Helicopter flying over. We added this over the top of our recording to make the city sound busier, we did have to turn the levels of each sound effect down so it sounded like background noise and just just an effect slapped over the top of our voices! 

CLIP TWO - Scene Three, The Sconer and Abi are discussing what they are going to do as they are about to be rumbled by the police. They are in La Boosh Bar having a drink amongst other people. 


This clip was taken from when we first imported our recording into Soundtrack Pro, If you listen to this clip it would be absolutely impossible to tell that the two characters are sitting in a bar as both of them do not even say anything about where they are. 

We decided to add some general background talking over our recording to try and make a bar style ambience to give a clue about where our characters are, however we decided this would still not be enough to help our listener imagine where our characters were. We also had to adjust the levels of the sound effects as it was hard to hear our main dialogue. 

The final effect we added was a piece of music we found from the college sound library, this worked perfectly and it now sounded like the characters were in a public place with lots of people, the general talking in the background was clearly recorded in an indoor environment as there is no other background noises such as wind. The music complimented the background noise as it suggests they are in a place to socialize. We choose Jazz music so it would fit in with the name of our bar that appeared in the script and made the venue sound a little classier. 

CLIP THREE - Scene Two, Lt. Justice is in his office narrating his thoughts on the crime case he is working on, He becomes tired and decides to open the window to get some fresh air. 

This clip was taken from when we first imported our recording into Soundtrack Pro, You can tell that Lt. Justice is in an office environment as he mentions sitting at a desk and looking through some paperwork, however he says in the recording "I opened the window to let in some air." We decided that it would be a good idea to include some kind of effect to show that a window is being opened. 

We added a "Window Opening" sound effect on the clip to show that as he was narrating what he was doing he was moving to open the window at the same time, however this would not be enough, we needed some kind of street noise to go along with the opening of the window. 

Lt. Justice says "The sounds of the busy nightlife flooded through the window." We found some street noise and sampled it without the window to see if it would go well, we adjusted the levels so the effect increased in volume whilst the window was being opened. 

This was the final clip from this scene, We agreed that the two sound clips worked well together so put them together to make the clip work. 

The end of the clip has some high levels of sound which seem to clash with each other, so after this stage we went into the level editor and adjusted each channel so they all sounded right.