Week 7: Recording audio drama production
The day before the recording day, I was able to send Jeremy the front page, final draft of the script and the calling schedule documents that I completed via email as we were already prepared to produce the audio drama production. Also, I have sent an email towards the casted actors informing them about the travelling routes to get to University and if they had any enquiries they’d like to ask. I have spoken to two actors as I called them to make sure everything is fine and able to answer any of their enquiries.
As my role, I have contacted with the other production coordinators in terms of who’s bringing what for refreshments. I was responsible for bringing biscuits, coffees and water to supply to the actors. Then, I single handedly gave out water bottles to each of the actors before they start recording to help them to rehydrate and get their voices ready. In addition, I was put in charge for the travelling expenses to pay for 3 out of the 4 actors because the other production coordinator, Zineb, was not able to commit to the expenses. Therefore, I stepped in and managed to get cash out before meeting the actors in order to pay them upfront.
Recording day (16/03/2018): This week, we were able to successfully record our audio production. As a group, we held a short meeting before the recording took place in order to get the front page, final draft of the script and the calling schedule document in order to hand out to the actors. I was also in charge of meeting the actors first as I instructed them via email to meet me in front of the university gate. Before the read though, I was able to catch up with 3 out of 4 actors and discussed about how much they have spent based on the journey to travel to our University. Afterwards, I was able to give them back the exact amount of travelling fee in cash in time to begin the read through session.
However, we have undergone various obstacles along the way for example, we started on a later note than usual due to setting up the microphone in the right place since it was sounding low.
As a production coordinator, I overviewed my role to always stay active in terms of communicating with the actors and with the members of my group. Throughout the audio production process, I was in charge of contributing to the recording log filling in the scene, take and comments as we record our audio production. The important thing that I have learnt throughout the audio production process was that it was crucial to communicate and listen well with the director’s comments in each take the audio was recorded.
The part that I have found difficult was when I had to stay in contact with one of the actors who was called in at a later time because he only had a few lines. Halfway through the recording session, I had to stop writing in the recording log and meet up with him in order to guide him in the studio. This had pushed back the ongoing production because we did not need him yet, so the director and producer were discussing the ways to speed up the process whilst the actor are on stand-by.
In the end, since we had a late start, we had wrapped the audio production 4 minutes over time, but we have worked well as a team and we managed to get the remaining internal sections done in a professional manner.