BLOG POST AUDIO DRAMA

PRACTISE WEEKS (WEEK 4-6) – Over our first few weeks of practising ahead of our show we changed our script. The girls had picked another story but we decided that the script was a tad bit too confusing. We picked entropy because we loved the idea and how funny the story was, so we printed the scripts off and started to plan how it would sound. In addition, over these weeks we talked through the script and edited them where we saw fit, for example, I suggested changing Ryan’s name to Ryan rather than RB, as it was in the original script. We also acted some scenes out and talked about how we wanted some things to sound.

EDIT: This was the last time that we heard anything from Ola or saw her. She has not replied to any of our messages or come into university, so we decided to remove her from our group as we would not benefit from expecting her to be there and then her not showing up.

WEEK SEVEN – Over week seven we sorted out the scripts, wrote the entire production schedules (different ones for us/ Jeremy and the actors). We decided which props we needed to bring in, our time schedule, what order we would record the scenes and where they would be recorded. I took lead in sorting this out as I believed it was more my role as producer, but we all collectively decided the best way to record things etc. I created the schedules, emailed Matthew the correct scripts, stapled them all in preparation for the following week and got the biscuits.

BETWEEN WEEK SEVEN AND EIGHT – Danny Hughes who was supposed to play Ryan dropped out at the last minute. Luckily Jeremy found Francis Quigley and he was excellent.

WEEK EIGHT (RECORDING WEEK) – We came in at 12 pm in order to make sure that we had everything sorted before the recording and the actors arrived. We had to change a few things due to the fact that Danny had left and we had it written down on all of our sheets, I took charge in sorting this out on all the scripts so it didn’t add any confusion.

During the recording process, I was in charge of production and pressing the green button (which I somehow kept messing up). I also made sure that the actors were comfortable and smoothed out some kinks to our production schedule etc (we had jumbled up the order of scenes but I had not put the scenes in this new order). Looking back on it I would have only given the scenes that each character was in, rather than the entire script. Furthermore, I made notes of how many takes we did of each scene and which take I believed to be best, this was to cut downtime during the editing process.

Overall, I felt that the entire process went well, the actors were very understanding and excellent in their roles. I do feel that the directing was not as ‘strong’ some of the time as it could have been, which would have been messy/confusing for the actors. I also felt the need to take over as I didn’t feel as though I was contributing much to the recording process.

WEEK NINE (POST PRODUCTION) – During week nine we recorded all the extra audio that we needed. So we recorded all of the extra sounds in my car which took about half an hour, Holly as the SAT nav, the ‘rugby singers’ and the intro/outro of our drama. We also started to put together our ideas/ a timeline on how we wanted to get done and when.