{"id":3528,"date":"2018-02-05T19:20:41","date_gmt":"2018-02-05T19:20:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/westminsterradio.net\/?p=3528"},"modified":"2018-02-05T19:20:41","modified_gmt":"2018-02-05T19:20:41","slug":"simon-woolcott-6","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.westminster.ac.uk\/radio\/simon-woolcott-6\/","title":{"rendered":"Simon Woolcott"},"content":{"rendered":"

Blog post 1:<\/strong><\/p>\n

We are now two weeks into Creating Audio Drama and already in our groups.<\/p>\n

The module is a little more full on than I anticipated, but I\u2019m sure it will be fun as well as hard work.<\/p>\n

Our lecturer Jeremy really knows his stuff and is a fountain of knowledge on the subject as well as being a very respected proponent of the genre.<\/p>\n

Because of studio availability my group, and one other, find ourselves only three weeks away from our studio recording day. We have chosen a script and have also chosen\/been assigned our roles.<\/p>\n

I was lucky enough to find myself in the roll I wanted – Studio Manager. It is going to be my job to both record the actors and other audio and mix the final piece. Although I\u2019ll have some creative input I\u2019ll mostly be at the back and call of the Producer and Director. That suits me fine, I like doing my best to produce what is required of me.<\/p>\n

We have been asked to listen to various examples of audio drama including some podcasts as well as some from more established creators such as the BBC. I\u2019m not really a spoken word listener but I\u2019m enjoying listening to a variety of productions, some more successful in achieving their aspirations than others.<\/p>\n

Despite having been in the business of creating Audio Drama for a couple of decades Jeremy is very forward-looking and is encouraging innovation. I\u2019m going to have to push myself to move beyond the straightforward.<\/p>\n

Producing Audio Drama is open to students from other disciplines within the faculty. This may prove problematic as we have already had a few late arrives from those outside Radio & Digital Production. There have also been a few moments where concentration is lacking and respect for Jeremy isn\u2019t quite what it should be. Hopefully, this will improve over the weeks.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m very happy with my group. They are a great bunch with a variety of appropriate skills and all dedicated to the task in hand.<\/p>\n

As our studio recording session is the first on the calendar we have decided to meet on campus on Tuesdays as well as on Fridays, the designated slot for the modules.<\/p>\n

Blog post 1: part 2<\/strong><\/p>\n

(Thursday 8th Feb)<\/p>\n

The Tuesday meeting was attended by myself, Natalie and Adam.<\/p>\n

Natalie is extremely organised thankfully so everyone is always going to know what\u2019s expected of them.<\/p>\n

Adam and I put together an email to send out to the prospective actors in order to touch base with them. Jeremy had already contacted them but we thought it would be a good idea to reach out and start to build a relationship.<\/p>\n

I went through the script and made a list of all the music and SFX that the script required, while also trying to preempt any further sounds and pieces of music we may additionally need.<\/p>\n

(Friday 9th Feb)<\/p>\n

A very productive day with some real insights from Jeremy about the \u2018back end\u2019 of successfully producing a piece of audio drama.
\nHe emphasised the importance of good paperwork keeping. When studios, actors, script editors, directors, producers and studio managers have to be all in on the loop, it is important that everything is extremely well organised.<\/p>\n

Jeremy suggested that although it would be great to produce a superb piece of audio drama at the end of this module, the lectures were aimed squarely at giving us the knowledge to understand every aspect of producing audio drama and that that knowledge was as important to the module as the finished product.<\/p>\n

As a team, we have agreed to meet much more other then we are timetabled to make sure everything runs smoothly. The cast are all but booked as far as I\u2019m aware.<\/p>\n

My main considerations between now and the studio recording day is to gather as much of the SFX, music and atmosphere as I can so that there is no time wasted after the recording of the actors is made trying to source other audio for the mix-down.<\/p>\n

(Tuesday 13th Feb)<\/p>\n

I made some recordings of SFX and wild track for the opening scene on my Marantz this morning as I woke up at 6.30 (eugh). I\u2019ve yet to listen to them but I reckon they\u2019ll be pretty good.<\/p>\n

We had a fantastic meeting to work on the script today. After the first read through we realised that, as it stood, the script ran to very nearly 14 minutes, which is at least 2 minutes too long. We used one of the big screen on the first floor of the library so we could all see the script. Ellen plugged in her laptop and we all made suggestions as to where cuts could be made.<\/p>\n

We worked on the script for a good three hours and now have a very good final(ish) draft. A few new SFX have been addd so I shall update the SFX\/Wild track doc this evening.<\/p>\n

I could not be happier with the team. Everyone is really pulling their weight and is very well suited to their roles.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

(Friday 16th February)<\/p>\n

We were in the studio for the first time this morning. The radio intern, Naiara, had already perfectly set up the drama studio (RP1, or is it RP2 I\u2019ve never known) for our try out session.<\/p>\n

It turns out that communicating through the glass isn\u2019t as easy as one would first imagine. Although we acted as each other\u2019s actors (and hopefully our actors will be considerably more professional then we were) the session showed the importance of having just one person giving very clear instructions to the actor, one point at a time.<\/p>\n

It was a very useful exercise to get used to how the room sounded with the microphone set up as it was (Two cardioid mics set to pick up only one side each and set at 90 degrees to each other and panned slightly left and right). And to hear how the sound altered when the actors moved around the mics as well as moving closer and further away.<\/p>\n

I refreshed myself on how to set up Audition for recording and saving on to a stick. I also made sure I could record the whole session into a cart on Myriad on the other computer, so if anything fails to save we have a backup.<\/p>\n

We had a big session on how the script should look for the actors and for the crew. Jeremy\u2019s input was very helpful. We have two scenes which contain flashbacks and other scenes which feature inner monologues. We decided that we would record the whole scene without the flashbacks and then record the flashbacks separately, but we had no idea how to mark this out on the script.<\/p>\n

I was all for printing off three different versions of the scripts with the appropriate parts greyed out but Jeremy assured us that the actors are quite used to dealing with scripts where parts of scenes are omitted and then recorded later and could skip over the omitted parts without too much trouble. He wisely pointed out that having multiple copies of scrips which very from one another was not the greatest idea I\u2019d ever had!<\/p>\n

I was keen to make sure the scripts we gave to the cast were as much like scripts they are used to in order to make the recording process runs as snotty as possible.<\/p>\n

I managed to source a small chest of drawers for the actors to use in a couple of scenes from the TV department. Matthew McGuinness (from said department) was very helpful and friendly.<\/p>\n

I WILL find time this coming week to record as much of the SFX and wild track as possible before next Friday\u2019s session. I\u2019d rather all other recordings were made up front in order to speed up the post-production process.<\/p>\n

I believe we are ready for next Friday morning\u2019s recording session. However, I have sadly not even looked at the essay question yet, very unlike me, but we have so much else on this semester.<\/p>\n

Blog post 2:<\/strong><\/p>\n

(Sunday 18 February)
\nVisited my mate Stewart\u2019s flat on my way back from work, Marantz and studio mic in hand. He lives on the 18th floor of a tower block in Bermondsey so I thought a recording from his balcony of the atmosphere of the city would be perfect for the rooftop scene in Theo & Tat.<\/p>\n

He gave me a glass of wine when I arrived (which was nice) and then I sat on his balcony recording for about 20 mins, interrupted only by his dropping a plate in the kitchen while trying to be really quiet.<\/p>\n

A city soundscape is an eery thing when you\u2019re listening to it through headphones. There are more low-frequency sounds than you\u2019d imagine: the rumble fo traffic; aeroplanes; distant music\u2026 I waited for a distinctive sound to emerge to set the scene\u2026 after a while a loud motorbike\u2026 a car horn\u2026 either would do I suppose\u2026<\/p>\n

But then I struck gold\u2026 a distant dog bark, strangely echoey. I sat there for a few minutes more to enjoy the ambience.
\nIt\u2019ll need a low-frequency cut I think to give more of an impression of height. I don\u2019t know if that makes logical sense, but it does in my head.<\/p>\n

(Wednesday 21 February)<\/p>\n

At last, I managed to find time yesterday to get into making recordings of SFX and wild track. As soon as I got in from filming for the pop-up station in Harrow I made a start.<\/p>\n

I told my flatmate what was doing, just in case he could hear me juggling keys, opening and shutting doors, endlessly microwaving etc and think I\u2019d gone slightly potty. He went for a snooze in his room\u2026 very wise.<\/p>\n

It took me almost five hours to get nearly everything I wanted.<\/p>\n

I also spent some of the time sourcing appropriate music, both incidental and for inclusion in party scenes etc, from the internet. I found a royalty free audio website called purple-planet.com<\/a>. They had some useable tunes.<\/p>\n

I also found an online recording of a London taxi pulling up and another piece of audio recorded from within a London taxi, just containing the engine, bumps and rattles you can hear in a cab.<\/p>\n

I wasn\u2019t happy with the door opening and shutting sounds on these recordings so, armed with my trusty Marantz, I went outside and recorded myself opening and shutting my car door – from both outside and inside. I got some strange looks from passers-by but they probably just figured I was some batty media type and moved on\u2026<\/p>\n

I also noticed the front door of the flats made a very satisfying sound when I opened it and then it automatically closed. So I recorded several versions from both inside and out.<\/p>\n

While uploading everything I\u2019d recorded I decided to make a folder for each scene with two additional folders in each labelled \u2018SFX\u2019 and \u2018Music\u2019 so I\u2019d know where to find everything when building the final piece. I\u2019ll probably also create a \u2018dialogue\u2019 folder too.<\/p>\n

Because the piece is much more complicated to produce than it first seems I think I\u2019ll build, mix and master each scene individually and then put them all together to create the final audio.<\/p>\n

There has been lots of admin chat on Messenger today. The whole team is working so well together. Nat is wonderfully organised, and everyone else is doing a brilliant job too.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Blog post 3: Studio week<\/strong><\/p>\n

I have to say, all in all, today was really quite disappointing.<\/p>\n

Most of the team arrived at 8.30am to make sure we had loads of time to get ourselves ready and set for the actors. Unfortunately, when we went up to the studio we discovered that nothing had been set up for the recording.<\/p>\n

Apparently, Niara\u2019s call was 9.30, which in my humble opinion wasn\u2019t early enough. It meant that she didn\u2019t really have enough time to set everything up and test it properly. Thankfully Tim helped but in the end, the set up wasn\u2019t ready in time and the very rushed sound check ate into our recording time.<\/p>\n

As it turned out the rushed set up had other consequences. I think we had all persuaded ourselves that the occasional dropout on one channel was a studio speaker problem. However, as the session wore on I decided to use the headphone and noticed the same problem.<\/p>\n

It turned out one of the old cardioid studio mics we were using was getting overwhelmed occasionally and dropping out. It was too late by then to stop the session, source a new microphone and re-record, so I\u2019ll just have to try and make one decent take out of the different takes we recorded for each scene.<\/p>\n

Our well thought out plan to record certain sections in a certain order seemed to go awry. I\u2019m still not sure of the reason, but it did make us look a little chaotic, which is a shame because a Natalie put a lot of planning into it.
\nFor some reason, the actors’ scripts had differing page numbers from the scrip that Afia was using to direct. It was a schoolboy error which meant we wasted time indication to the actors where exactly we wanted then to take it from. It was also an sn error which Jeremy socially warned us against making.<\/p>\n

He also suggested specifically that only one voice should use the talkback, but in the end, I found it very difficult not to contribute, particularly when it came to specific technical instructions. I\u2019m sure we\u2019ll be marked down for it.<\/p>\n

On the plus side, our cast were not only great performers but were lovely people too. I\u2019m sure Jeremy had briefed them that it might be a little less professional than they were used to, but they were patient and kind to us. On speaking to some of them afterwards I was assured they had enjoyed the experience. All part of the leaning curve of being an actor in these changing media landscape days I suppose.<\/p>\n

The editing process is going to be painstaking and it is unfortunate that we will not be able to simply use the best performances, but all be restricted to the ones during which the microphone didn\u2019t experience its problem. The perennial torture of the rather fiercely loud air-conditioning will also play a factor.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve spent a few hours clipping every take and putting each one into scene and scene section appropriate folders. I\u2019m not dismissing any take at this stage, just in case I have to use a word from here or a breath from there to fill in the audio dropouts.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve made myself an \u2018editors script\u2019 so it\u2019s easy to follow which clip fits into which scene where, for when I\u2019m putting the scenes together. I have created scene specific folders with subfolders entitled \u2018SFX\u2019 \u201cMusic\u201d and \u2018Dialogue\u201d.<\/p>\n

Today has been exhausting and somewhat disheartening, but I\u2019m sure with hard work I can produce a reasonable piece of audio drama in the end. However, I feel it will be a hard task to create anything that will live up to my exacting standards.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Blog post 3: Studio week: Part 2<\/strong><\/p>\n

I\u2019ve created \u2018Scene\u2019 folders on the Goole Drive and uploaded all the carefully clipped up and ordered dialogue audio into them so Nat and Afia can have a peruse before Friday\u2019s meeting<\/p>\n

.
\nI\u2019m hoping they find time to listen through to every take so we don\u2019t waste too much time on Friday before settling on which we consider the best pars of the best takes for each scene so I can get on with building the final mixdown of each scene. The dealing is looming.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Blog post 4: Edit week: Part 1 (Friday 2nd March)<\/strong><\/p>\n

We discovered yesterday that there would be no classes at college today and therefore no meeting with Jeremy – which was scheduled for midday – due to the adverse weather conditions.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s a bit of a shame because we were going to get together and go through all the takes and clips for the rest of the day to decide with ones we are going to use in the final edit.<\/p>\n

Instead, I have created a spreadsheet on the drive which lists all the clips and all the takes. It features a column for myself, Natalie and Afia in which to fill our respective scores (out of 10) for each take – and also to chose our favourite version of each internal monologue takes.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve asked Natalie and Afia to go through it today so I can get on with cleaning up the audio – taking out the aircon noise \/ inserting words from other takes when the mic dropped out – in order to start building the arrangement for each scene.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m hoping they will find the time because I’m getting a little worried that I am going to run out of time and have to rush the final arrangement. I think I\u2019ll take Jeremy\u2019s advice to always allow plenty of time for the last scene by arranging and mastering the scenes in reverse order.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m going to lead by example and spend the afternoon making my choices.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Blog post 4: Edit week: Part 2 (Sunday 4th March)<\/strong><\/p>\n

I\u2019m pleased to say that Natalie and Afia have made their choices of their favourite takes, and parts thereof, on the spreadsheet I put online. We mostly agree with each other, although there are a few surprises!<\/p>\n

I asked them to mark each take out of 10 so I merely added all the scores together to see which was the winner. There are a few draws. Not one gained the full 30 points. The closest was a 27 – the lowest score was 9.<\/p>\n

I think they were making their choices used on the actors\u2019 performances rather than the quality of audio, so I shall endeavour, when I put it all together, to use clips from the second favourite to make up for any mic dropouts in their favourites.<\/p>\n

I have sorted out the wheat from the chaff, so to speak, and put the losers in separate folders so when I come to starting the post-production process only the relevant files are there in front of me.<\/p>\n

Blog post 4: Edit week: Part 3 (Tuesday 6th March)<\/strong><\/p>\n

I spent a great deal of today on post-production.
\nI started by manually turning down any stand-out peak levels by -3db on each channel of the stereo takes. Then I normalised each channel separately to -0.1 db to balance up the stereo levels.<\/p>\n

I then processed each and every separate clip using SoundSoap by <\/a>Anteres<\/p>\n

SoundSoap has a setting in which you teach it to eliminate any extraneous noise on your recording. To use it, it is important that when you clip up the takes you wish to use, that you ensure you leave enough of the take with no vocal on it to give space for the software to learn the offending noise profile.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s not perfect, but it\u2019s the best way I found to clean up audio which is contaminated by such sounds as the hum of electrical equipment or the noise of air-conditioning. It has to be a regular and repetitive noise if the clean up is to work effectively.<\/p>\n

Once I had cleaned up the audio – including all the second favourite takes – I listened through each favourite for any dropouts. There were quite a few unfortunately, but I was able to patch up the audio using the second best take – or sometimes the third – to minimise any very noticeable missing words or syllables. It was an extremely fiddly task but hopefully well worth it in the end.<\/p>\n

I then went through the \u2018editing script\u2019 that I\u2019d created to make sure I had all audio necessary to build each scene. It was during this process that I noticed a couple of omissions. Fortunately, there were very domestic sounds so I was able to quickly record them and import them.<\/p>\n

I then created a whole different folder on my desktop in which I copied all the audio required for each scene. Once this was created and populated I made a further copy onto a memory stick. I shall build each scene flowing Afia\u2019s direction and save each arrangement and the associated audio files onto the aforementioned memory stick so I can work on it wherever there is a computer with Audition installed.<\/p>\n

Once this task was completed I decided to go for a rough arrangement of scene 1\/2 using Logic X on my Mac – my preferred software for arranging audio. I have so many great plug-ins for EQ and compression etc, which aren\u2019t as easily accessible on Audition as far as I know.<\/p>\n

It took me just over two hours but I\u2019m really very pleased with it. The audio (once all cleaned up and repaired) is not as poor as I initially thought it was. Perhaps there\u2019s a chance that the finished product won\u2019t be too much of a pig\u2019s ear after all.<\/p>\n

Tomorrow Afia and are going to spend all day working in the arrangement at Harrow. Hopefully, we can get access to a studio so we can both hear what we’re doing while we\u2019re doing it. Fingers crossed!<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Blog post 4: Edit week: Part 3 (Weds 7th March)<\/strong><\/p>\n

A long but very successful day working with Afia today. We were very lucky to get the VO booth to ourselves for the whole day, so both of us could see and hear what we were working on. It\u2019s very difficult\u00a0to work collaboratively huddled round one small screen, sharing a headphone jack.<\/p>\n

Afia liked most of my test mix-down of scenes 1 + 2, although she didn\u2019t think the pieces of music I chose for the part 2 scenes worked as well as they could have, nor the alarm clock beeps. We spent some of the time searching for some better tracks and found two good replacements, and a more recognisable digital alarm clock sound.<\/p>\n

With Jeremy\u2019s thoughts, about making sure enough time is allocated for the final scenes, we started with Scene 7 today. It\u2019s pretty straightforward, one stream of dialogue and one piece of atmosphere and one FX. We put in a couple of extra edits to make the dialogue feel more natural and I bought a \u2018beer bottles chinking\u2019 SFX from Pond5 because all the free ones – as well as the one we recorded in the studio – sounded duff. It\u2019s strange how sometimes the actual sound just isn\u2019t good enough to create the allusion of the sound one\u2019s mind thinks it should sound like.<\/p>\n

After scene 7 we spent the rest of the day putting together the most complicated scene – number 4 – the one with lots of flashbacks. It\u2019s a very meticulous job but I\u2019m rather pleased with the result, save for one piece – the internal monologue. The original recording is not the best and is therefore hard to treat acoustically.<\/p>\n

I looked up how inner monologues are achieved these days, it turns out the old school method of a large reverb application seems to be considered pass\u00e9. Apparently, the modern method is to use a lot of compression but we struggled to achieve the desired effect today, so it\u2019s back to the drawing board. I\u2019ll ask Jeremy his advice on Friday.<\/p>\n

When I got home, the last job today was to import the new music and alarm clock sound we had chosen earlier today into scenes 1 + 2 and tighten up some of the flashback transitions. I reckon it\u2019s sounding damn near finished.<\/p>\n

Afia and I will spend the bulk of Friday working on the remaking scenes. Hopefully, we will be lucky enough to get the VO booth to ourselves all day again and get it all done, bar the shouting!<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Blog post 4: Edit week: Part 4 (Saturday 10th March)<\/strong><\/p>\n

Afia and I spent a good 6 or 7 hours putting together the rest of the scenes yesterday at college. We had been labouring under the misapprehension that we had already done the most challenging ones but, aside from scene 7, none of them were less than very complicated.<\/p>\n

The last scene we built was the nerf gun scene. It was the one during the recording of which we experienced the most mic drop-outs. By this time we were doing more takes which funnily enough made finding the right ones which we\u2019d chosen to be our favourites the most difficult. It was don to a bit of poor labelling by me when I was sorting each the in to scene part edits.<\/p>\n

There were points where we had to take some audio from our least favourite take because it was the only one during which particular words or phrases had been wholly recorded on both channels. I hadn\u2019t noticed a couple of dropouts until we are listening back through the completed scene. Thank god I had kept all the raw audio on my Mac at home. Thank godder that I could access everything via the iCloud to retrieve them and insert them into the mix.<\/p>\n

We had a meeting with Jeremy at midday, a kind of debrief. We kind of knew what we\u2019d done wrong on the day but it was useful to hear our mistakes outlined by someone looking in. I think we all learned by our mistakes which is a good thing. If you make mistakes and don\u2019t learn from them, then that is a very foolish thing.<\/p>\n

I hope that Jeremy will be at least mildly pleasantly surprised by the final audio, bearing in mind how many mistakes we made on the day. I think it’s going to prove a reasonably good rescue, all things considered.<\/p>\n

Blog post 4: Edit week: Part 5 (Sunday 11th March)<\/strong><\/p>\n

I spent a good deal of yesterday afternoon and early evening putting together the separate scenes into a whole play. I\u2019m not sure I\u2019ve done justice to most of the transitions, but I\u2019ve very little experience at doing it.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve had a listen to a few reasonably similar pieces and I think I have some of the conventions right. I\u2019ve used a snippet of our theme music in between two scene but the rest I\u2019ve gone for a fade out and fade in.<\/p>\n

I put the result on the drive for everyone to have a listen to so they can give me some feedback, I need fresh pairs of ears on it. I\u2019m going to leave it alone save from one thing until after Monday\u2019s pop-up station edition.<\/p>\n

That one thing is the inner monologues.<\/p>\n

I asked JD (my music production partner and the person who told me about the virtues of SoundSoap) if he had any thoughts about how I could make the \u2018inner voice\u2019 audio sound more suitable – more intimate and compressed. He suggested a few things and even offered to have a go at treating them himself. He said, \u201cit\u2019s only 6 short phrases, and you know I like to play with audio\u201d. So I clipped all of them from the original raw audio and emailed them over to him.<\/p>\n

Blog post 4: Edit week: Part 5 (supplemental)<\/strong><\/p>\n

JD has said, just as I suspected, that the original recordings\u00a0were too encumbered by the room reverb and the aircon noise to be treatable to fit into the modern convention of hyper-compression to indicate intimacy. He has suggested I go for a bit of an old-school approach with some subtle gated reverb and sent me over examples. It looks like that\u2019s the only approach left to me.<\/p>\n

He\u2019s said he\u2019s going to have a bit more of play to see if he can get make it really obvious that they are a different sound and therefore not part of the regular dialogue. This is exactly what Jeremy suggested would be the best approach, He indicated that as long as it was made obvious that they sounded different enough to the regular dialogue the listener would accept them as being part of an inner monologue.<\/p>\n

Blog post 4: edit week: Part 6 (Tuesday 13th March)<\/strong><\/p>\n

The treatment on the inner monologues has, at least, made them all sound the same. They also sound clean and different enough from the rest of the other audio to make it obvious they are thoughts\/asides.<\/p>\n

I was merely going to spend an hour or so inserting the new inner monologue audio into each scene arrangement this morning and then I was going to go into Harrow for a couple of meetings. In the end, one of the meetings was cancelled, so I decided to cancel the other one and stay at home to work on Theo & Tatt.<\/p>\n

As I had not heard the scenes since Saturday evening, I came to it them with a reasonably fresh pair of ears. It was through this fresh pair of ears that I noticed two or three parts I really still wasn\u2019t happy with.<\/p>\n

There was one particular speech by Tatiana, that although a good performance, was not a great recording. I decided to revisit the other takes and found one, which although not quite as good a take artistically, was technically far superior. It was also our second favourite take, out of four, on our spreadsheet score sheet.<\/p>\n

In the end, I spent the majority of the day tweaking each scene to make it tighter, ironing out any creases, so to speak. And then built a new whole arrange on Logic. After an hour or so I was happy with all traditions bar one.. . and I\u2019m still sure there\u2019s something I can do to improve it.<\/p>\n

Ellen had recorded the intro and outdo script as Jeremy suggested they should be done, so I was able to build the first edition of the whole project. I have to say I\u2019m quite pleased with it. I put it on the drive at 8.30pm, let the group know it was there, and invited comments and suggestions.<\/p>\n

It wasn\u2019t long till Afia made some additional comments on her \u2018Afia\u2019s feedback\u2019 doc on the drive. she included some suggestions for alternative music to accompany the bar scene and some other bits and bobs. We had a brief conversation on Messenger about it but we were both tired and decided to take it up in the morning.<\/p>\n

Blog post 4: edit week: Part 7 (Wednesday 14th March)<\/strong><\/p>\n

As I had to go into the west end today for an interview at Global, I decided to message Afia and suggest we met up at Harrow to work on the two scenes she\u2019s made suggestions about last night in person, together. I figured it would be a lot easier than trying to explain things to each other via Messenger.<\/p>\n

We worked on scenes five and six today for 6 hours. There was a point at around 3pm where I was worried we were going backwards. As a precaution, I had exported each arrange and its associated audio into new folders, as a duplicate, and saved them as \u2018NEW\u2019 versions just in case we lost our way horribly.<\/p>\n

In the end, I think we have made some improvements to each scene, I will export the arrangements from the memory stick on to my PC this evening, but otherwise leave them alone, so I can come to them with another fresh pair of ears in the morning.<\/p>\n

There is only one thing niggling me now. I need a street sound of some sort, car horn, passing lorry etc to mark the change from the end of scene 3 into the beginning of scene 4 – the script says\u2026 \u201cThey walk on and reach the first office\u201d but there\u2019s no way I\u2019m using footsteps.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ll see what I can find on my original roadside recording. If there nothing, I\u2019ll stand on a street corner with my Marantz in the morning until a suitable sound happens by.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Blog post 5: final submission: Part 1 (Thursday 15th March)<\/strong><\/p>\n

Despite it being my birthday, I spent most of today working on the final mix of Theo & Tatt. Having listened to the scenes Afia and I worked on yesterday, I\u2019m pleased to say that I think we have improved them.<\/p>\n

I didn\u2019t make any major changes, just some level tweaks. I played the whole thing back through different speakers and headphones and made subtle changes each time. My main speakers in my lounge, despite being considerably bigger than my studio monitors, lack a lot of bottom end. This made me slightly concerned that I\u2019d rolled too much of the lower frequencies off, but I\u2019d rather that than have the horrid rumble of the studio air con swamping everything.<\/p>\n

Listening on my DT 100\u2019s (studio headphones) I could still hear some of the studio noise that SoundSoap hadn\u2019t completely removed, but unless I spent hours more using Izotope RX 6<\/a>. (after buying in it for over a grand) I can\u2019t see a way or improving the audio any further.<\/p>\n

Having used a careful bit of panning at the end of a piece (I was forced to use a merged stereo into mono version of due to the mic dropouts), I freed up a subtle bit of background noise I had been using to disguise the transition to signify \u201cthey walk on to the first office\u201d. (Not a beautifully written paragraph but I hope you get the gist).<\/p>\n

Having bounced each scene separately on Audition (on my PC), I joined them together on Logic (on my Mac). I used Logic because I have better post-production plugins and I\u2019m more familiar with them.<\/p>\n

I tried various different compression and limiting settings. The first one was far too fierce, another hardly made any difference. After further experimentation, I think (I hope) I\u2019ve struck the balance right in the end.<\/p>\n

The last thing I did today was upload the bounce onto the Drive to let everyone hear it and comment, fresh pairs of ears and all that. I left it an hour or so to give everyone time to listen and feedback.. when it arrived it was all positive I\u2019m pleased to report. Off to bed now.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Blog post 5: final submission: Part 2 (Friday 16th March)<\/p>\n

I hate submitting work on the day of the deadline. I\u2019d much rather it gets done and dusted beforehand. However, after working on the final mix most of yesterday I decided to leave it be until this morning to have one last listen before I WeTransferred it to Jeremy.<\/p>\n

So, one last listen it is this morning, before heading off to Harrow to meet up with my dissertation supervisor. It sounds pretty good, considering the original quality wasn\u2019t quite as good as it could have been. If only we\u2019d left time for retakes of scenes were the mic dropped out. Oh well, lessons learned for the future.<\/p>\n

I sent the WeTransfer to both email addresses I have for Jeremy – I asked him for an email to say he had received the audio, just for my peace of mind\u2026 If I had to prove it was submitted in good time.<\/p>\n

It’s in the lap of the gods now, or rather the lap of one of the most experienced audio drama producers in the country.<\/p>\n

I do fear we\u2019ve not been outlandish enough, but it was a fairly simple whimsical story of everyday drama folk, and I didn\u2019t want to go mad with effects just for the sake of it. It\u2019s a simple tale, simply (but hopefully well) told.<\/p>\n

One last thing I must say, having now listened to it over and over again, we had a bloody good cast!<\/p>\n

T-Rex vs Theo and Tatt vs The World – and the winner is\u2026\u2026<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Blog post 1: We are now two weeks into Creating Audio Drama and already in our groups. The module is a little more full on than I anticipated, but I\u2019m sure it will be fun as well as hard work….<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":492,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3528","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-audio-drama-archive"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.westminster.ac.uk\/radio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3528","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.westminster.ac.uk\/radio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.westminster.ac.uk\/radio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.westminster.ac.uk\/radio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/492"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.westminster.ac.uk\/radio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3528"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blog.westminster.ac.uk\/radio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3528\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.westminster.ac.uk\/radio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3528"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.westminster.ac.uk\/radio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3528"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.westminster.ac.uk\/radio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3528"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}