Youtube Video

Listening Party

During the production process we got an amazing oppurtunity for some feedback. We held a listening party with a large group of students and they were asked to give an honest evaluation of our radio drama. The general feedback from the students that we recieved was that they thoroughly enjoyed our work. We asked them to rate it out of 10 with 1 being the worst and 10 being the best, the majority gave us a 7/8 out of 10. The response we got as a group was that they loved our ideas and really connected with the piece, and felt that it was realistic. However, we also gained some constructive criticism from the listening party. The main negative response we got was that perhaps the acting could have been that of a more higher standard! We also had comments over Nick's scottish accent, and some individuals found it slightly comedic. This was not our aim at all, as this didn't compliment our genre one bit. However, we felt we justified this critique, We used this accent to show the diversity within the different characters. We felt his strong accent also came him some dominance which is what we were aiming for in the start of the narrative. Overall, we recieved mainly positive feedback and the majority liked our radio drama and would listen to more of it.

Edited Sound Clips

This is a sound clip that has been altered in Soundtrack Pro, the voice levels have been changed, parts have been cut and suitable SFX have been added.

Un-edited sound clips

This is a sound clip that is un-edited and before any sound effects were added.

Soundtrack Pro

When we had finished our recording we were introduced to 'Soundtrack Pro', this is a piece of sophisticated software which can edit audio. There is also a free music and sound effects library within this program which was incredibly useful, with hundreds of suitable SFX available in the bottom right corner of Soundtrack Pro and with a helpful search button, the perfect SFX were easy to find and to get to grips with. There are various tools on Soundtrack Pro such as the blade tool, fade tool and echo tool. After a few lessons, I found Soundtrack Pro was much easier to navigate.

We split our recording into three sections so we could each do our own editing and I edited the first two scenes. In the first scene there were lots of fake radio broadcasts that had to be added into the recording. For this, I had to cut up the entire recording, and find the dialogue that was read by the radio broadcaster. When I did this, I then had to change the levels of the speech and use the distortion tool to create a 'radio' effect. I used bitcrusher for this. I then also added an SFX underneath the speech called 'WalkieTalkie', which made the whole radio broadcast seem much more realistic and effective.

In scene two, there is a key moment where a building collapses and Jen nearly gets killed. For this, I cut the speech up using the blade tool and used many different sound effects piled on top of each other to create a realistic sound. It took me well over two hours after extensive research into different SFX to decide which ones were suitable to use. I finally decided to use the sound of an earthquake, followed by very heavy breathing and then the sound of lots of people running. I also varied the volumes of each different sound effect by putting them in different tracks, and overall, I think that the sound of the building collapsing sounds realistic and proffessional.

After I had finished editing my section over three weeks, my group added all of our scenes together and had a final run through and edited final small things, such as individual fading, before it was put forward for the listening party.

Raw Recording

This is the raw recording of our drama, before we made any changes and started any editing.

Production Log - Details of Studio

We learnt how to begin recording our drama and we had an introduction to the radio room. This was extremely useful and helped massively when it came to actually recording our final script. I was taught how to set up the booth by using the following steps:

1) Ensure all plugs are on.
2) Move sliders 1, 2, 3 up, and turn on each section.
3) Log into Imedia.
4) Begin Soundtrack Pro software.
5) Change Location for saving audio files.
6) Always export audio tracks as MP3's at 192KBPS.

We recorded our entire script in one sitting after much practice in the radio booth previously, however as a group we had alot to edit due to small mistakes which would have been very unproffessional if were left in our final radio drama.