Evalution

By completing my radio drama, I had to have some prior understanding of what professional radio
dramas were like. Researching different types to help produce my own, I looked at different genres,
mainly leaning towards Tension and Suspense. I listened and evaluated 3 different suspenseful radio
dramas looking into what made them suspenseful, engaging and sound like they were made with good
quality foley. This helped me when producing my own production, as I was able to find out how to
properly build tension through only using sound, which for me at the beginning was a struggle. After
looking at different suspenseful dramas, I realized music was a huge part of building suspense without
film footage for the audience. I then started looking into music; how and what instruments were used to
make people feel on edge uneasy and tense. I concluded from that research that mainly string
instruments were used, for example a violin and cello. Also instruments I had never heard of before that
create unusual notes at different pitches that make people feel slightly uncomfortable as it puts them on
edge. For example, an instrument called a Gym phonic gong. From looking into the different instruments
used I was able to find a song with those similar instruments that build tension over time and make
people feel uncomfortable. The song I chose to use in the end was a song using many different sting
instruments as well as drums. I like how I used the music in my radio drama, I think it really helped the
more intense scenes feel more dramatic, it also helped me with the storyline as the music build up
tension over time and then got to the crescendo and the climax tension was relieved in the story as well
as the song, showing how the two really worked together. One thing I would change about the music
was adding more. Although I don't think music was necessary throughout the whole thing, I do think I
could have added more of it but found it difficult to keep the music and layer on top of all the foley
sounds clearly. I was able to add the music and foley sounds together very nicely at the most intense
part of the drama (6:16), where the volume of everything increased and the Pase of the music also
increased.

Once I had an idea in mind for what I wanted my story to be like I went back to look at some of the radio
dramas I had looked at previously called Yousuf and the whale. As I had ideas of doing my dramas based
outside this drama was a good one to look at for the foley sounds. Because one of my ideas was to do a
story out at sea, this helped me get an idea of the sort of sounds I would need to make the audience be
able to understand the environment I was creating. Making them believe they are out at sea too with
the characters. I think one of my strengths were my foley sounds. For a first attempt at foley recording
the different wave noises was quite difficult, especially getting clear audio when by the sea, as there are
so many other sounds that are difficult to cut out to get the raw sounds. The waves crashing was my
main objective when recording the foley as the idea was fishermen out at sea in a storm and to create
that environment, I needed the sea to be rough. To produce the ocean storm sounds I layered many
different wave sounds I had recorded, cutting and chopping them up so specific wave crashes were one
after the other some louder then others to show how intense the storm was. I think what I could of
added in with my foley to develop the production would of been to add more of some of the foley I had
recorded, for example my seagull sounds, maybe more wind and then definitely rain sounds when the
storm was most intense. Looking at my feedback about my foley, most of it was good. People rated
them a 4/5 which is high meaning they were recorded well; I think I just needed more of them- this was
also mentioned by audience's feedback.
Looking into the script and my voice actors there were mixed responses with feedback. As most of my
voice recordings were recorded in the radio booth, some of the odd ones had to be re-recorded onto my
phone as I lost some of my audio. This will help me for next time as even though the foley was recorded
on my phone, speech clearly does not sound as clear or as good quality as the microphone in the booth.
So I don't think I will be recording speech on my phone again for an audio-based unit. Whilst editing my
speech clips I wanted to make it sound like certain characters were in different places when speaking. As
I found it difficult when recording the raw speech recording, I turned to editing to help me do this. To
make some characters sound like they were outside of the boat I added some De-Reverb. This can be
heard at 2:40 when the character Kevin is speaking. You can also see where I added Reverb to make my
characters Skipper and Jack sound like they are inside the boat, this can be heard throughout the radio
drama but an example of it is at 1:00-1:17. I also wanted to make one of Kevins lines to sound as if he
was speaking from outside the room Skipper and Jack were in and in order to make this happen I used a
Parametric Equalizer, and played around with the sound clip until I was happy with how the clip
sounded.

Overall I am pleased with my production, and I think my production strengths are my foley sounds, the
audience is able to understand that they are at sea on a boat. Although some people said they were a
little lost when listening to the drama, the narrative flows well and is dramatic at the right times. The
narration definitely supports this although I think I should have directed my voice actors with more
concern as I don't think some of their lines were as emotional as they could have been. For example at
the start of my production Seth, the narrator reads his lines instead of performing them, making them
sound a little flat and not as enticing as they should sound. The actors accents I liked as they sounded
accurate to the characters background and helped build the characters of the fishermen. To improve I
think I should focus on the editing more, as some of it I think I neglected a little bit. For example looking
at the voice recordings I think I could of spent more time playing around with the different effects to
help the quality of the speech sound better and louder over the wave sounds and music as from some of
my peer feedback they said that some of the audio wasn't clear enough, and couldn't really understand
what they were saying. I would also focus more on the fading in and out of the scenes. Some of my cuts
and fades weren't as clean as they could of been, so in future I would spend more time refining those
parts as they stand out quite massively, which I didn't really notice before.

I am happy I achieved most of my goals. The main goal being to learn how to use Audition and get my
head around it as working with new software for me is a struggle. I'm happy at the point I can use the
software but would like to deepen my understanding of the software and learn how to use more effects
and tools to improve my work further. Another goal of mine was to mainly build tension through my use
of music and layering sounds one on top of the other. I think I succeeded in doing this, as the tension got
stronger when layering all three elements-That being the foley, music and voice acting.