Radio Drama – Evaluation Part 1

1. In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

I believe that our product, the radio drama Possession, uses a wide range of forms and conventions within its works. We tried our best through strict analysis of other radio dramas that are renowned as some of the best radio dramas ever made, to include as many conventions as possible, such as editing on the voices to give impressions of different situations, and adding sound effects in appropriate places to make the story and the radio drama more appealing to the average person’s ears. The one thing that we did find difficult however, is to consistently create a convincing level of acting, to give the listeners a true impression of our characters. Although we did all try our best, there were moments in the clip where the voices were lacking elements that would make it seem like an actual person talking rather than a newsreader speaking.

For example, the member of our group who played Teena, Catt Orsborn, was very quiet in comparison to the rest of the voices, whereas I was on the other end of the scale and was somewhat too loud when it came to recording my lines, as I have a rather powerful voice, and Catt’s voice is timid and quiet.

I don’t actually think that we challenged much with this work, as we adhered to the general consensus of forms and conventions of regular radio dramas so we made sure that we got it right to begin with. The only thing I think we challenged forms and conventions with, was the general plot of the whole radio drama, as we tried to make something original and from what we noticed during the analysing stages of radio drama, we found there weren’t many horror genre radio dramas, other than The Twilight Zone, and we used this as our main reference for ideas about conventions of horror dramas.

I think we did a valiant job of trying to create a believable radio drama that people could expect to find on legitimate public radio, aired for all the general public to hear on a night time basis. I think the quality of the recording suffered a little when it came to how we sorted out the levelling of the vocals and sound effects, and I don’t think we recorded the vocal lines as well as we could have, but on the whole, I think we had a good attempt at creating a convincing radio drama.

Radio Drama – Raw Recording

http://www.veoh.com/watch/v20904454JXZMGMzf

Radio Drama – Double Page Spread Analysis

 

 

 

The running theme with the Radio Times double page spreads is that there is always a higher text to picture ratio, as people who read magazines tend to read them for the articles rather than pictures. However, pictures are important to visually aid the layout of the spread and make it more appealing to the eye of the average reader, afterall, everyone likes too look at something with illustrations rather than a dull wall of text.

There are a reasonable amount of pictures on each of the spreads, showing the reader what the article is all about, and visually giving them something to put with the text, and allowing them to know what is being spoken about. For example, in our radio drama there is a character called Zane, and I mocked up an interview with the actor. The image seen on the spread I made for this is a picture of Zane, placed on the page in a very dark and somewhat threatening manner, thus allowing the reader to instantly know that Zane is a dark and potentially evil character before they even read a word.

Radio Drama – Double Page Spread Final

 

 

PDF of Final Double Page Spread For Possession: The Radio Drama

This is the final version of my Radio Times double page spread.

Radio Drama Poster – Comments on Facebook

I placed a link for my poster on my blog to the popular social networking website, Facebook, for people to put comments on and let me know what they did and didn’t like about the poster. The above image shows you what was said about the image, and alot of people didn’t seem to like the font the word ‘POSSESSION’ was written in, but after I had explained that it was necessary for the image as the genre of the radio drama was horror and the font needed to look eerie and give off that kind of effect, they understood the idea behind it.

Radio Drama – Poster Analysis

This is the poster advertising the BBC Radio version of Star Wars, when the original film was released and it jumped to popularity among the general public. The general convention of this image is the huge picture of one of the main characters, C3PO, which has been edited to look like it is Radio Drama by placing headphones and a radio microphone on his personage. Also, the well known logo for Star Wars is featured at the bottom, as well as the information about when the show is going to be aired. I didn’t think about using this general layout as the idea for my own poster, as I used reference from another poster that wasn’t necessarily a radio drama poster.

This is a poster in the similar layout to the Star Wars one, where a large image takes the most space on the poster, and the rest is merely the title, and appropriate information regarding the airing of the radio show and who actually features in it. The layout is pretty simplistic, and more like the style that I did my own poster to, as the background in my poster in also black, with a single and simple image to add effect to the poster, and nothing else but the necessary information is featured upon the poster itself.

The final poster is in the same vain as the first one, as it is also a Star Wars related radio drama poster, but for another edition of the series. In this one, we see another large picture and the logo of Star Wars, just this one isn’t edited to suit the radio drama genre. Again, my poster isn’t really similar to the conventions featured in this poster, as the image in my poster doesn’t take as much of a place in the effect of the poster.

Radio Drama – Editing Video

Radio Poster – Final Choice For Broadcast Time and Radio Station

The final time for the broadcast of our radio drama would be 11pm, and the first day it would be broadcast on would be 24th April 2011.

There wasn’t any particular reason for the choice of date, as there isn’t really any factors that would contribute to the time a radio drama would be broadcast, other than obvious constraints like the time it would take to finalise and actually create the radio drama. The time we chose for it to be broadcast on was 11pm, and that time was chosen due to the content of the radio drama itself. There are a few moments when language was slightly too explicit and there was a reasonable amount of violence featured within the small cutting of the radio drama that we created, and it would be easy to assume that the same vain of conventions would feature in the other episodes of the drama as and when they happen.

Personally, I don’t agree with the time that the other members of my group have suggested to broadcast the radio drama. I don’t think the broadcast time is applicable to the target demographic that the radio drama is actually aimed at, and that 11pm might be a little too late for the target demographic of teenagers to be up until. It is obviously possible that teenagers will be up past the time of 11pm, but perhaps they wouldn’t exactly be listening to radio dramas on BBC Radio 4 Extra.

The choice of BBC Radio 4 Extra was come to as a result of looking at the broadcasting line-up of each BBC Radio station and looking at which one has the most radio drama and what the most common genres were. We came to the conclusion that BBC Radio 4 Extra, or BBC Radio 7 as it used to be known, would be the most appropriate station for the radio drama to be broadcast on, over BBC Radio 4. This was due to the amount of radio drama on BBC Radio 4 Extra, and the fact that it had a tendency to be slightly more alternative in genre than BBC Radio 4, which looked as if it catered to the older demographic with shows like The Archers.

Radio Poster – Something To Take Into Account

As you may have noticed on the other 3 posters in my group, the radio drama itself is due to be broadcast on BBC Radio 7, which until recently has been known as BBC Radio 7. As of the week beginning 4th April 2011, BBC Radio 7 has and will now be known as BBC Radio 4 Extra. This has been documented on my poster as the design for my poster has been finalised after the date of 4/04/11, thus will have the BBC Radio 4 Extra logo emblazoned upon the poster itself.

Radio Poster – The Group’s Other Posters

Jack:

Catt:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Tom: