A2 Media Studies Coursework

Abi Brennan

BRE07124310

Here is the radio drama we made for our A2 coursework.

Transgression

A History of Radio

Radio technology originally started in the 19th century as "wireless telegraphy", which was developed by many scientists over time from 1831 - 1872. The technology of radio is closely related to the telegraph and the telephone and started with the discovery of radio waves, which are electromagnetic waves that have the capacity to transmit audio, pictures and other data visibly through the air.
Guglielmo Marconi had been developing ideas for an invention that would replace the wired telegraph to help insure the safety of ships at sea, and in 1901 the first broadcast was made in morse code by Marconi in England to Newfoundland in Canada. This was the first wireless transatlantic broadcast ever sent and recieved.


In 1906 inventors decided to develop the wireless telephone in order to add humanity to the transmissions to ships, but other inventors such as Marconi disagreed with this as the messages wouldn't be private.
In 1906 Fessendon used wireless telephone technology of his invention to make a pre-announced broadcast himself playing the violin and reading the bible, he did this in order to seek finacial backing for his invention.
In 1907 De Forest made two important demonstrations of the wireless telephone by giving the navy a wireless telepone and an arc transmitter in order to broadcast phonograph records to shore stations, he also broadcasted well-known opera singers to reporters in New York because he wanted to bring culture into homes.

By 1920 some volunteer radio stations had started broadcasting in the United States and in January the first informal and spasmodic broadcast, including both speech and music, was made by the Marconi Company from Chelmsford. The first news broadcast was also this year, it was from Detroit using news from the Detroit newspaper. In 1922 the Marconi Company was allowed to set up a broadcast station in London, which was later taken over by the British Broadcasting Company (BBC).
Up until 1945 radio was highly unreliable due to interference, and international telephone calls were very expensive the but author Arthur C Clarke wrote an article describing a way to use satellites to transmit radio signals all over the world, this was a revolutionary idea which would take years for the technology to be available.

In 1957 Sputnik 1 was launched. Sputnik 1 was a satellite launched by the USSR that transmitted a beep, they did this to prove that satellites could be successfully put into orbit. Over time, many other satellites were also launched into orbit and pirate radio stations were formed. BBC Radio 1 was launched in 1967 and would go on to form the foundations of radio programming to this very day.

Radio Drama

Radio Drama is storytelling broadcast via the medium of radio. As radio drama is purely audio all of the themes and emotions have to be expressed using dialogue, music and sound effects.
Radio drama became popular in the 1920s and by the 1940s was the leading form of popular entertainment internationally. In the 1920s people began to tune into radio dramas rather than reading books, playing games or seeking other forms of entertainment, examples of very early radio dramas are; 'Lights Out' and 'Danger'. In the 1950s people began to buy into television and so the popularity of radio drama disintegrated in some countries, but continued to thrive here in the UK.

The BBC produces hundreds of new radio dramas every year which get

broadcast on Radio 3, Radio 4 and Radio 7. Radio 3

has a reserve slot for experimental radio drama called 'The Wire' and broadcasts radio drama regularly, Radio 4 broadcasts many radio plays in the afternoon and regularly broadcasts the famous radio drama 'The Archers' twice during the day, and Radio 7 generally broadcasts old radio programmes.

The first recorded english spoken radio drama was 'A Rural Line on Education', this was broadcast on the american radio station KDKA in 1921, but one of the first radio drama broadcasts in the United Kingdom was the 'Danger' by the BBC in 1924. The French radio drama 'Marémoto', also known as 'Seaquake' was considered one of the most influential of the time but wasn't allowed to be broadcast in France because the government believed that the SOS messages in the drama would be mistaken for real distress signals.


One of the most famous radio dramas ever to be broadcast was Orson Well's 'The War Of The Worlds' in 1938. The recording was from a H.G. Wells novel about an alien invasion on the earth. The broadcast was an hour long and included simulated news bulletins stating that aliens were attacking the earth, these fake bulletins scared listeners because they thought the programme was factual but adverts were inserted during runtime to clear up any confusion. Afterwards the programme got a lot of bad press because it had been misunderstood and people thought it was deceptive.

Other famous radio dramas to be broadcast are 'The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy' and 'The Twilight Zone'. The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy was first broadcast in 1978 up until 2005, and it is still sometimes on. The award-winning science fiction/comedy programme lasted 26 episodes and was broadcast both in the UK and in America.
The Twilight Zone was originally a television programme but was converted for radio and was first broadcast in 2002. The series was broadcast on the radio in America but can be listened to online also.

'The Archers' was created by Godfrey Baseley who has written over 16,000 episodes, and it is one of the longest running radio soaps. It was first broadcast on the BBC Light Programme, then on the BBC Home Service and it is now broadcast on Radio 4. The Archers is set in rural England and is about a middle class family who own a farm.
Another poignant radio drama was 'Mrs Dale's Diary', the drama is poignant because it was broadcast from 1948 until 1967 and it addressed sensitive issues of the time, such as homosexuality. It was about a middle-class Doctor's wife who kept a diary of her daily affairs and one of the starring characters was a homosexual, this is significant because homosexuality was still illegal here in the UK until 1967.

The invention of television may have stifled the popularity of radio somewhat but for some programmes radio was a doorway to televison, and therefore to more fame. Television programmes and films that started as radio programmes include 'Little Britain' and 'The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy'.

Audience Feedback, Distribution and Target Audience

Our audience feedback showed us that our radio drama was generally well liked. The feedback helped because it gave us a clear idea of what people wanted and showed us what to improve if we were going to do it again. Most of the audience said they liked our use of sound effects and voice acting, they said that the sound effects created the atmosphere well and that the voices helped to create realism. Some people also said that they liked the way our radio drama was reminiscent of film, as well as radio drama, which is what we were going for as film noir is generally a style used in film.
The audience feedback showed us things that we needed to improve, such as the volume levels in some of the scenes as the effects were a little loud and distracting from the characters. People also said that the theme tune was too long. If we did the radio drama again we would improve these things by monitoring the volume levels better and by shortening the song, however we believed the volume levels were fine and that the long theme tune helped to set the moody atmosphere.

If our radio drama was to be aired it would be on Radio 4 weekly as a serial. Radio 4 is one of the best known radio stations for radio drama and already has serials such as ‘The Archers’, also as the target audience for Radio 4 is middle class intellectuals aged late 40s and up, the same as the target audience for our radio drama. Although we believe that older people would enjoy our piece, we are aware that people interested in film noir and many other age ranges would enjoy it too, most likely young men aged from 20 and up. For this reason if our radio drama were to be broadcast I would like for it to be on Radio 3 or Radio 7.

I believe that people older than 40 would enjoy our piece the most because they will be able to perceive and visualise the film noir genre better because there would have been more film noir text as they were growing up, compared to the amount of film noir text when people my age were growing up.

Attracting the audience for our piece was done by creating advertisements that clearly expressed the film noir genre which produced interest as it was quite an innovative idea for radio drama. We tried to use colloquial language people would have used in the 50s but would also understand nowadays, I believe this is a unique selling point of our piece as the style of discourse is reminiscent of what the audience would have heard in other film noirs but has its own modern chic.

Genre

The genre of our piece was noir, this affected the way in which we wrote it because we had to set a moody, sullen atmosphere without any visuals. We researched film noir and watched a recent film noir called 'Sin City', we decided to follow general conventions of film noir such as storyline and the type of characters. We also used 1950s colloquial language to set the scene.

The genre 'film noir' uses shadows and dark shots to create a moody atmosphere and includes themes such as crime, murder, sex and lust. Our whole group happened to be interested in film noir so we researched some film noir texts that we enjoyed, including 'Sin City' and 'Twilight Zone'.

Sin City is a film about a morally bankrupt metropolis with themes such as murder, deceit, love and a storyline of a misanthropist on a mission to avenge the death of his one true love. This is similar to the storyline in Transgression of Justice searching for the killer of his partner.

Transgression is also similar to the film 'A Touch Of Evil' which is an Orson Welles film. The film includes many negative themes such as drugs, racism and murder juxtaposed to one outlandish good cop who will do anything for reparation, much like Justice in Transgression.

Twilight Zone is a radio drama in the style of film noir, we listened to it and decided we should construct our radio drama in a similar way to how the Twilight Zone is constructed by using similar cues and links.

We tried to impersonate the film noir style using only audio, this meant we had to develop ways to create audio that encouraged the listener to visualise what's happening and get deeply involved in the drama. We did this by using sound effects that represented themes and ideas generally used in film noir. To get a crime enthused atmosphere we used helicopter noises and sirens, and for the scene between Abbey and Sconer in the restaurant we used old sounding 50s jazz music reminiscent of film noir texts and other public atmosphere sound effects. We also used a main character as the narrator to make sure the audience were fully aware of what was going on and could feel the atmosphere, this isn't a common convention in radio drama but it is used sometimes and I feel it was very effective.
As we opted to base our radio drama on film noir texts we chose to follow the same narrative conventions. Typically, film noir characters include the police, a villain and a femme fatale, so we wrote these characters into our piece. The storyline of our radio drama also held typical film noir values as it was a crime mystery about a policeman looking for the murderer of his partner.
The location was important to the atmosphere of the piece so we decided to set Transgression in Detroit, which is typical of film noir texts because of the aesthetic factors such as tall buildings which cast mysterious shadows, the hustle and bustle of city life and long dark back alleys, also underground crime thrives in cities such as Detroit. Although we couldn't show the audience our classic film noir setting, we hoped just by knowing where it was set the audience's imaginations would prevail. We also used city sound effects to create a busy, city atmosphere.

How does my media product develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

Our radio drama uses the same conventions as other radio dramas, such as voice, silence, music, sound effects and narrative. The style of our radio drama was film noir, we didnt really defy any of the general conventions of film noir but we werent trying to change it, we were trying to impersonate it. Other radio drama noirs include Criss Cross and Gaslight.
Even though our drama is a noir, it still shares many of the same conventions as radio dramas like 'The Archers' and 'Believe it or not!'.
Usually radio dramas announce the actors who appeared in the programme as the credits, however in our radio drama we chose not to reveal the names of the voice actors to make the drama seem more realistic.

Sound effects, voice, silence and music.

The four main elements of radio production are sound effects, voice, silence and music; we had to consider these elements carefully during the production of our radio drama.

We had to use sound effects to create atmosphere and realism in our piece and we attained sound effects by trawling through the sound effect libraries on the college computers and also by recording audio from the internet. We did this using a programme called Audio Hijack pro, this programme enabled us to record off the internet to use on our recording. We also recorded our own sound effects using college equipment, we recorded the sound of a door opening and closing because the other door sound effects we found didn't sound right on our recording.
I think we used sound effects competently in our radio drama, the sound effects I think work most effectively are in the opening scene when the siren and the helicopter go past. A doppler effect was used on the siren to make it sound like it was going past which adds realism. I also particularly liked the sound effects in La Boosh bar when The Sconer and Abby are talking, these effects are from the sound effect library and I like them because they really set the scene.

Here's a clip of the first scene with all the sound effects, Justice is at the crime scene in the middle of the city.

Here's the same clip, this time without any sound effects. This version was very early on in the editing stage before we had considered sound effects. This version is very rough and unrealistic as it has no supporting sound effects.


Here's a clip of the sound effects in the scene between Sconer and Abby. The sound effects here are the people talking and the 50s jazz music. These sound effects make the scene more convincing and add to the atmosphere.




We set our radio drama in Detroit to stick to the authentic film noir style which meant that we had to record with American accents, as opposed to our English accents, we also had to write the script in a similar way to old film noir scripts by using American terminology and 1950s colloquial language because this added to the realism of the piece. The accents and the strange lingo proved to be quite difficult at first because as we were afraid it might make our radio drama seem light hearted and we kept on slipping back into our original accents but after recording multiple times our accents improved tremendously and we had enough to use in post-production. We needed a lot of material to work with as their were some sound disturbances in our recordings such as page turning and noisy students, but recording multiple times meant we were able to get around any unwanted audio.

Here is a clip from Transgression to illustrate the American accent and language



We used music in our piece as a link at the beginning, after "previously" until the start of the episode, and to set the atmosphere. We found the a short jingle in the royalty free music archive at college and added sound effects to it to create a theme tune for our drama. We also found a 50s style jazz song in the archive which we used in the scene between The Sconer and Abby and added people sound effects to make it sound like people were talking around them.

Silence was the best way to indicate scene changes to the audience without complicating or cheapening the drama. Although it might seem difficult to decipher the sound of silence, it was obvious to the audience which silences were scene changes because the rest of the drama was generally quite noisy; with sound effects and ambient noises etc. Silences and pauses were also used within the script to add emotion and humanity to the dialogue.

Cues, links and style

Cues and links are used to fill space between scenes and cuts. In the radio drama we made we had to consider cues and links carefully to fit the style of our piece. The genre of our radio drama was noir so we used emotive music as the theme song which acted well as a transition from the opening scene to the second scene, other transitions we used were fades. Between scenes we used fades to silence which helped our piece sound more natural and flowing. We had to consider all of the cues and links in our radio drama when we were writing the script, we did this by writing paragraphs similar to stage instructions that only described audio. We included cues such as silences and atmospheric noises such as glasses being clinked and doors being opened and closed.

Here are examples of cues in our script:

"Previously on Transgression...."
(Cue a couple of seconds of brief pause)
(Begin theme music)

(Scene one fades out, cue a few seconds to show scene change and fade into scene 2)

(INT. LA BOOSH BAR- Night, jazz music is playing quietly in the background, the sound of a busy bar with various sounds of drinks being poured, general conversation and the sound of Abby's chair being pulled from it's table)

The genre of our piece was noir, this affected the way in which we wrote it because we had to adhere to a certain style of writing. The term 'film noir' is French for "black movie", this is literally because they are very dark visually as film noir uses stark shadows to create moody, dimly lit scenes. We tried to get this effect on our radio drama through audio by using atmospheric music and sound effects, this helped us to develop our film noir style. We also wrote our script in a traditional film noir style and tried to develop a film noir storyline, although our radio drama was just one part of a serial. The script was written using colloquial 50s slang which is often featured within the film noir genre, this gave it a more authentic feel and helped us to get into character when we were recording it.

Evaluation

The radio drama we created used the same conventions as many other radio dramas such as theme music and sound effects but our piece was based on a film genre which is heavily based on aesthetic style, which meant we had the difficult task of using sound effects and atmospheric music to set the dismal scene.

Social groups generally represented in film noir media products are private detectives who don’t play by the rules, high flying, wealthy women and seedy criminals. Our radio drama represents social groups similar to generic film noir but slight differences include; the detective in our piece works for the police and the femme fatale in our piece is the Chief’s daughter rather than an actress or a model.

The radio drama we created represents women with access to power as selfish, bloodthirsty, confident and malicious; this is based on the character Abby in our piece.

Abby will do anything to get what she wants, even if it means deceiving her own father and framing one of his closest friends and best officers.

Detective Justice was based on the generic film noir idea of corrupt law enforcement but was represented in a relatively good light,

making him somewhat of an anti-hero. Justice doesn’t agree with the depth of the corruption around him but he isn’t perfect either; he doesn’t mind bending the rules to get what he needs, however, he would never kill in cold blood. Based on the representation of Justice in our piece, the police are represented as a group of people who use unconventional methods to enforce the law and have a pessimistic outlook on life due to the hard times they have had to endure.

The Sconer is the criminal in our piece, he is arrogant, sly and hungry for power. The Sconer is said to ‘kill for sport’, this shows that he is uncompassionate and cold. This represents criminals in a very bad way, implying that they will kill for fun and show no remorse. The Sconer’s only ally was Abby, this indicates that he had some wealth and status because of her shallow nature and it shows that he has friends in high places, which implies that criminals are wealthy and can gain immunity to the law depending on who they know.

I researched radio drama and film noir using the internet, by watching films and by listening to radio dramas. We had to find out about film noir in detail in order to effectively impersonate the style for radio and I believe that watching old film noir movies such as 'Touch Of Evil' (1958) and 'Laura' (1944) helped to develop my knowledge thoroughly and using the internet meant I could read about the general conventions of noir as well. I listened to many radio dramas but the ones I found most helpful in developing my knowledge of radio conventions were 'War Of The Worlds', 'Twilight Zone' and 'The Archers'. We also had to use a file hosting website called mydatanest.com to host the clips that are on our blogs. The clips were uploaded to the website and we used the Html codes on our blogs that blogspot would understand.

We recorded our scripts using the microphones and radio equipment, the track went on to the Mac in the radio room and we put it on a usb to edit it in class. After recording our radio drama we used Soundtrack Pro to edit it. I had never used this software before but I had used Final Cut Pro which is relatively similar. The general idea and processes on both the programmes are similar so I didn't find it hard to work, it was mainly cutting the clips, adding transitions and adding sound

effects. All the other people in my group were familiar with different audio software and film software so we all had some understanding of how to work Soundtrack Pro.

I used InDesign to make my poster and radio listing page, this was easy because I learned how to use it last year. The only problem I encountered was when I was editing the picture for my poster. The reason I found this problematic was that I am not familiar with photo editing software such as Photoshop. I managed to overcome my photo editing problems by playing around with Photoshop and eventually getting the hang of it. To make the picture look older and more film noir I used a 'sketch' filter and desaturated the colours.

Original picture

Edited picture

Before making the advertising poster for the radio drama I planned it out on paper but when I finished this design on InDesign I decided I didn't like it so I started again and created a poster I was happy with.

First design of poster

First design of radio listings

Final design of poster

Final design of radio listings

I believe that the combination of our radio drama and my ancillary texts are very effective. Alone they all give the impression that the radio drama is in the style of noir but combined they fit together to represent the film noir style and atmosphere with professional looking aesthetics. If our radio drama was actually going the be broadcast the listings page would have helped create audience interest because the 'pick of the week' was Transgression. The pick of the day box has writing in it describing the radio drama with a picture of our 'poster boy' in 1950s apparel. The writing in the box says;

"Transgression made a storm in the radio drama world last week when it was first aired on Radio 4.
The moody thriller is set in 1950’s Detroit, deep in the shadows and dark alleys of a film noir atmosphere.
Stunning performances are given by all the actors, adding to the raw realism of the series, which compliments the compelling storyline and really gets the listener hooked.
This week Inspector Justice thinks he’s getting closer to catching the murderer of his partner, little does he know the murderer is closer than he thinks."

I think this write-up is attention grabbing and sells the radio drama well. The poster I made also represents the radio drama well as it is eye catching and clearly accentuates the style of the radio drama, leaving people who see it curious about the product.

Production Diary Log 17

Today we had a listening party in class where people from different courses listened to our radio dramas and gave us feedback. The feedback has been very useful in the evaluation process.

Production Diary Log 16

Today I finished my radio listings and we added some finishing touches to our radio drama, ready for the listening party next week.

Production Diary Log 15

Today I started making my radio listing double page spread. At first it seemed like a lot of work but after our tutor talked us through it and gave us some example radio listings I was able to get on with it and I made a lot of progress in just one session. Today we also continued editing the radio drama.

Production Diary Log 14

I decided to dress my friend up in 1950s apparel in order to take a picture of him for my advertisement and today I edited the picture using Photoshop to make it look older. I used the 'sketch' effect and desaturated the colours.

Production Diary Log 13

Today I started creating my poster on InDesign. I wrote a short, catchy tagline on the poster and thought about an image I could use. I wanted to keep the poster simple so I only put a small amount of text on it that explained when and where it was on. I didn't feel I needed to put much text on the poster because I felt that the picture and the tagline explained enough.

Production Diary Log 12

Today we hired out a camera so that we could take pictures for our poster, the original idea for the picture was that it would be photo-shopped so the figures would become silhouettes, however this didn't work out and we decided we'd gather our own images and continue to work on our own poster designs.

Production Diary Log 11

Today we researched noir more thoroughly and tried to make our drama fit the genre more by making more moody so we added more sound effects, which helped with keeping the atmosphere.

Production Diary Log 10

We added sound effects and audio to our radio drama in this lesson and started more detailed editing to make it sound more professional. This included changing the sound levels and cutting out anything that could distract the listener from the atmosphere.

Production Diary log 9

Last session before the Christmas holidays. Today we edited more and found some music we could use in or piece.

Production Diary Log 8

Today we applied atmospheric sound effects to the first scene and tidied it up to a respectable standard.

Production Diary Log 7

Today we started to design the advertisements for our radio dramas and continued to edit our piece. Simon played the recording to us in small sections and we shared our opinions and made corrections until we were all happy with it. We also looked for sound effects and appropriate theme and background music in this session.

Production Diary Log 6

Today we recorded a little more but mainly focused on editing. We used Soundtrack Pro to edit the radio drama and started by cutting it up and deciding what we would and wouldn't use.

Production Diary Log 5

Today we recorded the entire script twice, we did this so we could use the best bits from both tracks to get the most effective piece.

Production Diary Log 4

We began recording in lesson today and managed to record half of our radio drama. The equipment in the radio room was quite simple to use so it didn't take us long to figure out which helped our productivity.

Production Diary Log 3

The second draft of our script was finished today as we added the final scene to our script, the scene was the one me and Joe star in so we wrote it. We also added some cues and 'stage directions' to be added in using sound effects.

Production Diary Log 2

Simon and Kieran began planning the script in a coffee shop and then brought their draft to the group so we could all amend it.

Production Diary Log 1

Today we were given our project which was to write, record and edit a radio drama. We began planning our radio drama after brainstorming for a while about what it could be about and in what style, we eventually decided to base our radio drama on film noir.
We started the planning by creating characters and devising the narrative to fit the genre we chose. The story is about a detective trying to find the murderer of his partner and discovering more than he had bargained for along the way; the plot of our radio drama had to be typical to film noir narrative to make it obvious to the audience because of the lack of imagery.