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.