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WEEK 1: Modern Audio Drama

The most difficult part of writing a blog is perhaps starting it, and ironically, the only way to overcome this difficulty is to start the blog and amaze oneself at how quickly one gets into the groove, so to speak.

And so, I start… This seminar is different from anything I’ve ever done before in many ways.

There are many aspects of the seminar that I could describe to exemplify this, but the one I am going to talk about today is our relationship with the concept of Modern Audio Drama.

Perhaps the most telling fact about the concept is that I hardly found anything on the web about it. This is because, as I was unable to understand earlier (perhaps out of incredulity that I could possibly be a co-pioneer of any sort), Modern Audio Drama is a field of study that is unravelling itself before our eyes; that is growing and developing itself as we speak.

In my attempts to gain a grasp on the subject, I happened to find the following in a blog entry by Mr. Sloan,

“What i said was, Modern Audio Drama is at phase in its development where we, toilers-in-the-field, are making and applying the rules. This means we correct ourselves with our own true sensibilities, rather than what we have been exposed to - to date.” (Source: http://uctcreativeminds.blogspot.com/2007/07/audio-drama-int ensive-week-at-uct.html, Accessed: 01.03.2008)

It was a slightly daunting, but overall an exciting discovery, because we were actually, as our ‘demystifier’ said in the course outline, potential “revolutionaries” in developing the art from of Audio Drama.

Audio Drama, as I learnt from Wikipedia, has existed for a very long time, and finds its origins in “very old traditions of storytelling and stage presentation” (Source: www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Audio_drama, Accessed: 03.03.2008). With the advent of new technology, Audio Drama has greatly evolved over the years. From being in the 1880s a rendering of theatre performances over the telephone, it involves today, one, or a combination, of the following production processes: live performance, multi-track studio, location production and computer-based production (ibid.).

And of course, the potential of the medium has yet to unwind itself completely…

In the course of my research, I was also to discover that the aim of Modern Audio Drama at Idasa is not just entertainment, as I thought it was. It is also an initiative to combat societal problems; as the Idasa website states, to create “new possibilities for…their communities” (Source: www.idasa.org.za, Accessed: 03.03.2008). This makes Modern Audio Drama an attempt to impact not only the realm of art, but also society at large.

I am truly excited to be part of this seminar, because what appeared as haziness at one point is actually an invitation to the exploration of possibilities.

WEEK 2: Some theory on Audio Drama

Today we presented our third person narratives in front of the class and wrote scripts for our collective drama, which was a lot of fun. It was amazing how we had come up with something so creative in such a short span of time.

Amanda and I came up with the following for Gertrude and Jorgen:

Gertrude

Jorgomi!!!!!!!!!

Jorgen

(Coming in)

Oh God there she goes again…

Gertrude

Jorgomiii, come here. I call you. Come here now I say.

Jorgen

Number one, it’s Jogen. Number two, stop bugging me. Number three… oh whatever, what happened now?

Gertrude

Where you put my broom? I give you to use now it gone.

Jorgen

You give me to use? Same way you acted in ‘Pretty Woman’?

Gertrude

You stupid boy. What you say? I tell you I meet Richie when he come to A16, and what you do? You just laugh.

Jorgen

Yeah okay, whatever makes you happy. Hey, did you hear about Gustav?

Gertrude

What he done now? Oh did he cook with dirty hand again, you that Gustav, he-

Jorgen

(Interrupts her)

No Gertrude, he’s having a thing…you know, thing thing?

Gertrude

What? He sick? Because his dirty hands? What thing? But I see him just now, he’s fine fine. Oh, poor child.

Jorgen

Oh God, what’s with you and hands? Don’t you know about him and the waitress?

Gertrude

Mandy? No. you tell lie. Mandy only 16. That no good. Where you see this?

Jorgen

Where did I not see it? So, you really don’t know anything?

Gertrude

You naughty boy. It bad to talk about others and make lies. I go get my broom now in store room….

(Walks away talking to herself)

Jorgen

(Sighs)

Before our seminar, I had showed my ‘Week 1’ blog to Mr Sloan and he explained that I should be more academic, because the blog is actually a combination of a diary entry and an academic paper.

And so I found a very useful book at the library called Radio drama: Theory and Practice by Tim Crook (1999, London & New York: Routledge).

Some of the interesting things I learnt from the book are summarized below:

• The Theatre of the Mind
Marshall McLuhan: “I live inside the radio when I listen. ‘The Medium is The Message’.” (p.1)

In the same light, Crook argues that audio drama is not just a “sound phenomenon” (p.7) because the audience of an audio drama create, as they listen, “an imaginative world based on image and fully separated from the eye as a camera” (ibid.)

• The Challenge to Radio
Rudolf Arnheim: “The essence to broadcasting consists just in the fact that it alone offers unity by aural means … The sensory preponderance of the visual over the aural in our life is so great that it is difficult to get used to considering the aural world as more than a transition to the visual world.” (p.11)

• The six ages of Audio Drama
1. The age of Oral culture or single-voice narratives (p.22)
2. The age of the Phonograph (1878 onwards) which made it possible to record and play back sound (p.22)
3. The age of the Cable (1902 onwards): this allowed for broadcasting – “disseminating the same source to a wide number of individuals at the same time” (p.23) – and networking radio services to transmitters.
4. The age of the Wireless (1908 onwards) which developed “the potential for greater quality of sound transmission … through FM, satellite and digital transmission and reception” (p. 23-4)
5. The age of Optical Recording Techniques (1926 onwards) – an age of “symbiosis with film and television” (p.25)
6. The age of the Internet (1994 onwards) which was able to “deliver sound services to a mass audience” (p.26)

The book also covers other issues such as the theory and practice of writing, directing and performing audio dramas, which I will be discussing in my future blog posts.

WEEK 3: More work on ‘A16’

In our seminar today, we elected the Head Writer (Jerusha), Director (Max) and Technical Director (Jonas) of our play. Everybody was then assigned slots for their individual drama performance.

We also went through the seminar assignments and deadlines – which had me launch myself in a moment of retrospection (remembering the countless times when I have been doing things at the last minute) and I resolved to be better-organised this time. 

Mr Sloan also talked to us about ‘War of the Worlds’ by Orson Wells, which is a famous radio drama broadcast in 1938, that led many listeners to believe that aliens were invading the Earth.

(On listening to the drama later, I found that I was not surprised that people had reacted in this way. The drama had a series of news broadcasts that sounded very realistic)

We were to integrate the concept used by Wells in our collective drama ‘A16’, by inserting ‘interruptions’ between our different scenes.

On Friday, the script writers of ‘A16’ all met in A16 (!) to work on the draft of the collective script due in the Week 4 seminar.

We decided to use an Eskom ‘interruptions’ between our scenes. At the beginning, most of us thought that we were expected to use, like Wells had done, the ‘alien invasion’ story, but we discussed it and realised we needed something more pertinent to the present reality, and that maybe Mr Sloan wanted us to use Well’s model and not his concept per se.

WEEK 4: Recording of third person narratives.

In this week’s seminar, we recorded our third person narratives. Brother Sloan (Mr Sloan’s son’s younger brother ) explained to us how the recording device and microphone works.

For example, I learnt that when talking into the mic, one should not place our mouth directly on the mic because then the plosives /p/, /t/, /k/, /b/, /d/, and /g/ sound ‘hard’ because air is expelled directly on the mic. Rather one should speak into the ‘pickup pattern’ placing one’s mouth laterally to the mic.

Also, one should not obstruct the pattern in any way, by, for instance, placing our hand on the mic, like hip-hoppers often do.

To know more about recording equipment, I took a book from the library called Radio Production Worktext: Studio and Equipment (Fourth edition) by David E. Reese and Lynne S. Ross (1997, USA: Focal Press), where I was able to find more information on recording, of which I had no prior knowledge. Some of my findings are listed below:

• There are different types of microphones, and the ones that are most used in broadcasting are:
1. The dynamic microphone, also known as the moving-coil microphone and pressure microphone. It has as advantages the fact that it “produces very low self-noise, excellent frequency response”, can “handle extremely loud sound levels” and has a very sturdy design. However, its reproduction of voice is sometimes not satisfactory (p.53).
2. The condenser microphone, also known as capacitor microphone. This type of mic requires a power supply (unlike the dynamic mic, which used magnetic energy to induce current into the voice coil). It “produces excellent sound quality and wide frequency response.” However, “because all condenser mics are powered, the electronics of the mic can produce a little noise, and there is a limit to the sound level signal a mic can handle” (p.54).
• There are also several types of microphone pickup patterns: the omnidirectional, or nondirectional pattern – the mic picks up sound equally well from all directions; the pattern is spherical (p.57), the bidirectional pattern – the mic picks up sound from the front and the back of the mic; the pattern looks like two mushroom heads joined together that exclude the sides of the microphone (p.58-9), and the cardiod pattern – the mic picks up sound from the front and the sides; the patter looks like a mushroom that include the sides of the mic but exclude its back (p.58-9). The mic we had used to record in class had a cardiod pickup pattern.
• Sometimes, the mic has, like the mic in class a foam accessory known as a windscreen to protect the mic from humidity and dust and to reduce the chance of a plosive sound (p.63)

The book also contains interesting information about other studio equipments and how they are used in broadcasting.

WEEK 5: Task reports and ‘Trapped in the closet’

In today’s seminar, we were supposed to report on our tasks.

During the vacation, I had thought about my role as set designer in our collective audio drama. In preparation, I read Brother Sloan’s email about the need for the set to be unobtrusive to the audience’s or the actors’ line of vision. My job was mostly about creating the general atmosphere needed to guide the actors and the audience. I also made a list of the required settings for our drams. These include a bar, an office, the beach, the kitchen, and the cold room, among others. I would need to visit Baxter theatre to see what the stage looks like and what facilities and equipment the people there offer.

At one point during the seminar, Brother Sloan told us about why there should never be dead air on the radio – because people tune in at different times. This is why Wells’ ‘War of the Worlds’ had caused so much panic, because a lot of people had tuned in after the disclaimer had been made.

He also told us about the origin of the word ‘Foley’ in ‘Foley artist’. It was actually the name of a person who developed several sound effect techniques. As I found out in my research, his full name was Jack Donovan Foley.

I also found more about radio sound effects. What I found really interesting were the different techniques given for creating certain sounds. For example I found the following on http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foley_artist (Accessed: 02.04.08)

Galloping horses : Banging empty coconut shells together
Kissing : Kissing back of hand
Punching someone : Thumping watermelons
Bone-breaking blow : Breaking celery or bamboo or twisting a head of lettuce
Footsteps in snow : Squeezing a box of corn starch
Star Trek sliding doors : Pulling a piece of paper from an envelope
Star Wars sliding doors : Flare gun plus sneakers squeak
Bird flapping its wings : Flapping a pair of gloves
Grass or leaves crunching : Balling up audio tape

I also found on another website http://www.old-time.com/sfx.html (Accessed: 02.04.08) other ways in which sound effects can be created. Some of these are “twisting cellophane (crackling fire) … blowing through a straw into water (boiling water), rubbing duelling foils together (skating on ice), pull wet cork from any bottle and then prick balloon (opening champagne), squeeze folded sandpaper (breaking eggs) and rattle used flash bulbs in a can of water (cocktail shaker)”

I think it was interesting to see what all one can create with the most ordinary things one sees daily but does not quite think about.

At the end of the class on Monday, we watched a drama called ‘Trapped in the closet’ which was very entertaining because it was a musical. It also helped me get an idea of what audio drama is about – conveying the visual to somebody who can only hear the sounds. It helps to see what is going on, but even if we didn’t, it would not be very difficult to understand.

WEEK 6: Blog reports

In this week’s seminar, we had what Brother Sloan calls a “student-driven lecture” where each seminar participant was to share what he/she had found while researching for the blog. I found it very interesting that we were being made to learn from, and ‘teach’ our classmates. The participatory nature of the class reminds me of the concept of community radio, which offers a forum for members of a community to interact, share and receive information that is of specific relevance to them.

It was a very informative session, as I was able to learn a lot from the other students.

As far as my own research for this week is concerned, I found a book in the library called The Powerful Radio Workbook by Valerie Geller (2000, USA: M Street). It’s a book for radio managers designed to help them with airchecking, which is "a session at which talent works with the tape [of a show used for review purposes] to improve on-air performances by expanding good habits and eliminating weaker areas" (p. xvii).

I guess, on an information level, it's not really relevant to what we are doing in the seminar but I sort of stumbled upon it by accident and started reading it out of interest. It was really a revelation to see just how much there is to radio, how much preparation goes behind what we so often take for granted. Most of the 'rules' (or preparation, performance and post-production) put forward by Geller seem pretty obvious, but they need to be acknowledged and consciously followed and that's what makes a great show, for often what seems 'natural', like a deejay chatting casually, is the result of talent and informed preparation.

As far as our audio drama is concerned, this book pressed upon me the importance of being extremely well-prepared, of foreseeing the task ahead, of being ready for things that might go wrong. As Brother Sloan puts it, we should always provide for "accordion time" and unplanned eventualities.

WEEK 7: Audio Drama experience and more theory on Production

I listened to the audio drama cd Brother Sloan gave the class. It was a very enriching experience. I have ot listened to much audio drama before, and I had mostly listened to dramas without really analysing them and without the understanding of the medium that I believe I have now.

What I found really interesting was that I found myself creating, as Marshall McLuhan would say (see Week 2 blog), a theatre in my mind. I could 'see' so much. It was cool to analyse the way I was responding to the dramas and see how what I had read from Tim Crook's book fitted in so neatly in what was happening as I listened to the pieces.

I particularly enjoyed the 'Wrong number' drama, as it was so captivating. I loved the way the suspense built up, and the final revelation that the old lady actually overheard the plans being made to kill her came as such a shock. I think it was a beautiful example of dramatic irony, because she herself had not realised what was going to happen to her. And I liked the concept of this fact not being made too obvious to the audience, for that amplifies the 'shock factor'. I got so involved in the drama that I was really sad not to be able to listen to the rest of it and know what follows.

The 'Answering machine' monologue was also very very good. The acting was so brilliant and touching. I was absolutely astounded. Even though I could not see the person, the voice conveyed so much emotion that emapthy was inevitable. Somebody in class said in the student-driven lecture, that a good drama is a combination of good acting and a good script. I think this drama is a very good embodiment of that idea.

I also like 'The family eish' because it was in typical soap opera style and also very pertinent in terms of the social issues of the present day. Brother Sloan's commentary was useful as it helped me picture the process that went behind the play.

I intend to share, in this blog, more information from Radio Production Worktext: Studio and Equipment (Fourth edition) by David E. Reese and Lynne S. Ross (1997, USA: Focal Press) because I think, as we approach the day for the performance of our dramas, a knowledge of production becomes increasingly important. So here goes... A summary of some of my findings - general information and terminology.

The Audio Chain - the process through which sound moves through the production studio

Antenna > Transmitter > Signal processing equipment > Audio console (consisting of the headphones, monitor speaker, mic, cd player and audio recorder)
- adapted from Figure 1.1 on p.2.

Sound signal versus audio signal

"When signal is naturally produced (for example, an announcer speaking into a microphone), we think of that sound as a sound signal, when that sound is then manipulated electronically (such as recordedon audio tape), it's called an audio signal" (p.3)

Radio hand signals

Standby - "holding one hand above the head with the palm forward" (p. 9)
Cue talent (you're on) - "pointing index finger ... at the person" (ibid.)
Cut (to terminate whatever is happening at the time)- "drawing the finger across the throat in a 'slitting' motion" (ibid.)
Give mic level (to announcer) - "hold one finger in front of you with the palm down and the thumb under the second and third fingers. Open and close the thumb and fingers in a 'chattering' motion to indicate that the announcer should talk into the mic so the levels can be checked" (p. 10)
Slow down - holding both palms face down and moving them away from each other slowly (adapted from Figure 1.12 on p. 10)
Speed up - holding the index finger up and moving it in a circular way (ibid.)

Microphone feedback - the 'howling' sound made when "a sound picked up by one microphone is amplified, produced, and through another speaker, picked up again, amplified again, and so on - endlessly" (p.61)

To avoid feedback, one should make sure "the distance between two mics is three times the microphone-to-sound distance", and not "operate headphones at an excessive volume" (ibid.)