Monday 25th February 2008

Today was our first session of Modern Live Audio Drama, or more well known as ‘my radio seminar’. I have to confess that this wasn’t my first choice of seminars, I was really hoping to get into Music Journalism because I always felt that it held more of an interest for me. That and the fact that I had done the same seminar the year before and had quite enjoyed it. So when I walked up to that notice-board and saw the group number for the radio seminar next to my name, my heart sank, just a little, but I was determined to make the best of it. I was a little apprehensive on my way to the class today, even though I was really rushing because I was late, and when I eventually arrived there 5 minutes late, my feelings of apprehension were not resolved. Brother Sloan has strict policies on tardiness and absenteeism, and I was given the task of writing a 2 page dialogue, as ‘the consequence for my actions, just like in the real world, where there are consequences to your actions’. So that is how it all started for me.

So as I sat there, brooding in my unwanted task, I started to think what is this course all about? Brother Sloan was telling us all about what he does and how the class will work, but I distracted by my own curiosity of the subject matter. What is Modern Live Audio Drama? I decided to investigate as soon as I got the chance, but first I had to write that 2 page dialogue, which, I must admit, wasn’t too bad after all.

Thursday 28th February 2008

So I have spent most of this week mulling about what is this course is all about. I have done my dialogue, I decided to write about a fictional break-up between two friends of mine who are a couple. My friend Jeanine, who makes up half of the dialogue, was less than impressed when she heard about it, owing to ill feelings that I would somehow ‘jinx’ her relationship through my fictional dialogue. I, of course, thought this to be very amusing and decided that if I ever had to write another ‘consequence’ dialogue, it would be another one between Jeanine and her boyfriend, Jason.

To have a fair understanding of this seminar, I think I should investigate where it all started. In this day of rapidly expanding technological advances, I thought the best way to first do this was to go to my all time favourite website: wikipedia.com. I entered ‘Modern Live Audio Drama’ into Wikipedia’s search engine, but no result with that exact name was found, instead I found a result entitled ‘radio drama’, I clicked the link and so my journey began. According to the result found, exact link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radio_drama, radio drama “is a form of audio storytelling broadcast on radio. With no visual component, radio drama depends on dialogue, music and sound effects to help the listener imagine the story.” I sat back after reading this quote remembering instances where I would be driving around with my mother when I was very young, and she would be listening to stories on the radio, which I now realize was Radio Drama. I couldn’t make much sense of the story line at the time, since I was too young to grasp the adult concepts, but I tried my best. Reading further on in the Wikipedia text on Radio Drama, it seems that there is much more to this than I first realized.

Monday 3rd March 2008

Today was the second session of the seminar, we all met at the Mendi Computer Lab, but first I had to find the place. I vowed to not be late again, even though another chapter of the Jeanine-Jason saga probably wouldn’t have been too painful, I made a concerted effort to be on time. I have a film tutorial just before this radio seminar, so I had just 15 minutes to locate the Mendi Comp Lab. I walked into the Beattie Building and walked up about 3 flights of stairs before I realized that I had to walk down about 3 flights to actually find the place, hidden in what could only be a below-ground-level setting. Fortunately for me, I was still on time, even after all those ups and downs… In this session of the class we started with the first part of what would become the collective script. It was decided that the script would be called A16, because this is the location in the Arts Block where the journey of this seminar first began. Max Cromarty and I were put in a group together, and we wrote a script called ‘Sandy’s Sexy Secret (with Patrick)’, in today’s 2 hour session. I thoroughly enjoyed this session and I’m really starting to enjoy this seminar.

Returning to my investigation of Radio Drama… According to Wikipedia, “Radio drama achieved widespread popularity within a decade of its initial development in the 1920s. By the 1940s, it was a leading international popular entertainment.” It all seems to have started in the United States, and according to historian Bill Jaker, A Rural Line of Education, a brief sketch written specifically written for radio, aired on Pittsburgh’s KDKA in 1921. Another radio station, KYW, aired an entire season of complete opera’s from Chicago starting in 1921. So this is where is all began.

Wednesday 5th March 2008

Continuing on my journey through the history of Radio Drama, I thought it wise to look to other sources too, so this time I ‘googled’ Radio Drama to see what I could come up with. I found a very interesting little tidbit of information when I found a site detailing The Mercury Theatre on the Air. Apparently, according to the site, “The finest radio drama of the 1930’s was The Mercury Theatre on the Air, a show featuring the acclaimed New York drama company founded by Orson Welles and John Houseman”. Exact Link: http://www.mercurytheatre.info/ I thought this was quite a bold statement to make, to say that The Mercury Theatre on the Air was the finest of its time. So I decided to see if I could gain insight into this show through some more research.

I found an article on the trusty Wikipedia about The Mercury Theatre on the Air. It states that The Mercury was a theatre company started in New York by Welles and Houseman, the company had success at first in theatre, but later moved onto radio in 1938. They were known as the The Mercury Theatre on the Air and the series included one of the most memorable radio broadcasts of all time, The War of the Worlds, which was aired on 30 October 1938. The show ran until December of 1938 without a sponsor, but was picked up by Campbell’s Soup and renamed The Campbell Playhouse.

Monday 10th March 2008

Today we returned to the Mendi Computer Lab to continue the work on our scripts and we picked the days on which we will perform our individual scripts, which is what Brother Sloan calls ‘the infamous (l)ottery’. I decide I would choose the 5th of May at 5pm, because I have a good feeling about the number 5. Today, funnily enough, Brother Sloan spoke about The War of the Worlds, which I had learned about earlier in the week in my research. The task was to find The War of the Worlds podcast somewhere online, where would we even begin looking? Since I had been appointed Head Writer (oh did I forget to tell you all this?) I decided that I would take it upon myself to find the link and share it with the rest of the class, so I started combing through google results for ‘War of the Worlds’. I eventually found the link and sent a mass email with the link, so that everyone could listen to it. The link is: http://www.oculture.com/2007/07/the_war_of_the_worlds_on_pod cast_how_hg_wells_and_orson_welles_riveted_a_nation.html. Quite a mouthful, isn’t it?

Since I had been appointed Head Writer, I was curious as to just what this job would entail, to think I started this seminar with apprehension made me smile when I realized how far we had all come since then. So in order for me to know what it means to be a Head Writer of an Audio Drama, I decided to do a little more investigation. I searched for a while, but couldn’t seem to find any solid examples of what exactly a Head Writer does. Brother Sloan said I would be overseeing the writing of the script, that all changes to the script would have to be passed by me first, and that I would pretty much be in charge of all aspects of the writing process. This didn’t sound too bad at all. We have to adapt the different scenes to make the script flow, so we have decided to meet on Friday to do the said adaption.

Friday 14th March 2008

Today the whole group met to adapt the script, needless to say Max was late, along with a couple of other people. But we didn’t make them write dialogues, because we reckoned Max probably has so many of them to write already, we didn’t want him to burn himself out. So we all went to Arts Block to try and find a room to work in, after many failed attempts at this, we strangely enough ended up in A16, we thought this was fitting so we stayed. Tamlyn had brought her laptop and I used this to add things to the script that I thought it required, just to make the script flow better. Once I had entered the ideas for changes in the script, Tamlyn agreed to adapt each scene to flow correctly, adding the ‘interruptions’ that Brother Sloan had requested we input. We decided that the ‘interruptions’ should actually be a news broadcast about a riot breaking out outside the Eskom building, owing to the recurrent load-shedding.

This investigative journey so far has taken me down quite a winding road of information regarding the history of Audio Drama, and I have decided to return to the beginning to take another look. So, as previously stated, Audio/Radio Drama really began in 1921, and was very popular by the 1940s. Although according to the Wikipedia information about Radio Drama, “With the advent of television in the 1950s, however, radio drama lost some of its popularity, and in some countries, has never regained large audiences. However, recordings of OTR (old-time radio) survive today in the audio archives of collectors and museums.” Most radio stations no longer produce Live Audio Dramas, choosing to instead broadcast recorded episodes of older Radio Dramas, but the BBC has chosen to do differently and still “produces and broadcasts hundreds of new radio dramas per year on Radio 4, BBC 7 and Radio 3, - On Radio 4 as afternoon plays, Friday evenings, woman's hour daily short dramas, Saturday plays, Sunday classic serials and on Radio 3 Sunday evening drama on 3 and the once-monthly experimental wire slot. BBC7 output tends to be comedy, sci-fi, 7th dimension - and predominantly archived programs.” Most people think that Radio Drama is dead, but as you can see, it is very much still alive today.

Monday 17th March 2008

Today, the 4th session of our radio seminar, was quite a fun session. We were back in the Mendi Computer Labs and today was the day we would record the third person narrative. In the first session of the radio seminar, we were spilt into groups of two, and we had to get as much information about the other person as possible. Jonas Hansen and I ended up together, we sat on the steps and got as much info as we could about each other. We had practiced it once before, but now we had to record it, and I didn’t even have my notes with me! So I decided I would do a mock interview with Jonas instead, and it worked out quite well. Jonas was made technical director, so he was in charge of listening to the recordings as they happened, and to make sure the recordings were clear and audible. Max listened to our recording because Jonas couldn’t listen and partake at the same time. It was a lot of fun listening to everyone’s pieces and made the session just fly by!
Back to the winding road of Audio Drama history, according to Wikipedia, “An important turning point in radio drama came when Schenectady, New York's WGY, after a successful tryout on August 3, 1922, began weekly studio broadcasts of full-length stage plays in September 1922, using music, sound effects and a regular troupe of actors, The WGY Players” This started off a trend in radio drama, but as stated before by the 1950s, with the advent of the television set, radio drama lost its popular appeal. Looking over the history of radio drama, this is quite a sad development. Before I started this seminar, I wouldn’t have cared that radio drama died out on a popular level in the 1950s, but now that I know more about it, it seems quite a shame. Although before radio drama became less popular, there was one called Lights Out (1934-1947). In 1951, American writer Arch Oboler suggested that Wyllis Cooper's Lights Out was the first true radio drama to make use of the unique qualities of radio: “Radio drama (as distinguished from theatre plays boiled down to kilocycle size) began at midnight, in the middle thirties, on one of the upper floors of Chicago's Merchandise Mart. The pappy was a rotund writer by the name of Wyllis Cooper.” This series is often remembered for its gruesome stories, which were accompanied by even more gruesome sound affects, but the series was well-written and could be seen as creating a standard in Radio Drama.
Thursday 20th March 2008
Well today is the start of our Easter Vacation, so I’m quite sure that I won’t be writing a blog on my radio drama seminar for a little while. I’m going on holiday with my parents, so I will produce another entry when I return.
Monday 31st March 2008
Well today was our first session and the first day back at UCT, since the Easter Vacation. I’m feeling rested and invigorated, and am ready to tackle the next term of Modern Live Audio Drama. In today’s session we were back in A16 and had to report back on our progress with our collective scripts so far. We each have individual tasks, so we each had to give individual progress reports. I told the class how the script was coming along and how Tamlyn had adapted each scene to make it flow, and that the script was ready to be used for auditions. Brother Sloan also gave us a little lecture today about Audio Drama, and he raised some points that I wanted to investigate further.
Most of the points raised my Brother Sloan are regarding Foley. Foley told us several interesting anecdotes regarding Foley, and spoke of how Foley is actually a film term and not an audio drama term. I returned to my genius friend, Wikipedia, and searched for Foley. According to Wikipedia: “The Foley artist on a film crew is the person who creates many of the natural, everyday sound effects in a film, which are recorded during a session with a recording engineer”, after reading that quote it is easy to understand why this term can easily be used in relation to Radio Drama as well. Brother Sloan also said that the term Foley is named after a man, and I found the first pioneer in the art of Foley, Jack Foley. “The term Foley artist is named after Jack Foley, one of the earliest and best-known Hollywood practitioners of the art. Foley began his career in the film industry as a stand-in and screenwriter during the silent era, and later helped Universal make the transition from silent movies to talkies.” What an interesting man Jack Foley must have been.
Thursday 3rd April 2008
I think Jack Foley must have been a very interesting man, owing to his very interesting profession. I decided to find out a bit more about the man named Foley. According to Wikipedia: “Jack Donovan Foley (April 12, 1891– November 9, 1967) was the developer of many sound effect techniques used in filmmaking. He worked on the pictures such as Melody of Love, Show Boat, Dat Ol' Ribber, Spartacus, and Pink Submarine. He is attributed with inventing the art of Foley, which is the process of adding sounds effects such as footsteps and environmental sounds to films and video games.” Exact link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack_Foley I also found another source, a website called ‘The Art of Foley’, exact link: http://www.marblehead.net/foley/jack.html On this site you can find the story of Jack Foley, apparently quite a fascinating man. The site states: “Jack Foley started in the motion picture business in the silent picture era and lived through the exciting times when overnight the industry converted to sound moving pictures.” So even though Jack Foley worked in the film industry, his work is still a shining example and inspiration to all Foley artists, whether they are working in radio or in film.