WEEK ONE

Tuesday 26 February 2008

Last week I spent my first night at the Guest House my parents have just taken over. Pebble Beach, as it’s called, is a breath of fresh air after living in the mad bustle of Johannesburg for so many years. Backed by the Voelklip Mountain it sits propped on the rough of the 21st hole of the new Hermanus golf course. Unfortunately due to the head-splitting Monday morning traffic through Sir Lowry’s Pass coming back into Cape Town I missed the first media lecture of my third year at UCT. I saw my Media buddy later that day and she informed me that in the lecture a bunch of seminar leaders had come into the venue and given a quick blurb about the seminar they were each offering. She then handed me the seminar choice form. Not knowing about each seminar in detail I chose Advertising as my first choice (as I’m hopefully going to be doing a post grad in Advertising next year), and Audio/Radio drama as my second as it is a field I’ve always been interested in. I popped my application into the course administrator’s box.
Monday afternoon brought a greatly unexpected surprise by the name of Brother Sloan, an American guy with somewhat alternative teaching methods. He gave the class the chance to bail out before formally registering for the seminar, and told all the rest of us to meet him upstairs in his office for admin reasons. Back in the classroom about half an hour later half the class had vanished into thin air (or course co-coordinators office) and the “survivors” sat ready in room A 16. I was one of them. Brother Sloan seemed to warm a lot easier to this smaller group and so we began.
So, my first assignment is this right here. A blog. A pretty exciting task as I enjoy reading a blog called 2oceansvibe.com, but without a little push I’d have been way too lazy to ever sit down and try it myself. So what’s a blog? Important starting question, and probably the question that would’ve started my blog with if I didn’t always have so much to say on the way to my point. What is a blog? According to www.marketingterms.com a blog is defined by “A frequent, chronological publication of personal thoughts and Web links.” They go on to say “A blog is often a mixture of what is happening in a person's life and what is happening on the Web, a kind of hybrid diary/guide site, although there are as many unique types of blogs as there are people.” Basically what I’ve gathered from this is that a blog is all the thoughts that run through my head in one day, personal thoughts, opinions, world news, being put into a user friendly quasi-academic format. Also I’ve gathered that a blog is never to be preached as fact but always to remain opinion that is open to interpretation. It can (and in my case will) be academic, but doesn’t require a formal tone or structure.
So as I said earlier I’ve embarked on this Radio Drama challenge. I would be lying if I said say that after my first seminar I wasn’t petrified of what was to come. But I feel I’ve figured out the trick to staying on top of it pretty quickly. I’ve decided to actively enjoy this seminar. I’m going to try and blog daily and stay real in this entire process. For instance I arrived late to my seminar and as punishment was instructed to write a two page dialogue on ANYTHING. I found it a little weird that I wasn’t being properly instructed but after reading the course outline I discovered that that was the point of this course. I had to think for myself in a very loose framework of instruction. So that night I went out to Forries (the proverbial UCT waterhole) for a drink, and whilst sitting there encountered a very hostile conversation between friends of mine that had just met. I decided it would be my material for my dialogue as I found it intriguing sitting in the middle of such an awkward conversation, and thought that others would find it interesting to find in a midst such a mundane task.
I was intimidated by the seminar. Particularly I was intimidated by the lecturer. But whilst finding definitions for Audio drama, and community radio I googled him and checked out his page www.ajsloan.name. In there I found an article by Zenzile Khoisan from the Cape Argus on January the 16th 2004, in which Brother Sloan is termed the ‘funk man’. Turns out my intimidating lecturer is an award winning radio drama producer, and suddenly its clear to me why he may have seemed a little impatient when it came to the whims of third year university students.
So enjoy my blog over the next few weeks as I discover the ins and outs of audio drama.

WEEK TWO
Tuesday 4 March 2008
Last week Anthony got everyone in the class to say a word, any word on their mind, and then he wrote it on the black board along with a place associated with that word. We then took a class vote for our favourite places on the board and wee left with:
Beach
Restaurant
Theatre
So from this we created a fictional “Sun City-esque” resort called A16, in which our course collective modern live audio drama will occur. So our characters so far are:
Sarah the Manager
Gustav the chef
Mandy the waitress
Patrick the waiter
Gertrude and Jorgen the cleaners
Glen the events co-coordinator
Sandy the bartender
Tanji the lifeguard
Pretty ridiculous names, I have no idea where our class gets their odd ideas from! So anyway, once we had all of this down we paired of and wrote short dialogues between the characters. Myself and my partner Labeeqah worked really well together and this is what we eventually came up with:
A16
By The Class
Mandy and Gustav
Kara Morland and Labeeqah Jacobs


Kitchen noise.

Mandy
Gustav the customer asked for the LONG, LONG carrots, not these short floppy ones.

Gustav
Well tell the customer we don’t serve LONG carrots here anymore. Perhaps if its long carrots she’s looking for she should find a new restaurant!

Mandy
What are you talking about Gustav? Just put the long carrots in for her, this lady’s working on my g-strings! Ugh!

Gustav
Amanda! I’m telling you that this restaurant does not serve long carrots! What restaurant do you know of that serves long carrots? Where have you been working all this time that you don’t know this? Now get out of my kitchen I’m busy!

Mandy

Fine! I will get out of your kitchen! But don’t blame me if I don’t come back, you don’t know how to treat your workers! (In a whisper)
Gustav, you’re treading on thin ice my boy.
Mandy storms out

Door opening
Gustav
Uh... Amanda? Um may I see you in the cold room please?

Mandy
What for?! All I am to you is some…

Gustav
AMANDA! I… I need you to help me do a stock take of the baby carrots. I think we should consider getting the long, hard ones.

Mandy
Ok. Finally you’re listening to me!

IN THE COLD ROOM
Buzzing freezer sound
Gustav
Mandy, finally I have you alone. I know what you meant by the long, hard carrots you naughty little minx…

Mandy
What are you talking about now Gustav?! I’m confused.

Gustav
Well, I’ve got your long, hard carrot now…

Mandy
Well give it to me then! This woman is… Oh! Oh no no no Gustav! I just realised you’re the short, floppy carrot?

Gustav
Now why don’t you lock that door and come over here to me…

Mandy
Who do you think you are!? You think you can just treat me like that out there and then bring me in here and treat me like some cheap floozy? You’re becoming too attached Gustav.


Gustav
Oh no my little chocolate soufflé, you know all I want is to leave that dreadful woman I’m married to and be with you.

Mandy
One day baby, when we’re far away in our mansion in the south of France… But until then… I’ve got customers to serve! And just so you know, until you get me that villa I’m way beyond you my boy!
Slamming door.
Gustav
Oi vei! All women are the same. Amanda…
All of the scripts were quite good and all bordering on the lines of humour. We’re meeting on Friday the 14th to correlate all the segments into one showstopper of an audio drama! We’ve got a class made up of pretty headstrong characters so it’ll be interesting to see how it goes. Another really important lesson we learnt in today’s class was how to structure a script. As I’ve set it out above is exactly how it goes, it is colour coded so that red stands for ambient sound, green stands for live sound, and black writing on the right of the page is stage direction. Anthony gave us a little blurb on the history of stage direction which I must remember to research and add to this blog. Anthony also told us to listen to a famous audio drama called “War of the Worlds” which (even though it was from 1938) I enjoyed immensely! He told us that it created sheer chaos amongst the listening audience as they believed a staged alien invasion to be real, I hardly found that surprising as it really is quite authentic.
I still have this foggy area: Radio or Audio drama. What is it? As far as I know it’s the audio equivalent to a television sitcom. The clearest definition I found was on www.dramapod.com, where they spoke about a definition for podcast audio drama. I found this definition the most relevant as in this day and age we are more likely to be exposed to a podcast on the internet than to an advertised live radio audio drama.
“An important distinction between radio dramas and podcasted audio drama is that anyone can create audio dramas in the comfort of their own home and can reach a potentially huge audience via the internet.”- dramapod.com
I’m feeling way more confident in this seminar as I finally know what’s going on, and after listening to a few audio dramas (yes a few!) I really grasp what it is we’re trying to achieve! Next week we’re sorting out some course administration and voting on who our Head writer etc should be... Fun times lie ahead!

WEEK THREE
Friday 14 March 2008
WOW! We just had our group meeting about our group project. CHAOS!! Yip we are a headstrong bunch, but I really love what we’ve come up with! We’ve chosen to create disturbances in our script using the whole “Eskom load-shedding debarkle” as the interference. Once we got the idea our work just kind of took care of itself and a fantastic script evolved.
On Monday in class we voted and decided that Jerusha is our head writer, Max is the director, and Jonas is the technical director. I’m very confident in these three they all seem eager to sink their teeth into the challenge. Not too much more to report back on, everyone’s really getting into the course and we’re working well together. WOOHOO it’s the weekend!!

WEEK FOUR
Monday 17 March 2008
Happy St. Paddy’s Day! It’s 10pm and I’m at home doing a range of awe inspiring tutorials and assignments. Joy. I’m really quite proud of myself tonight I just completed a 13.5km run in preparation for the Two Oceans 21km marathon on Saturday! I have no idea why I’m including that in my Media blog but I feel it excuses me from working too hard tonight as I’m EXHAUSTED!
So class today was really good, got a lot of things done and understood a lot of things more clearly. First and foremost we learnt how to use a microphone, apparently when rappers and hip-hop artist grab the whole mic in their fist and scream “WATSUP CAPE TOWN!! HOW Y”ALL DOING TONIGHT???!!!” (Sloan, A. 17 March 2008) that causes a problem. We learnt that there is a sound field around the head of the microphone and tat we should talk diagonally across the field for the best sound quality. Jonas recorded all of us and proved to be a fantastic techie!
After recording ourselves speaking utter balderdash we took a vote to name the roles of the rest of the class in our collaborative audio drama. The results were as follows:
Graphic designers Amanda and Tammy
Publicist Labeeqah
Costume designer Nicola
Set designer Hemlata
Sound designer Your’s truly!
Foley artist Doza
Musical director Jerusha
Stage manager Lunel.

I’m really excited for my job as the sound designer! Can’t wait to get a portable recorder and microphone and head out on missions to get the right ambience and sound! I can however hold back my excitement for the mission to “Petros the Terrible’s” office to request the equipment! (Note to self: get letter of permission from the brother first, and don’t make eye contact at any stage). So I’m going to love and leave my blogging for now so that I can print out our script and make a list of all the sounds I need to record.
Until next week!

WEEK FOUR
Wednesday 19 March 2008
So it’s mid-week and as I told you on Monday I am the new Sound Designer for our class project “A16”, my first step in the process was to make a list of all the sounds that are going to be present in the production, note that this list is ALL the sounds not just the ambience sounds.

1. Kitchen noise.
2. ----Theme song jingle----
3. Mandy storms out
4. Door opening

5. Buzzing freezer sound

6. Slamming door
7. Telephone ringing
8. On the Telephone
9. Silence (ambience)
10. Waves crashing
11. Wind and people rioting

12. Gun shots and running
13. Kissing
14. Echo: “I’ve gotta good plan, what if I get the shoes for her! When she gets back they’ll be on her pillow in pink ribbons and I’ll get nooki for a month! Sweet man”
15. Dials number-Rings
16. SILENCE!! Call disconnected

17. Sandy re-enters

18. Wind



Because I compiled this list from our A16 script I had to simply rely on the authors of each piece to include their sound list and their colour coding of what was ambient sound and what was live sound. As only one group applied the colour coding that we agreed on, I will have to speak to Doza (the Foley) and deduce with him what is live and what is ambient sound.

The ArtsAlive.ca website is fantastic for finding out the basics of theatre, so I downloaded some fast facts pertaining to sound design to clue myself up before I started on my task. the site states that the sound designer’s work is completed before the time that the show opens; their work almost completely falls in the area of pre-production. An important word that was made clear to me through this reading was “SOUNDSCAPE” which is basically the collective for all the music and sound as a whole that make up the drama/piece. The article stated that an early meeting between the sound designer, director, and design team is essential in order to begin sufficient planning. While some directors, it is stated on ArtsAlive.ca, have clear ideas of what they expect/want from the sound designer, it is not unlikely that they would prefer to give the portfolio over entirely to the sound designer to compose themselves. Below is a very good table that I shall use as a guideline and a reminder when planning my sound design, I took this table directly from http://artsvivants.ca/en/eth/design/sound.html:

Another important fact I learnt from the site was that there are “five controllable properties of sound” (National Arts Center, 2008), these five properties being pitch, volume, quality, direction, and duration. By controlling these properties a unique piece is easily created. As I am already in the planning stages of my portfolio these are three “planning tools” as outlined by ArtsAlive.ca that I have begun work on:
“Plot: A list of all the music and sound cues for each act/scene. It indicates where the sound or music occurs, the page number of the script where it appears, precisely when it begins and ends, and the equipment that will be used to produce it.
System layout: A system layout shows the type and location of speakers on stage, on the set and in the auditorium. The system layout may also include a layout of how all of the sound equipment will be interconnected.
Cue sheet: A version of the sound plot to be used by the sound technicians who will run the equipment during the performance.” (©2008 National Arts Centre)
So that’s where I am for right now with my sound design portfolio, feeling confident and finding the information uncomplicated and quite user friendly up until now. Oh! Except one thing, I ventured into Petros’s office and he informed me that “Horrible radio production students, similar to me, have stolen all of the sound recorders. Now go away.” Great!

WEEK FIVE
Monday 31 March 2008
“Don’t be so defensive!”
“Don’t listen to me!”
“I don’t think y’all get this: THIS IS REAL!”
(Sloan, A. 31 March 2008)

Today’s lecture was utterly frightening, and yet very refreshing. We had to give an oral report to the class outlining where we stand with our tasks, through this a couple of unbelievable confusions and beliefs surfaced! These were the cause of the creation of the above quotations made by our course demystifier, Brother Sloan. People, unfortunately, thought that the entire production of A16 (our class project) was not real but rather all to be done “in theory”. Meaning that much of what was reported back on had, in fact, not physically been done but rather made up as a speculative event. This means that a few areas of our production started on a bit of a back foot, but there’s no need to worry as we’ve still got time on our sides. Another problem Anthony had with our reports was that every time he tried to give criticism (or even just feedback) we jumped down his throat on the defensive. He told us we should listen to each other more as that is the whole point of the course. One of his biggest criticisms of our script is that because we are using Eskom power cuts as our interferences we are facing the problem of one slot of “dead air”. We were dead keen on this silence, and didn’t view it as a problem but rather an effect that would make the whole broadcast and the interferences far more believable.
After Doza gave his feedback report we got onto the topic of the film term “Foley Artist”. “Named after the early practitioner Jack Donovan Foley” (www.imdb.com/Glossary/F) the Foley artists job is to create the live sound of a drama (any drama although it is a filmic term) out of imaginative material. there are really fun sights about Foley artists and artistry, one of them being http://www.marblehead.net/foley/ which says of Jack Foley “Despite the modernization of recording equipment and techniques, we still use many of the same time honoured ‘tricks of the trade’ (old wooden chairs still make great creaky floors). And performing Foley still requires studying the way people walk and move. Acting (or reacting) the role, is as true today as it was when Jack invented it many years ago!” (Rodrigues, 1995-2007). The ‘Art of Foley’ website really is great as it is filled with tips and ideas for original Foley sound, I’ll definitely be using it with my ambience sounds.
Anthony gave us an interesting set of definitions that adds to the clarity of the purpose of this blog; in terms of film a report is simply a report on what the film was, a review is what it was plus an opinion, and a criticism is what the film was plus academic (perhaps historical) backing. So a type of critique is what I am looking to fulfill with this blog.
That’s all for this week, next week Jonas and Anthony are going to begin launching our blogs online so I’ll finally have someone to write to!
Kara.

WEEK 5
3 April 2008

I’ve had a few thoughts today that I feel are necessary to this blog, so let’s use this post as a type of “accordion session” as Anthony would term it. According to Anthony an accordion session or slot is an extra amount of time which is inserted into a timetable, a broadcast, or any project really to allow for some leeway in time. Like the instrument it stretches out a time slot right in the middle of whatever is currently being worked on.

Reading over Hemlata’s blog I found an interesting line of thought in the fact that the reason we have found it so hard to find information on audio drama as a subject is because it is not a developed field in the past that we can now look back on and study. Audio drama is evolving before our very eyes! And it is so exciting to be a part of something evolving right now. This would explain why it is so difficult to deliver a historically apt account and placement of radio drama. In Tim Crook’s book “Radio Drama: Theory and Practice” (1999: pp5) I found an interesting passage along these lines:

“American radio history is complex and chaotically documented. It would be a brave scholar who confidently asserted that the first US radio drama had been identified with a particular date and on a certain radio station. There are some references, for example 1922 has been marked as the year when General Electric’s New York station WGY in Schenectady broadcast ‘the first dramatic series … and the first sound effects were used in “The Wolf”, a two and a half hour play on the same station.”

This subject is complex. Weeks along I still don’t know where it started or where it fits in, however I’m finding that my interest in and commitment to the subject is growing stronger by the week. At first I felt that this course lacked in structure and I found it incredibly confusing as to where we were going with it and what on earth it actually was! But I can happily say that I understand why the course is so loosely structured, it is for the very reason that i am learning and growing so much in it week by week. Nothing s being spoon fed, nothing comes easily, and everything takes personal commitment and effort. It’s a demanding course but it’s fantastic to educate oneself after all these years of having one educated by an institution.

It’s fantastic to have come to the realisation that we are a part of an evolving art; it has also caused me to fall upon the realisation that we are the revolutionaries Brother Sloan speaks of. I know I probably shouldn’t admit to not listening in class (especially not in an audio drama class) but I don’t ever remember hearing Anthony call us revolutionaries, this meant that the very first time I laid eyes on the word REVOLUTIONARIES in this course was on a file on Anthony’s computer. So it might be embarrassing to say out loud but it has just dawned on me: WE ARE THE REVOLUTIONARIES OF AUDIO DRAMA! Fantastic. I never thought of myself as the revolutionary type, and now look at me.

This anecdote aside, I have unfortunately realised that my blog is lacking in the academic side what it makes up in the anecdotal diary side. Alas I am going to have to (from my very next post of course) frame my blog in a far more academic structure, however I’m going for the label of “interesting and enriching” rather than “academic” to avoid ever falling into the trap of dullness.


WEEK SIX
7 April 2008

Today we had a student driven lecture, whereby we recorded the highlights of our blogs so far in front of the rest of our class mates. I think it was my worst audio drama experience yet, not to say that I have had many others mind you! I was first up and while I had reams and reams of information to deliver I completely froze and had to stop half way and begin again a little later. I was nervous to the point of sweaty palms, which was terrible as I’m not a nervous person. After discovering from the course demystifier that I was not doing what he wanted I launched myself into a further series of failed attempts of what he wanted. He was truly merciless today and for the first time since junior school I had to fight back bursting into tears! All in all it was a terrible session but I learnt a thing or two from my class mates.

Lunel, an Afrikaans class mate of mine, spoke about audio drama in a very personal way which contextualised the form for me greatly. She decided to look at audio drama in terms of her culture, and reported to us that the Afrikaans radio station “Radio Sonder Grense” (Radio Without Limits) or RSG as it is also known, still uses and produces the form today! Finally! A South African audio drama still in operation; Halleluiah! Apart from my grand parent’s tales of “When I was young we didn’t have any television sets to watch…” I had not heard of any South African audio drama. So it feels good to know it’s actually alive and pulsing among us.

I also learnt something from Anthony through his criticism, he told us (after just about all of us read about it from our blogs) that our definition of where the term “Foley” came from was a little off track. We all claimed that the Foley artist was named after the early practitioner Jack Donovan Foley; while it is true it was actually a director who hired Foley who won him the honour of being so legendary. He was a rather ordinary Foley artist in fact, but the ravings of his employer are what got everyone talking, and it was in a rather jestful manner that the term got its name.

After feeling a little down and discouraged about my blog after today’s lecture I have found the following in an attempt at reigniting my flame for audio drama, it is from a chapter called “A creative Anarchist” in the book “No Static” by Quincy McCoy (1999: pp5) who seems fresh and has fantastic ideas:

Individual Creativity

• Learn as much as possible about whatever it is you want to do. Inspiration rarely comes unless we have immersed ourselves in a particular subject.
• Go against conventional wisdom. Don’t follow rules; break them and be different.
• Daydream. Let your mind wander, and write down key images or words to help bring insights for problem solving.
• Brainstorm. Usually considered a group technique, this is also an important method of private idea-generating. Record every single idea that pops into your head. Make no judgements or evaluations as you come up with ideas. Think logically. Don’t reject ideas because they don’t “make sense”.
• Imagery: The right side of the brain communicates with images rather than words. Think in pictures and tap into your senses. Look for qualities in the images rather than the literal meaning. The more clearly you can create an experience in your mind, the easier it will be for you to dialogue with your intuition and change those images into words. Use metaphors.
• Relax: don’t grapple with a problem for too long. Take up a relaxing activity (meditation, swimming, hiking, biking, T’ai chi); often the solution will pop into your head.
• Fun: Let yourself go- be loose and spacey. Don’t always be serious. Adopt a more devil-may-care attitude towards pleasing other people and always being right. Get in touch with your emotions. Feel. Trust your heart, not your head.

It feels great to know that even someone who is established in his field has experienced, at some time or other, the problems that I have faced today.


WEEK SEVEN
15 April 2008

Today Anthony cleared up a few things for us as far as our assignments are concerned. He explained that by “blog weave” he meant a scholarly article drawing from all of our classmates online blogs. A quilt of all the information gathered by our peers (and ourselves) over the past few months.

Secondly he explained to us why we may not act in our individual audio dramas that we have been creating. At first this instruction was met by resistance but I think that by the end of the class all were in agreement as to why this would be a bad idea. Anthony explained that distinct roles in audio drama are created for a reason; there is a reason that we have a director, who is a separate entity to an actor, who is a separate entity to a foley artist… and so on and so forth. It would simply be far too big a portfolio for one person to manage, and would probably result in the demise of the show.

We chatted among ourselves about our blogs for a fair amount of time and drew ideas and original thoughts from the discussion, as well as shared our own experiences. Anthony explained to us that this is exactly what blogging is! It was great to see one of our assignments in such easy practice.

Our discussion grew into a very bold question from one of our classmates, Max, who wanted to know if there was any such thing as “adult radio”. I have no idea where the question came from, however it was an interesting one that Brother Sloan was happy to discuss. He told us that he preferred to exclude material of a pornographic nature from any of his productions. He clearly sees radio as a still almost pure medium, and while he explained he was certainly not a prude he believed that the growth of pornography of any kind was destructive. In a world where disturbing sectors of pornography, such as child pornography, are growing and need to be curbed it seems necessary to avoid promoting any affiliation of the industry. I agree with Anthony here, and on top of this I believe that keeping sexual content out of the form can also only help to spur on creativity. Why you may ask? Sex sells. We know this as we are the consumers mindlessly absorbing the easy seller that is constantly in our face. We see it everywhere, television, Hollywood films, artscape films, news headlines, and even on stage. Drama students on UCT’s Hiddingh campus seem to rely more and more on the notion that sex sells, and it has almost come to be that if a student has no inspiration for how to add an edge to their performance, they perform it in the nude (perhaps splashed in dramatic colours of body paint). Frankly its boring, and lacking in creativity, the art form of audio drama can only benefit from drawing on other creative inspirations and delving deeper to produce originality.

On the note of creativity, I have completed my individual audio drama script, it is called “Pebble Beach” and more than that I will not share with you until after I have performed it. After putting it off for so long due to not knowing where to start, I started! And low and behold it was so much easier to just start and just write, the creative juices flowed and before I knew it I was having fun. I got a few starting pointers from Tony Palermo’s website called www.ruyasonic.com as well as Tim Crook’s tips on www.irdp.co.uk. I have listed a few of my most helpful finds below:
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Here are some off-the-top-of-my-head suggestions toward a method to adapting other works for radio. A lot of this advice applies to writing originals too. It's not the only method, but it's what I use.
1) Read through the work. If it's a classic with Cliff notes available, read the notes too. They'll give you sketches of the major characters and the action of each scene. If no notes exist, turn the story into a "treatment" or "scenario" describing the plot, characters and "sub-text" (what's really going on in a scene).
2) Rewrite the story as a brief treatment--something similar to how you would recap a movie when someone asks "What's it about?" What you recall is what you should use to adapt.
3) Try to find the traditional three-part structure to your treatment:
Beginning-Middle-End (or Normalcy---> Conflict/Problem---> Resolution.)
Building tension --> Engagement (escalating thrills/involvement) --->The climax.
4) See how your treatment works as a story. Decide what scenes to keep or combine or delete. Be merciless in cutting out "off topic" sub-plots and characters--especially characters. Look for the drama in a scene.
6) I then list out the scenes I must include and then write out a "requirements document" for each: Purpose of scene, Characters, Action, Subtext and discussion of direction, Sound Effects possibilities, ending dialogue line. This gives me the "marks" I must hit. I always avoid writing a scene until I know exactly where it must go--it keeps my writing from meandering around. Once your characters start talking, their conversation can stray all over the place and when that dialogue is written, I find it harder to edit. I tend to get married to the lines.
7) Now, "Radio-ize" your story.
Limit the number of characters speaking in a scene. This is very important. I generally find four characters are the max that the radio audience can handle without confusion settling in as to who is talking. Crowd scenes are different, but you'll need to keep tagging lines with "But, Inspector Rufflethorpe! How can you believe a woman murdered..." "It's easy, Col. Frothingham. Those cockroaches were only HALF-eaten..." Using actors with distinctive voices helps, but the blindness of the radio stage can still confuse the audience. Clarity is everything--never confuse your audience--unless it's on purpose.
Put some action into a scene--not necessarily a plane crash, but don't let pages and pages go by with no music or sound effects. Try to select scenes that have some action, otherwise you risk lulling the listener to the point of tune-out. Old time radio writers would often say, "You need a sound effect every 1/2 page"
Your job as a writer is to delay the bad happenings as long as possible--thus creating suspense.
Tell! Don't Show.
Your main character must have the sympathy of the audience. Your audience has to identify with your main character. If this does not happen you have created a failure. Booo!
Get your listener inside the world of your play. How?
a. Sympathy or empathy with the main character.
b. A bloody good set up.
c. A big, nasty antagonist or villain.
d. Great Plot...Great Story....twists and turns.
e. Crisis at the beginning is dramatic and a great start.
f. Emotional intensity. Hit some high points.
g. Escalating conflict so the structure climbs with tension and humour.
h. Strike the colours with detail so there's an atmosphere, mood...ambience.
I. Modulate charm with alarm...humour with tension...tension with humour...funny policeman nasty policeman.
j. Surprise, surprise...that's what you do to the listener, through the plot.
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At the end of today’s lecture we watched “The Altered Boy” a production put on by Rhodes students in three days. While it was evident that it wasn’t rehearsed it was still a great piece of work, all factors considered. It gave me a few pointers for my studio drama too, such as making sure my speakers don’t just read their lines as it loses the drama’s impact. I have also decided, after watching the performance that it works far better for men to play the role of males, and women the roles of females. I say this with absolutely no sexist preferences, but rather for the sake of clarity. One needs to remember that the listeners of an audio drama are just that; LISTENERS. They cannot see what is going on and thus rely on their imagination and understanding, and thus if a man is reading the role of a young girl in a play of a serious nature, the role loses its impact and believability.
Until next week!

WEEK EIGHT
22 April 2008
As we haven’t had hand ins lately, and class consists more of observing than discussing, I have had a lot of time to think. And I have come to a great conclusion with regards to audio drama in South Africa. With regards to media in South Africa, radio plays a very important role. A radio is affordable to the greatest population of South Africa in comparison with a television, it is the most accessible as a large percentage of South African’s are illiterate and cannot read a newspaper, Radio stations (such as community radio stations like Bush Radio) are cheaper to run, and powering a radio is the most appropriate in the townships and rural areas as it is battery powered. Thus it can be agreed that a radio is a very important tool in educating a great many people in South Africa. However, the radio that is available to South Africans mostly consists of music shows, talk shows, and news broadcasts. Other than music there is very little to escape into in terms of South African radio and, at the risk of sounding condescending, township and rural life are anything but easy and are often rife with hardship. I hope that by now the call for audio drama has become blindingly obvious to you! Audio dramas in the all of the 11 official languages of our country would offer a perfect route for escapism. A simple soap opera that people could listen to daily, in their own language, would allow for a lapse in the mundane and a brief interlude of joy and escapism. Funding would be the major stumbling block here and that is where my great idea has come from! Battery companies such as “Duracell” and “Panasonic” would benefit greatly from funding studios to create these audio dramas. By making professional and enjoyable audio dramas they will create a large audience who will also require their product (batteries) to tune into their daily show. It would be a small investment for such large corporations to make, and holds a promise of great return as long as their target market are marketed properly.
I really enjoy having some time to think in this course, as ultimately that is what blogging is all about.

WEEK NINE
6 May 2008
Yesterday I watched the first half of my class perform their audio dramas. They were very enjoyable, and a great array of creativity. I marked under the following criteria:
Content
Sound
Costume and acting
Professionalism
I found the following in Crook’s book with regards to dialogue:
“There are a number of essential principles which distinguish the dialogue of drama from the conversation of real life. the language used by characters must be a response to a situation, plot or action. The exchange between characters should be a response to each character in the scene. Dialogue can serve an excellent function as comic relief during intense and emotionally overladen sequences. However, humorous dialogue is not simply a matter of characters cracking jokes, but he construction of carefully crafted lines responding to the dramatic situation. The dialogue should also be written and constructed so that scenes are connected. Such lines and exchanges can serve as effective conscious and subconscious transepts.”
I felt a few of the audio dramas today lacked in a storyline. I feel that if I were to sit down and listen to an audio drama I would want it to be going somewhere rather than a snippet of dialogue out of a stranger’s life. Listening to everyone’s dramas yesterday really inspired me to work hard on mine for next week and make sure it was polished and professional rather than juvenile.
I really enjoyed facets out of everyone’s dramas too though; Jonas’s was very well timed and his music and Foley were very professional. I also liked his mixing of two languages yet still having an understandable plot. Lunel had great, vibey audience interaction. Max had a great idea and obviously practiced enough to pull off a funny musical.
So I’m looking forward to reporting back to you next week once I have finally performed mine.

WEEK TEN
12 May 2008
I finally performed “Pebble Beach”, it went quite well except I felt it lacked in energy a bit. Otherwise all else ran smoothly. Here is a basic run down of the piece:
“PEBBLE BEACH”

CHARACTERS:
Margaret Hamilton
• Guesthouse owner
• Kind hearted
• Elderly- mid to late sixties
• British accent
• Level headed
• Well liked and known in the town

Jenny Van Tonder
• Police constable
• Forties
• English/ Afrikaans
• Tough on crime
• Professional
• Educated

Hans Slomkowski
• Guest
• Polish
• Mid fifties
• Pompous, stuck up, rude, façade, difficult, disrespectful, ill natured, unkind.
• Single bachelor
• Food critique

Burt Jacobs
• Gardner/ handy man
• Simple (bordering on slow)
• Coloured Afrikaans
• Adores Mrs. Hamilton (like a mother)
• Very protective
• Thinks it wrong that Mrs. Hamilton lives alone
• Honest, hard worker
• Has a pregnant wife

CONFLICT
Burt accidentally murders the terrible Hans Slomkowski.

RESOLUTION
Mrs Hamilton helps to hide it in often humorous ways.

SCENES
Scene 1.
The arrival of Hans Slomkowski to the jovial Mrs Hamilton’s guesthouse.
Introduction of characters.

Scene 2.
Hans discovers Mrs. Hamilton has accidentally forgotten to confirm his flight to Johannesburg and flies into a mad rage, she begs him to calm down but he flies toward her. Suddenly Burt appears out of nowhere and tackles Hans to the ground, accidentally smashing his head against a small brick wall. Hans is dead!

Scene 3.
Panic stricken and fearing for Burt and his pregnant wife, Margaret decides the best thing to do is cover it all up. She tells the people who are expecting him in Johannesburg that he is suffering a terrible stomach bug due to some off won ton soup that he critiqued the previous evening at a small Vietnamese restaurant.
Rolls his body into a rug and tells Burt they shall hide him in the wine cellar until she figures it out and sends him home.

Scene 4.
Early morning visit from Inspector Jacobs looking for a missing polish man. Humorous events to cover the situation up.
Ends with the decision to dump him into the sea.

Scene 5.
Two weeks later Margaret, happily watering her herb garden, gets a visit from Inspector Jacobs.
They have tea and he tells her the polish food critic still hasn’t showed up.
She comments on how terrible it is and feels relieved she got away with it.
As he leaves he makes a comment letting her know he knows exactly what happened but he chose to let it go because they were good people and he wasn’t.

I enjoyed how easily this story came to me; I started this blog at the same time hat Pebble Beach Guesthouse became my mom’s new home so I though it appropriate that the two went hand in hand! Next week we are performing A16, I hope it goes smoothly as we’ve all worked hard on it and it deserves to run smoothly.