Before production we did some research to gauge an Idea of what a radio drama actually is, here’s a link to a source you could use to find out more and even listen to some samples: https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/category/drama (though do keep in mind that this wasn’t quite my original source, just saying)
over the past few weeks we’ve been working on making an audio drama that’s suppose to target teenagers (although after production, you’ll see that I end up failing to fully appeal to that kind of audience) like the kind you find on daytime radio where they don’t have visuals because, well… Radios (although I should point out that most modern radios have touch screen technology now)
Ok, what are examples of a Radio Drama
Well I did find some examples of what a radio drama is, the first one is known as The Letter Of The Last Resort
This one is about a woman (who is the prime minister of the UK) who has to write a letter of last resort to go to war with an enemy country, I think? (oh no, it’s a political drama, this is a trap isn’t it?), one thing I’ve noticed is how they use sound effects (I.E: when there’s writing going on they’ll insert some writing sounds so that you’ll imagine what’s happening due to a lack of visuals), another thing I noticed was how there was a brief intro at the start to slowly get the audience in the mood to listen to the story.
Another example of a radio drama is one called Foursome
so this one is about two couples who end up meeting up in a variety of restaurants throughout their 4 decades together, the use of a soundtrack is more prevalent here but is put in as ambiance to immerse you in the atmosphere, and the sound effects are mainly food and drink related things such as clanking forks and even the characters talking with their mouths full at times, this is done to sell you the idea that they’re in the various restaurants.
our third and final example comes in the form of one called Fridays When It Rains
now this one is different from the rest because there’s a narration throughout, though just like with the other radio dramas, there’s a use of sound effects for the train (which chugs throughout the story) and the characters footsteps for the sake of emotion. Another thing this one does more of is that it describes things such as places and characters through dialogue, all of this is done so that the audience is more likely to be immersed in the story (which is a spooky ghost story, wooooooooo)
One thing that’s shared across all of these examples is that they all last at least half an hour. (although radio dramas could be shorter or longer than that, It’s just a commonality between these examples)
You know, in looking at these examples of radio dramas retroactively (because let’s face it, one cannot hide retroactive meddling on the internet in this day and age), I’d say my favourite example from this bunch is Fridays When It Rains, the reason for this is because I could imagine the story playing out visually (unlike the others as you can tell) and there was also a consistent soundtrack to go along with it. (at least from what I listened to anyway, I didn’t have time to listen to all three all the way through, but alas, Friday ended up being my favourite in the end) My least favourite on the other hand was The Letter Of Last Resort, though that’s mainly due to the political subject matter and not any actual faults I had outside of it being boring. (I kind of find politics as a subject boring to be honest so it’s not the radio drama’s fault)
Production
during the start of production we had to write a story treatment and a script (the story treatment is basically a written lift pitch that summarises what the story’s going to be)
For example, for the treatment I made, I wrote the following (keep in mind this was written after I’d already decided on the name change):
Stair Treatment
The story will now be called Stairdevil (considering how Attack of the stairs is too generic of a title), It is about two dudes named Ceevil Norms and Rogo Renstive who die one by one because their stairs are decidedly evil. It is revealed later that this was all the narrator’s fault.
the original script for this was called “Attack of the Stairs” and was just a wee bit too long (the story had to be 2 minutes)
Attack of the Stairs
By Sam Gordon
NARRATOR
Some time in 2025, there were two friends, one of them was about to go somewhere, but little did he know his biggest obstacle would be his own lack of hindsight.
We hear a door opening
CEEVIL NORMS
Hey Rogo, I’m going shopping, you need anything man?
ROGO RENSTIVE
CEEV NOOO! THE STAIRS ARE EVIL, DON’T ASK ME WHY
CEEVIL NORMS
But why are the stairs evil?
ROGO RENSTIVE
I JUST SAID DON’T ASK ME MAN!
CEEVIL NORMS
Well I wanna know why the stairs are so evil, look at them, they’re stairs.
ROGO RENSTIVE
Because… they’ll make you fall down and possibly die.
CEEVIL NORMS
Really? They’ll make me fall down and die. That’s what your going with?
ROGO RESNTIVE
Well, yes. Because it’s true.
CEEVIL NORMS
*sigh* look Rogo, I like you. I really do. But your warning is just stupid, it’s like telling me radios are bad because the word radio is part of radioactive waste.
ROGO RENSTIVE
Uuuuh, but I overheard them talking last night an…
CEEVIL NORMS
No, I don’t wanna hear your dumb fantasy about talking stairs, good bye.
ROGO RENSTIVE
NO DON’T DO THIS YOU NINCOMPOOP
Ceevil then goes to walk down the stairs and then he falls down
CEEVIL NORMS
AAAAAAAAAAH OOF OW EEE AAH OUCH GUUUH OI OH *Burp* OW OH NO
We then hear a crash at the bottom of the stairs as Ceevil norms kicks an actual bucket, and then he kicks the bucket (in death form)
Rogo then shakes his head in shame as he looks at his now dead friend
ROGO RENSTIVE
Ceevil, even though you’ve died today, I just wanna say that YOU fAILED TO HEED MY WARNING YOU IDIOT, AND NOW YOU’RE DEAD WHAT ARE WE GONNA DO?
NARRATOR
How about you call the police
ROGO RENSTIVE
good thinking narrator
Rogo then goes on the phone to his police friend Po Lease
ROGO RENSTIVE (CONT)
(on the phone)
Yeah hello Po, could you come over, the stairs killed my friend.
PO LEASE
(on the phone)
uuuuuuh, just remain still and we’ll have you at the Looney bin in 6 minutes.
They end the phone call
ROGO RENSTIVE
Welp, only one thing for it
Rogo then tries to go down the stairs and then slips
ROGO RENSTIVE (CONT)
Whoa, OOF OW EE AH WHY DIDN’T I HEED MY OWN WARNING NOW I’M STUPID TOO OFF OW AAH EE OOF OWIE AAH OH NO BURP.WMV OOF OW AAH! OI!
Rogo then ironically dies in the same way as his firend
NARRATOR
And that’s how two idiots died from falling down stairs. *Whisper* with a little help from my banana peels. Heh heh. We’re dinny done folks.
it was immediatly after writing this that I decided the name was too generic, so here are some alternate titles I came up with as potential replacements
A vey Stairy Story
A stair filled night
Stair-der
the Stairy of a lifetime
Killer Stairs
Night of the killer stairs
Stair-mongers
after that I eventually came up with stairdevil before the making of one of the Blog Bogs
so after a couple of edits here and there came the second draft of the script
Stairdevil
By Sam Gordon
NARRATOR
Some time in 2025, there were two friends, one of them was about to go somewhere, but little did he know this trip would be astairding.
We hear a door opening
CEEVIL NORMS
Hey Rogo, I’m going shopping, you need anything man?
ROGO RENSTIVE
CEEV NOOO! THE STAIRS ARE EVIL, DON’T ASK ME WHY
CEEVIL NORMS
But why are the stairs evil?
ROGO RENSTIVE
I JUST SAID DON’T ASK ME MAN!
CEEVIL NORMS
Well I wanna know why the stairs are so evil, look at them, they’re stairs.
ROGO RENSTIVE
Because… they’ll make you fall down and possibly die.
CEEVIL NORMS
Really? That’s what your going with?
ROGO RESNTIVE
Well, yes. Because it’s true.
CEEVIL NORMS
*sigh* look Rogo, I like you. I really do. But your warning is just stupid, it’s like telling me radios are bad because the word radio is part of radioactive waste.
ROGO RENSTIVE
Uuuuh, but I overheard them talking last night an…
CEEVIL NORMS
No, I don’t wanna hear your dumb fantasy about talking stairs, good bye.
ROGO RENSTIVE
NO DON’T DO THIS YOU NINCOMPOOP
Ceevil then goes to walk down the stairs and then he falls down
CEEVIL NORMS
AAAAAAAAAAH OOF OW EEE AAH OUCH GUUUH OI OH *Burp* OW OH NO
We then hear a crash at the bottom of the stairs as Ceevil norms kicks an actual bucket, and then he kicks the bucket (in death form)
Rogo then shakes his head in shame as he looks at his now dead friend
ROGO RENSTIVE
Ceevil, even though you’ve died today, I just wanna say that YOU fAILED TO HEED MY WARNING YOU IDIOT, AND NOW YOU’RE DEAD WHAT ARE WE GONNA DO?
NARRATOR
call the police buddy
ROGO RENSTIVE
good thinking narrator
Rogo then goes on the phone to his police friend Po Lease
ROGO RENSTIVE (CONT)
(on the phone)
Yeah hello Po, could you come over, the stairs killed my friend.
PO LEASE
(on the phone)
uuuuuuh, just remain still and we’ll have you at the Looney bin in 6 minutes.
They end the phone call
ROGO RENSTIVE
Welp, only one thing for it
Rogo then tries to go down the stairs and then slips
ROGO RENSTIVE (CONT)
Whoa, OOF OW EE AH WHY DIDN’T I HEED MY OWN WARNING NOW I’M STUPID TOO OFF OW AAH EE OOF OWIE AAH OH NO BURP.WMA OOF OW AAH! OI!
Rogo then ironically dies in the same way as his firend
NARRATOR
And that’s how two idiots died from falling down stairs. *Whisper* with a little help from my banana peels. Heh heh. We’re dinny done folks.
as you can see, It’s basically identical to the first draft with a few changes here and there, that’s because I used draft one as a base to make draft two.
after this step comes getting some temp audio together in audacity (think of it as an the radio equivalent to a storyboard) so that I can time it out in terms of the audio.
the robot voices were made using the website known as note vibes.
this website allows you to type up to 500 characters (on the free version that is) and select which ro-voice you want to use (and the results are quite hilarious let me tell you)
for the human version with human voices, I had to do some thinking about how I wanted Rogo and Ceevil to sound and eventually, I landed on a David Attenbrugh esque voice for Ceevil and a sort of, perpetually worried sounding voice for Rogo, I landed on these voices because it makes Ceevil sound like he’s more of the rational one in this situation while Rogo, with his crazy sounding stair warning, comes off as the less rational man. in fact, now that I think about it, Rogo sounding less rational could also hint towards the reveal that’s its all the narrators fault that these two died.
I got to record my sounds for the project however, due to techincal difficulties, not all of the sounds actually got recorded (that and for take 1 of Po I tried doing my Hugo the Shape-shifter voice, but that didn’t work out so I chose a different voice for him) and even then, some of the ones that did aren’t of the highest quality (probably because I had the microphone too close to me when recording), although… I do have other options for recording the voices, mainly Dreams of the PS4
you see. This game allows you to record your voice and other sounds using a Playstation eye Camera’s Microphone, but the game also allows you to edit the sounds using tools that are similar to what audacity uses which means I could theoretically cut audacity out of the equation and basically bypass my technical issues, I also have more experience with the game (considering I play a lot of video games)
now, here’s the process I went through to do this conversion:
Now I can get cracking with the human version of the StairDevil
Now things were going smoothly with the human version, at first. Things started going wrong once I realised that when I recorded the audio the overall time ended up being O V E R Two Minutes (which was no good)
looking back, maybe I could have realised that attempting to replace the robots with humans in the same project file wasn’t such a good idea because the human audio overall ended up with a longer duration than the robot audio (because robots like trying to be the future I guess), so after a while of trying to fix it and a little advice from the unit leader, I decided to sit down, and start a new project file for the human version so that I could alter the speed of the human voices without too much trouble
Overall production was more of a challenge than I thought it’d be considering my Vocal range, but I think the main sticking point here was that I even made a version with Robots to begin with, had I just recorded all my Voice lines much earlier, this blog post would be well up by now and you wouldn’t be here reading it, but I didn’t, it isn’t, and well here we are. I also think that If I’d just sat down and re-recorded the whole thing but faster I wouldn’t find myself in this sticky situation. Although I did have fun working on it and doing the character voices (I even ended up getting a copy of audacity for my own computer back home near the end of production, so now I can be 4 steps ahead of the world, Mwa ha ha ha ha!)
After Listening to the final re-condensed version I’ve realised a few things, The dynamic I was going for with a rational David Attenbrugh-esque character and his overly paranoid maniac friend got lost in the speed up process due to how now everyone sounds like they took at least 3 cups of coffee and a dose of helium before coming to the set (and that’s not the only thing lost in speed up-ery), there was also a notable lack of quality with the audio. (because speeding the audio up to the degree of making it E X A C T L Y two minutes can do that) one of the only aspects I liked was the clever use of a reversal for the explosion at the end where I play the clip forward and then backwards, and the voices (as high pitched as they are) were at least distinctive from one another. (as in you could tell who was meant to be who)
Were I to do this again I know I’ll be cutting the robots out of the equation entirely and just sticking with a single human version (maybe the robot version can happen once the human version is finished) and I’ll have to make sure that I record the human voices at a faster pace to make sure it lasts the duration I need it to (in this case two minutes) but most importantly, I’ll need to make sure I’ve recorded everything with the audio recorder so that I don’t have to bring in the Video Games to save the day at the last minute, but other than that, not much would be different
You know, despite how much fun it was for me to do some funny voices for a radio drama, I don’t necessarily think It’ll appeal to the teen audience as well as it could (although lots of teenagers do tend to go watch funny movies) because the very Idea of it (that being a delusional man thinking the stairs are out to kill his old man friend) might be misconstrued as a children’s fun filled adventure instead (much like how The Princess and The Frog was misconstrued as a girls only film due to it’s title and ended up not doing as well as P.I.X.A.R’s Up)
The people who come here expecting a serious drama that’s full of intrigue will be sorely disappointed to find that it’s all a big jokey parody where the intrigue is ruined by jokes about narrators being the villain the entire time (as well as that 4th wall break with the narrator and Ringle interacting), although parody is a pretty big thing these days (especially in terms of the internet and internet content)
Sam Gordon's Media Journal 