LISTEN

Photos taken for poster

Roxy and joe , Belle and Max this photo shows conflict!
Roxy and Belle argueing

My Radio Poster

This is the poster I have created for my Radio Drama recording "Listen" we decided it would be a good idea to use the people in our A2 group for a photo which would represent the characters in our story. On the right Jess and Chris are standing together, Jess clearly loves Chris however chris has his back turned to her and has folded his arms to show he is not interested.

On the left Me and Simon are standing together, I played in my drama recording so as you can see i appear scared with my boyfriend as I had been raped by Chris's character Max, to show this Jess and Chris have turned there back to me as they have fallen out with me over all of the drama during the story.

I have included the BBC Radio 4 logo and frequency to show that this is a Radio broadcast I have also included the time and date of the broadcast so my listeners know when my broadcast will be on air.

I have also used a review tag from "The Times" these are used to draw listeners in as when a big company or organization likes something the companies fans will be sure to follow there recommendations.

I have also used a caption underneath my title to give the listeners a clue about what they should expect when they listen to the show.

how effective is thie combination of your main product and ancillary texts?

For my radio drama i had to make a poster and radio listings to support my radio broadcast. The poster would be in the radio times and would hopefully attract young people to listen to the radio drama as it has young people on the poster. The radio listings has a radio guide to inform listeners what the drama is about , and to get them to want to listen to it.

I think that this is effective to have other ancillery texts to support the radio drama , as it advertises and informs the audience about the media product.

What media technolgies did i use in the construction , reaserch and planning and evaluation stages.

During the construction , research , planning and evaluation stages of making my media product i used lots of media technolgies.

FOR EXAMPLE

Indesign





I used indesign to make my tv listings , i found it hard at first but when i got the hang of it i found it simple and easy to use. I used textboxes for my listings and used swatches and strokes to change the colours. Indesign was a good programme to use as it is sometimes used in industry and it was simple to construct the tv listings.

• Photo Shop

I used photoshop to do my Radio Poster , this was because i found it easier to use and edit the poster. i changed the tint of the background to a more calming orange. I added the text in different font sizes. I did some research on posters and most of them had 1 line reviews praising the radio drama so i added one. I put the radio 4 sign in the corner of the poster , i had to edit this so that it looked more professional.

• Digital Camera

We had alot of fun taking photos for our poster , i think the end photo was really effective as all our emotions really showed the characters emotion. We took photos with Simon Jess and Chris and ME. Kieran took them , he is good at photography. There was about 150 pictures we took all together but the one we used really stood out and i knew straight away that would be on my poster. Other people in my group used this photo also.

• Sound track pro

We used sound track pro to edit our radio drama this was a lot easier than i originally thought! i had never used sound track pro , but i quickly picked it up and edited and found sound effects!We deleted many parts of our radio drama and parts we didnt need and bits we recorded ,more than once. We had to change the voice levels. We then added all our sound effects. We all helped with each part of the editing. It took longer than expected and some people from my group had to come in during the holidays to finish editing.

• Mac Computers

I used Mac computers to do all my research and type up my part of the script.

These media technologies really helped in the making of our radio drama!!

Consider the way in which your radio drama represents different social groups

My radio drama represents teenagers as a social group. There are 4 characters in our radio drama.

• Roxy: Roxy is the main character , she is young adult in her early 20's. She enjoys drinking and hanging out with her friends and her boyfriend.


• Belle: Belle seems to be a stereotypical young adult , she also likes socialising with her friends and is interested in boys as in the radio drama episode she gets a new boyfriend.


• Max : Max seems to be a more "Jack the Lad" character , he likes drinking as one scene is set in the pub. he also likes girls and stereotypical thinks Roxy wants him even though he just met her this shows he is arrogant.He also gets aggressive with Roxy when she threatens to tell Belle about the attack he says "If you tell Belle anything i will hurt you so much you wish you were never born."


• Joe: Joe seems to be a really caring character he doesn't jump to conclusions like Belle did about the attack , he is always there for Roxy and helps her through her difficult time.

Social groups are represented in a stereotypical way

Sound Clips

-SUICIDE PART, NO EFFECTS.MP3-

This is the suicide part of the drama before editing.

-SUICIDE PART WITH TRAFFIC AND POLICE.MP3-

This is the edited version of the suicide part , we added traffic noises and a police siren. This is too add drama to the scene.

-SUICIDE PART WITH ALL SOUND EFFECTS.MP3 -


- SHORT CLIP WITHOUT FOOTSTEPS.MP3 -


- SHORT CLIP WITH FOOTSTEPS.MP3 -

Some people in our evaluation said that these footsteps sounded like marching , so we had to change them.
- MONOLOUGE WITHOUT BEYONCE TRACK.MP3 -


- MONOLOUGE WITH BEYOCE TRACK.MP3 -

We found the beyonce track on the internet. We had the instrumental version.

- SHORT CLIP WITH FOOTSTEPS AND RAIN -

Production Diary

22nd October
As a group we decided on the plot , we based our story on Katie Price's book "Angel". We decided on the theme and the style. It took a little while as , as a group we couldn't make a decision. But finally we all agreed on a storyline.

5th November

During this lessons me and Steph research the issues in the book , such as depression , rape and suicide. We starting thinking of ideas of how to write the script and how the characters are going to be.

We chose the character names , Roxy , Belle , Joe and Max.

12th November

We started writing out our script for the previous episode we tried working as a group and doing it together but that was very hard, so we decided to do a section individually and then put it all together later.

19th November

We continued writing our script and putting it together , Chris had done loads of work but it didnt really fit in with the style of script that we had wrote , so we eddited it a bit and cut it up and put it in our script.

We then had a read through of our script just to make sure it sounded realistic.

3rd December

In this lesson we had to write out the suicide note , we found this really hard so i suggested that we all write a suicide letter each and then choose the best one. But they were all not that good , so we acted out as if it was a drama and then wrote down what we were saying and then we had our suicide note.

We also made the finishing touches to our script and printed them off , we had another read through.

10th December

Unfortunately the radio recording room was busy this week so we coudn't record so we decided to look at sound effects and have another read through of our script.

17th December

We recorded most of our drama , i thought this was lots of fun. I was the main character , i didn't want to be but the group persuaded me. I thought m group was really good as we put lots of emotion into the script.

7th January

We did last minute recording for the radio drama , we went through it lots of times because we kept messing up our lines. We also had to record a part again because the paper from our scripts was rusteling and it was in the background , so it wouldn't sound realistic. I never realised how much you have to think about when recording as there are so man noise around.

14th January-25th February

We started editing , i found it difficult at first , because we had recorded so much material as we had to keep starting again but after a while i got used to it and we cut it down to 7 minutes and we had it all in order.

We spent absolutely ages looking for the right sound effects , everyone had the same ideas in there head of how the wanted the radio drama to sound , so there was no arguemnts about what sound clip to use. Me and Steph spent a whole lesson looking for the themetune and music for in our radio production. I love Beyonce so i made sure we listened to her so i could convince the group to have one of her songs in our drama. It fitted in well. After that i had the song in my head and i kept singing "listen". Then i realised we didnt have a title for our radio drama then everyone said it should be called Listen!!!

Analyse your genre and make comparisons with alternative media formats

The genre of my radio broadcast is teenage real life drama.
Other radio dramas include:

• the archers
• paradise lost
• charles chilton space form
• oliver twist
• mrs warrens proffession
• murder on the links
• project rapheal
• we need to talk about kevin
• killing me softly

Similarities between other radio dramas and "listen"is that:

-most of these dramas have themetune

-last weeks recap

-not many speaking characters

-not many settings

-uses phone conversations

-stereotypical characters

- uses modern day issues

-uses sounds effects

-mainly dialogue

Different things that "listen" does that other most radio dramas don't is we have:

- we have a suicide monologue

-also we dont name the actors in the radio drama at the begininning or end

What kind of media institution might distribute my media product.

While reaseaching radio dramas i found a lot of information about how the younger generation and young adults don't listen to radio dramas as much as older people.
On my poster I advertised that our radio drama would be on radio 4.
I think if Radio Dramas like "listen" were put on radio 4 and other radio stations the ratings would go up and more people would listen , because it would interest younger people.
People could also listen to our radio drama on the internet.

Elements of Radio Production

Theme Tune

we used a backing track of a popular song "Shut Up & Drive" by Rihanna as our theme tune and also put some exciting sound effects over the top of the song to get our listeners ready for the show, we also used it to cut our recording into sections so it would not confuse our listeners. We used these links to make sure our drama was easy to listen to and to ensure our story was easy to understand throughout.

Sound Effects

We used a lot of different sound effects when we were making our radio drama, there was a large selection of effects built into the program we used to build our drama, the program was called called Soundtrack Pro. Sometimes we could not find the right sound effect we wanted to we used the internet to find different sound effects that would sound better in our recording. Sound effects were important when we were creating our drama because with radio there are no visuals, so the understanding of our story depends on what the listener hears. We used sound effects to help aid our listener to understand what our characters were doing, where they were and how they felt during our story.

Voice

Music

We used music in many different ways when we were producing our radio drama, theme tunes were used to show the start and end of our recording however we also used music to create atmosphere in the locations our characters were during the story. In one scene the group of friends are having a drink in there favorite bar "The Walkabout" to create the atmosphere that they were in a bar we used quiet background music as well as sound effects of a crowd and drinks being poured and moved around. We also used music to express the emotion of our characters in one scene the character I play is talking about the down sides in her life at the moment and is thinking about suicide, whilst she is talking about that we put some slow/sad music in the background to help our listeners to understand that I am meant to be upset.

Silence

As our drama was in the same style as a "soap" would be on TV we decided it would be important to use moments of silence in our recording to build up tension on what was going to happen next. Also silence was used to show a break between scenes and helped our listener understand that the scene has changed and different characters could be in different locations.

What i learned from my audience feedback?

After we had completed out Radio Drama , we had a listening party which included a few classes which evaluated our work. It was all confidential and we didn't know who made what comments.
The age range of people listening to our dramas was age 17-20. i think as our radio drama is on radio 4 we will reach social class B through to C2, from managers through to skilled manual workers. BBC radio 4 has very little demographic D and below listeners.

What the audience liked.

• many people commented on how the scene was set by using sound effects , i was pleased that people noticed this as we spent a lot of time researching and looking for sound effects.


• they mentioned they liked the theme tune


• The introduction to the radio drama , i agreed with this i thought our introduction of what happened last week on listen really set the scene and made the audience want to listen more.


• the music over the monologue was effective and really gave the audience the feeling that Roxy had as she was reading her suicide note.


• The plot of the radio drama was mentioned as being very good and gripping.

What the audience disliked.

• the shifts in sound volume


• audio quiet in some scenes , (characters mumbling)


• acting could be improved , like better voices , emotions in voice not strong enough


• there was a random loud bang at the end of the radio drama

Luckily we had a chance to change some of these things and do a bit more editing !

Unfortunately we couldn't change the acting and emotions as we didnt have time to re-record the whole piece but we sorted out the volume changes in some scenes and we got deleted the loud bang at the end.

What the audience thought could be improved technically.

• sound levels e.g on one point a character is walking and it sounds like marching.


• we could slow down the scenes a bit as the storyline went a bit fast


• and again the voice levels changing

What the audience thought could be improved in relation to the plot.

• more emotion in the storyline


• scenes spaced out to make it better to understand


• more talking and information about Roxy's boyfriend


• some people said that the storyline was a bit predictable


• BUT others said that the dialogue sounded real and believable

I agree with some of these points but hopefully , we have changed and edited the bit that's the audience didn't like.

Overall i thought this was a good evaluation and it helped us improve our main product and it was good to get a second opinion on what people thought.

I think the audience for my media product would be young adults , maybe students. This is because has alot of drama and issues that would not be suitable for children , and they storyline is based on young adults so i think they would probably enjoy it more.