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.