Radio plays have to main rely on audio techniques. During the audio project I will be looking at way to enhance an audio play to make it more immersive. The BBC radio play "murder is easy" is based on an Agatha Christie crime book; in the play we can a varyed range of audio effects ranging from crashing, panting and rushed actions(for example hurried paper shuffling or running). Because the genre of the play is crime the actions have to be clearly explained or heard to get the audience fully immersed; if the actions were a little bit off or inaccurate then the audience may be confused about certain parts in the story.
Music is also an important aspect of this particular play as it delivers a lot of audio clues to the audience; for example when a plot twist is uncovered you can hear a striking small tune that brings about a feeling of shock and suspense. Other examples of musical clues are the relaxing tunes when a character is sharing a moment or being snetimental to another character.
To create the enviromental atmosphere of many of the sets the recording areas are changed between a big spaciouse room:
To a proper kitchen or living area to capture the acoustics of a scene:
They even use big sinks to create the effects of a swimming pool or a pond; they have to use this large sink due to the fact that they don't have a swimming pool or a proper bath so this sink will have to do:
There can also be sound absorbing rooms to make an outdoor scene; they use these rooms because if they had used a normal room or hall then there would be an echo effect which is not normally heard outside:
Here are a range of doorbells; each doorbell is very specific to an individual's house. We can see this because there are labels on each one; all the doorbells:
This is dog food; it is foley equitment used as pig feed and other animal feed.
Equipment Used
Foley equipment is used for substitutions of other noises in radio plays and films; for example a low budget radio play may not be able to have an actual gun firing so they would use a heavy phone book to drop on a hard surface and create a loud bang noise. Some examples of foley sounds are creaking sounds coming from old chairs. Often in old movies you would find foley equiptment being used; horror movies are an example as they may record a frozen lettuce being crunched as a substitute for a head being squashed. Some other examples of foley sounds are creaking sounds coming from old chairs which could substitute for a stair step creaking.
Sometimes in radio plays you will just get the actual piece of equipment used instead of a substitute foley; you can see this in the Archer's doorbell picture. They use a board of doorbells which is convenient as the doorbells would all be in one place and you would not have to move the mic between them. This practice is used so that the recording sounds authentic as the noises would be recorded in the same room as the actors and to be added in later.
You may also digitally add in sound from programs like Logic and other editing softwares; an editor may use this when a recreated foley sound does not sound like the noise they wanted. Gun shots are often hard to re-create due to the fact that there are many other components to a gun shot; you have the initial clicking as the trigger is pulled, the actual bang itself and finally you have the smoke fizzing from the gunshot. All of this would be hard to recreate using low budget objects so you may resort to finding sounds online.
Equipment I Used
For my radio play I have mainly used the foley technique with only a few actual sounds being produced. For example I used a pen clicking to substitute for a lamp and wooden planks that substitute form hard wood flooring. The only noises that were created organically were the sound of an object hitting the floor(this was easy as I did not specify what object I would use) and I also had the idea for one of my actors actually getting into the cabin ate in the recording studio and that produced the sound of the cabin ate opening and slamming open in the script.
I used digital noises for the gunshot and the loud creaking doors as there were no doors that would produce a loud and ominous creak in the college. I also used a digital gunshot for the reason of a gunshot being hard to organically make or reproduce using foley equipment.
I have used a recorder similar to this make in the picture above. I had mainly left it on the table so that I could focus on holding the microphone still. I found my first practise recording's audio was a bit wavy and all over the place; this was due to me pointing the microphone at the sounds and actors as they were happening. I used proper headphones such as these:
These headphones would've proved more useful then standard headphones as they seem like they can capture where the audio is coming exactly. Unfortunately the headphones only worked in one ear and there were no spares so I had to listen through only one headphone bud. I had also used Adobe Premier to equalise the sounds as audio was only recorded though one channel.
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