The first one we looked at was War of the Worlds (1938):
This was a revolutionary product of its times, the performance of this broadcast resulted in many people believing the story was true and fearing for their lives. This was due to the program having no breaks, and it was also one of the first radio plays so it was new to everyone, causing people to react to what they were hearing as it sounded no different than a normal radio station. However when listening back to it now it wouldn't cause the same reaction due to the progression of technology, although it does have some realistic sounds which for the time it was made is quite impressive.
This reminded me of one of the first videos made by the Lumiere Brothers, Arrival of a train at La Ciotat, which caused people to flee from the theatre as they thought a train was coming straight for them. Whereas looking back at it now it doesn't seem to revolutionary due to everything we have grown up, and adapted throughout the years.
The second one we looked at was Hitch-Hikers Guide to the Galaxy (1978):
The Hitch-Hikers Guide to the Galaxy is quite a famous story, mainly due to it's recreation into a film, however some people haven't actually read the book or listened to the radio play. As a big Douglas Adams fan it was nice to hear the radio series as an example, although it did mean I knew where the scene was that Harry showed us. However the clip itself showed off the scene incredibly well, the atmosphere and effects described the places in which it was set perfectly for the time. Admittedly at one point it did seem a bit vague, I believe it was when they were outside of Arthur Dent's house, and it seemed like it was just missing something to really make the scene stand out in my mind. However for the time it's impressive to see how the sound effects work, and the clarity and clearness you get from the recordings is wonderful.
The final one we listened to was The Truth Podcast - Interns (2014):
According to 'The Truth' company, they aim to make "movies for your ears". This is the one radio play that we listened to that I hadn't heard before, and it was definitely interesting. After reading about the company a little it's become clear that they improvise the script, and record on location for the edit later on. In a way it kind of reminded me of a young version of 'The Archers' that's recorded outside instead of in a studio. I wasn't too impressed by it but did take note of the non-diegetic sounds throughout the piece, which are probably what boosted it a bit otherwise half of it would make absolutely no sense. But I guess that is what sound does, it fills in the gaps to make the story more realistic to the listener.
After listening to the radio plays and other examples we looked at recording, so how to use the Marantz recorders and different types of microphones.
For the Marantz we were given one each between four of us, and then within the room we all went through the different functions and set each one to the specifications given. These functions included settings such as; recording format, and sample rate. We then got to have a little practice with the recorders, unfortunately ours was running out of battery so we were stuck in the room attached to a plug.
After all that Harry then informed us of what we would be doing over the next four weeks; we were told to choose a 30-60 second extract of a book, poem, or song and create a soundscape for it. This involved the; mood, pace and locations, and we were not allowed to include dialogue or mood music.
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