February 11th

The final piece with alternative endings have now been uploaded! Head over to the Final Submission tab to have a listen.

February 4th-10th

This week is editing week! Audio edit suite 7 is now our home… Not long till our ‘vision’ for the radio drama is reality.

 

February 7th

There is a park scene which needed to be authentic, so we now have recorded the sounds of children playing football, birdsong and trees in the wind combined to make the ambiance of the park.

February 3rd

Today was the day we recorded the male voice and the sound effects. We enjoyed playing around the microphones today, getting David to walk across the room whilst saying lines or standing to one side. He took direction well and we are now ready to edit!

February 2nd

A baby crying is crucial in our radio drama, so we made sure we got an authentic sound to use in our piece. Fortunately for us, (unfortunately for the little baby) the child responded brilliantly with lots of laughter and crying which we can layer up in our drama.

January 31st

What a day! Gillene was fabulous – as expected – and was so convincing in character the producer had a few tears! She really brought Dawn to life for us (and she does an amazing accent!). We had Gillene sing ‘Hush a bye baby’ lots of times, in lots of different ways so we had  a good variation of emotions conveyed to use when editing.

January 30th

Today Catherine went back home to Leeds to meet our actress to talk through the script. Whilst she was there she also visited the props department of Opera North to borrow some items for our sound effects. Here is a collection of the the props they lent us…

January 29th

Today we visited Lincoln Castle… We got some amazing sounds recorded to add to the piece to make it sound more realistic. The staff were brilliant – opening and closing doors and turning keys for us to record (not usually open to the public). We then had a wander around the building ourselves and recorded heavy metal doors, locks and footsteps on the cold stone surface of the chapel. See the Behind the Scenes tab for pictures!

January 27th

After the work in progress, we reviewed the script and changed parts and added lines to make it clearer for the audience yet retain the abstract feel. Tonight the final script will be fully formatted properly, ready to give to our actors.

January 24th

Today was the work in progress presentation. We were pleased with how it went and received positive feedback! The tutor’s appreciated how much research we’d done and said they said although it is a complex piece, we have simplified it well to maintain creativity while keeping it understandable. An issue that was brought up was that the idea of flashbacks may confuse the audience so we will aim to construct in such a way which has a clear rhythm and flow to it. Another point made was that we are very familiar with the research and the drama itself so we must be aware not to become blind to plot anomalies.

January 22nd

What a great few days – we now have a confirmed male actor too! David Bulley will be playing the role of the male voices. Actors are cast, script is finalized and radio studio 1 is booked for our recordings.. Looking forward to it! We also met today to combine the slides we have been working on individually and practised the presentation.

January 20th

Yay! Our female actor has read drafts of the script and is eager to get involved. We’re excited to announce Gillene Herbert will be playing the role of Dawn.

January 19th-21st

After finalizing a solid structure, the script has been drafted and redrafted over the weekend to produce the final script! It’s coming along nicely.

January 19th

Group meeting today! We are beginning our work in progress board to be presented on the 24th. We have also emailed Lincoln Castle to as if we could film some sound effects there.

January 13th

We have placed our advert for an actor and actress on Star Now. We have decided to cast one male actor to act as all the male voices in the radio drama; this represents how all authority figures have become the same in her mind. And although we have contacted other actress’ we thought it best to place an advert too.

 

January 11th

An email was sent out today to potential actors to use in our radio drama. Our director has contacts within the professional theatre, so we may be lucky enough to have an experienced actor in our piece. Fingers crossed!

January 10th

Today we had our review with Zara. We presented our research and discussed the ideas we had for the piece. The main point we took away from the review was that we must understand and respect that capital punishment is a sensitive (and controversial) topic which should be approached with caution. We will look at charities and forums and their beliefs on the subject and look into blogs written by inmates (as long as they’re authentic) to get an inside perspective.

Christmas Time

Over the Christmas period we have been spending time researching Death Row and particularly the life of the inmates. Lots of books have been purchased (found out some very interesting things!) and lots of notes and bookmarks were made to refer back to. We now have a rough structure of the piece too.

Hello!

We have decided to base our radio drama on a young women who is on death row in Virginia, USA.
We hope the drama will provide an insight into what it is like for a person facing death row and challenge the stereotypical views about death row inmates.We also wanted to question the whole issue of the existence of the death penalty in the 21st century.

Today we spent our time writing up our proposal for the drama and decided on the song ‘Hurt’ by Johnny Cash.

We look forward to start casting and making the drama as soon as possible and will inform you all of any news as it happens.