Audio Production: Component Brief of Craft
Title: Toxic FM
WHAT WE DID
The brief of our assignment was to produce a trailer for a radio station that was exactly one minute in length and to research other types of radio trailers and as a group to produce a final radio trailer, script and edited sound effects to accompany the trailer to make it sound realistic. Our group consisted of four people who were involved in the final stages of the process: Tom Mofitt, Maddy Jordan, Adam Wessellby and myself Paul Heath.
Firstly, we researched different radio stations, listened to the sound quality, the use of sound effects, how the presenter introduces the topics and flows from one subject to another. The three main radio stations for our region are Viking FM, Galaxy FM and Radio 1 which provided good research for our production.
Once we had finished our individual research we got together as a group and discussed different ideas and came up with a fictional based radio trailer that was themed and based about the last minute of the world radio station, where the world will end in exactly a minute. The story and layout of the trailer would be the sun sending out radiation blast waves causing a lack of clean air or water. The radio station is still trying to keep up the moral of its remaining listeners whilst the rest of the world plummets into darkness and chaos.
The idea was inspired by fictional game Fallout 3 and how the radio stations on the game would try to give the impression of the world being a wasteland and trying to give the player a scene of loneliness and the struggle to stay alive.
We wanted the beginning song to be ironic to the trailer and decided to choose R.E.M’s “It’s the end of the world as we know it”. We chose to shorten the song to sound as if the listener would have just changed the radio channel over catching the end of the song followed by the presenter of the radio trailer.
I chose to be the main speaker as I was confident to take the role of the main enthusiastic presenter of the radio show.
We tried to make it realistic with even one of the radio presenters panicking and leaving the room whist the main presenter (me) remained calm and optimistic.
For the end part of the trailer we wanted to make the effect of the radio broadcast to sound as if the place was being destroyed by the blast, and added radio static sounds to represent the end of the communication. A weather report was added to part of the radio trailer; the reporter was to sound distorted in voice and slightly quirky. The voice of the weather girl was Maddy, her voice was changed by altering the pitch control to a higher level. Sound clips were taken from the internet to illustrate the purpose of the audio for example begging song and the static.
Recording of the radio trailer was recorded in separate sections as there was limited amount of people on the day we used the recording studio to work the equipment and speak in the soundproof room. The script was done first so that the main bulk could be recorded and checked over to avoid any background noises from people leaving and entering the room. Once the main bulk of the radio trailer was recorded we added the weather girl’s part which was done separately and then edited that particular part with the main bulk of the pre recorded radio trailer. The sound effects were added during the recordings by using various props. For the none digital sound effects we wanted it to sound as if the recording studio was falling apart and ready to collapse. We searched for different sound effects in order to get a range of noises that seemed realistic and varied. Once we were happy with the outcome off the recordings and sound effects we combined the clips together to produce the final outcome.
In total recording and editing took about 3 hours altogether.
THINGS WE DID WELL
Overall we wanted to get the realism of the trailer right by making the sound effects realistic as possible and to make the listener believe the radio station was literally falling down around the presenters and there crew whilst still trying produce a final radio show knowing the world was about to end and in the hope that there was still people listening to them in there last moments.
CHANGES
Given more time, and with a lot more practice I think we would have made the script stronger and more realistic by maybe making the main presenter more cheerful but with a bit more disbelief in his voice that everything will be ok as the place falls down around him. Learning the script was reasonable, none of us had been in a recording studio before and reading the script in a room knowing people are listening to you can be quite daunting and make you tense. After about 4 or 5 test recordings and a lot of bloopers the final recording was fairly good but could have sounded more realistic and had more of a flow to the main presenter’s voice. The weather girl’s voice, once edited to sound funny and quirky could have been played around with bit more, or changed to sound more depressed knowing her last moments of earth she has to spend reading the weather on a radio trailer despite the earth falling down around her head. Because let’s face it no one wants to read the weather out over the radio when the world’s about to end.
Sound Link : http://soundcloud.com/heathy83/final-radio-toxic-fm
