How Voice, music, silence and sound effects they affected my radio drama

Sound effects, voice, music and silence are all very important elements of radio, as you don’t have actions or expressions to show how a person is feeling or where the scene is set. My radio drama is a drama thriller, meaning that we chose for the listener to get to know the character more and the emotions they feel through their voice rather than a show such as the twilight zone which is hugely based upon sound effects, although the sound effects we did use are very important.

Sound effects
Below is first part of scene three. In particular this scene is very focused on sound effects as the audience have to know that Kaitlin is on the phone to ruby. We had to incorporate background noises for both of the characters without confusing the audience.

KAITLAIN#: (V.O) So much for that show Ruby.

RUBY#: (D) (Cheerful) I think you were awesome Kate.

(TRAFFIC LIGHTS ARE LOUDER HERE AS KAITLAIN IS CROSSES THE ROAD)

KAITLAIN#: (V.O) (Upset) Maybe I’ll feel a little bit better if I had actually managed to help that first caller today rather than feel like I’ve failed her.

RUBY#: (D) (Sighs) (Bored) She’ll be fine.

(OTHER SOUNDS START TO FADE AND HER HIGH HEELED FOOTSTEPS ARE LOUDER. THE THUNDER FROM THE STORM CAN NOW BE HEARD IN THE DISTANCE)

KAITLAIN#: (V.O) (Unconvinced) Oh please (.) She didn’t get disconnected (.) We both know-

(OTHER BACKGROUND SOUNDS, APART FROM THE RAIN ARE GONE. WHILE KAITLAIN IS WALKING ANOTHER PAIR OF FOOTSTEPS ARE SOFTLY ADDED IN ON THE WORD MONSTER)

We created many of our own sound effects, such as Carlos dropping to the floor, footsteps, door opening and closing. In particular we thought it was very important to have background noise in the cafe to create an ambiance.
We also included clips of knocking doors, different types of footsteps so that the audience could distinguish between men and women walking, we had high heels for women and a gravelly scratching noise for men. We had dialling and hanging up of calls as you can hear below. We have used thunder and heavy rain to connote something bad is going to happen.



Voice
Voice is a very important part of production as it is where characters convey their emotions, and as we don’t have a visual aid of facial expressions, it is all down to the voice. Scene five in particular is focused on the way in which the characters speak. Darius and Carlos are two completely different characters we had to make distinct differences to their voices and the way they spoke for the audience to understand this. As you can hear from the clip below, Darius has a deep voice, he asks questions but only gives short answers, where as Carlos is a friendly nice guy who tries to make conversation.

Music

The music we chose was an eerie tune that we used throughout. See below. Firstly at 20 seconds after the prologue, this was placed here to create atmosphere for the audience, and also to separate each scene. The second time it was used was at the end of the drama to conclude it and tell the listeners that the programme has finished.

Silence

We very rarely used silence as it wasnt needed, we used techniques such as fades and cuts to distingusih between scenes.