deekhoo

Chosen Program and Structure

The ‘host’ program I have chosen from ABC Radio National as a freelance producer is ‘Airplay’. This program, according to the Radio National website, is one of ‘Australian radio writing and performance’. It runs for half an hour every Sunday at 3pm and has a repeat telecast on Thursday evenings at 7pm. Airplay ‘involves collaboration with both established and emerging writers, performers and composers’, giving freelancers the opportunity to submit their stories and voice actors the chance to showcase their creativity.
While Jane Ulman is the presenter of the program, the cast for each one is different, as the stories vary from a wide range of theatrical genres. Jane is also almost always part of the producing crew on the show.

House Sound and Style

Very dramatic and atmospheric music plays in the background of the audio plays that give them the atmosphere surrounding the story and creating a deeper sense of the theatre of the mind. Very often sound effects are used in conjunction with the drama, embossing the actions or object involved in the story and again making it even more tangible. The cast is also very important as their ability to bring forth the drama will make or break it’s believability and authenticity. Airplay is definitely not recorded live, as sound effects, mood music and voice acting have been edited to make sure the audio drama plays out like a audio storybook.

Shelf-life

Airplay programs are available on the Radio National website as archives which go as far back as January 2002. Each program has a short write up that includes usually the names of the writer(s), voice talent(s), and producer. For some the music arranger and sound engineer are also written in the credits. Even though the archive goes 7 years back, the audio of the program is only available two months from the present. After that only information of the story and credits are shown.

Scope of Content and Central Subject Areas

As Airplay is a show about radio writing and performance, the stories vary from a wide spectrum of drama, comedy, mystery, war, fantasy and love. The number of cast members in each program can be as many as ten people, or just one person. Each show is evidently very thought over and planned in terms of atmospheric music, emotions from the cast and is definitely pre-recorded with a lot of postproduction done to fit into a half an hour slot.
Being a program about theatrics the show always axels around a different storyline, in turn having different central subject areas each week. One consistency the show does have is the structure of a good dialogue or monologue and atmospheric music as well as sound effects.

Reference: Radio National (Online). Available from: http://abc.com.au/rn/airplay/about/ [Accessed on 9th May 2009]

This ‘theatre of the mind’ business started in my second year as Ngee Ann Polytechnic. Where my radio teacher, who is a very (and I mean VERY) radio passionate man, would encourage us to close our eyes and play vox pops and sound effects just to get us to envision what we’d put on our ‘stage’. It was an awesome practice because everyone always imagined something else. But that’s the beauty of radio. It’s still personal even though its a form of mass communication.

Thus began my love for radio performance.
Which is why I’m so passionate and plugging for Airplay, I can’t wait to write a story about… well drama, love gained love lost, with the opened question of what atmosphere the story is set in, yet have it engraved at the back of someone’s head, with the characters personally etched by every individual listening. How beautiful. I imagine it to end with footsteps. of stories we have walked away from, that we remember…to forget.