Blogmas 22: Audio drama excitement

Today was the final edition of Let Them Hear of the year and we presented a two hour show, featuring an interview with Catholic chaplain Father John and a very exciting audio drama of a modernised Nativity story.

This was my first foray into the world of audio dramas and I kicked off the experience with a bang – I adapted, produced and starred in the drama and I loved every minute. We were blessed with a wonderful albeit small cast of Clement Jones, Miranda Hersey and Julia Ingles-Taylor (sorry for spelling) plus my regular co-presenter Rachael Rampat – all of them helped bring the story to life and were complete naturals, despite only reading the script minutes before we recorded.

Once our recording was done, we needed post-production. A few volume adjustments were needed as we were working with five people and only two mics – no matter how hard you try, you can’t situate yourself perfectly with a microphone when you have to share! This required Audacity AND Myriad SmoothEdit but I got there in the end – Adobe Audition would have got the job done perfectly but also has the disadvantage of costing a considerable amount.

One of the most stressful but also most fun parts of post-production was the sound effects. I have been fascinated with Foley since 2005 when I saw an episode of Doctor Who Confidential focusing on how sound effects are made for the TV show outside of the actual sound recording on set – it’s no wonder I’m now looking to go into sound! I’m not sure how far the sound effects we used could actually be classed as Foley but I had great fun wandering around the Students’ Union looking for a good door to show Joseph’s exit and also standing on the platform at the train station on the way to London trying not to look weird with my dictaphone (I did the same at Caffe Gondola but it made an amazing crowd sound!)

The last part of editing our audio drama was to put it all together with relevant music. We were able to showcase a range of lesser known artists featured on Noisetrade with new versions of classic hymns and I think we did a good job of charting the Nativity through both drama and music!

Did you listen to Let Them Hear this morning? Did you enjoy the audio drama? Let me know! I’ll be posting a link to the podcast once it is uploaded (and my internet problems have subsided)

Blogmas 15: Audio editing and childhood

Today was my final day of work experience at Create Productions and it was another great week of what I hope was valuable contributions to the work of the company. Having been there before, I was able to feed back on what I enjoyed and wanted to do more of, which was audio editing (but actually also a bit of everything!).

Last time I was at Create I spent a chunk of my time editing some poems from a competition, and this time I was allowed to do even more audio editing, which was fantastic. It also showed me how fast the turnaround was for some of the content I was creating. The first set of packages I helped put together were airing on the two following days and the second had a similar ‘deadline’, yet I was never pressured to work faster or finish off swiftly. It also slightly altered my view of childhood character ‘Big Bird’, although having never been a Sesame Street fan I didn’t really mind!

You can hear the Big Bird interview I edited here:

https://www.omnycontent.com/w/player/?orgId=289ceca7-bef3-48af-9f74-a4ba0095cab1&programId=8ac9406d-304d-441e-8532-a4ba00967cfc&clipId=f9be3fc6-c7be-484b-ac23-a6dc00a41747

Thanks must also go to Create, particularly Mark, for having me back again and I really hope this is not the last time I associate with Create and Fun Kids!

(In case the embedded player doesn’t work, the link is https://omny.fm/shows/fun-kids/big-bird)

Fun Kids Podcasts

You may remember that back in July I was very excited about the audio editing I did as part of my placement with Create Productions. The poems really were of high calibre, especially impressive for the ages of the children involved, and you can now hear the podcasts on a playlist from Fun Kids online and on iTunes. One of my favourite poems was also the hardest to edit because of its length so I’ve included it below* – if you only listen to one of the poems, this is my pick!

I won’t repeat myself from my previous post but listening back to this, and having listened to a lot of commercial radio over the last couple of weeks, I really enjoy well edited radio and would definitely love to look into doing audio editing as part of a future career – so if you like what you hear from an editing perspective, get in touch! And thanks must again go to Create, Fun Kids and the Royal Holloway Placement Scheme for providing this opportunity.

https://www.omnycontent.com/w/player/?orgId=289ceca7-bef3-48af-9f74-a4ba0095cab1&programId=8ac9406d-304d-441e-8532-a4ba00967cfc&clipId=70a7b57d-07f5-48a6-9ec8-a64900df0807

*I am not confident that the embed link has worked so please enjoy the poem on the link here whilst I rectify this! Thanks for bearing with me as I continually figure out WordPress. https://omny.fm/shows/fun-kids/wildverse-2016-coronation-by-lucy-purbrick 

Wildverse on Fun Kids

I spent the last week on work experience at Create Productions, where I did everything from organise my supervisor’s life to audio editing (and many other tasks in between!) – it really was a great week and a wonderful placement. One of the first tasks I had to do was edit the audio of the entries for a competition on DAB radio station, Fun Kids, called Wildverse. With a collection of poetry books gathering dust all over my family home and what some would see as my own odd passion for audio editing, this was almost a perfect task for me!

Even though I only edited the audio, I am very excited to hear the poems being broadcast on national DAB radio and know that I helped create something which loads of people will hear and hopefully enjoy. The poems are really great too and I would definitely recommend listening in to hear them, even if you aren’t interested in my audio editing.

The winners will be announced from tomorrow (Wednesday 20th July) during The Club with Bex, which is on Fun Kids from 4pm every weekday. You can find out more on the Fun Kids website and listen on DAB, online, via their app (Apple and Android) or on a Smart TV! If you want to know more about Create, where I did my placement, their website is here.