Evaluation of Final Draft

SWOT Analysis of first draft

SWOT Analysis

The Strengths of my first draft are that the narrative is fairly interesting, it leaves a lot of things ambiguous to the audience and therefore means that there is a lot of enigmas when going into the first episode of the audio drama, it doesn’t explain everything to the audience which leaves the rest of the plot to be heavily expanded on which is what you want from a first episode. Not only this but the effects used in the episode are very effective in telling the narrative, meaning things such as doors opening and closing allows the audience to almost follow the characters in where they’re going making it much easier to actually follow the narrative but also creates a better suspension of disbelief; enticing the audience further into the episode.

The Weaknesses of the first draft is that the editing of the sound doesn’t make it very believable. While yes the effects and sounds effects I used are strengths and make things more believable; the way that they’ve been editing don’t actually make it seem entirely realistic meaning that adding fades and things such as that in the final draft will be very beneficial to the end product as it adds a layer of suspension of disbelief. This then reinforces the overall narrative as we are now more effectively able to follow the characters in their journey in laying out the narrative. Another weakness however that was picked up on is the actual quality of the audio, meaning that you can kind of tell that this was “recorded” and not “heard”. By this it breaks the suspension of disbelief in that the audience can hear faults that shouldn’t be there such as mic’s crackling and also things such as people in the background talking. To fix this, I will need to add a noise reduction filter to the audio so that the audience cannot hear things I do not want them to hear, therefore keeping that suspension of disbelief that I want the audience to feel.

The Opportunities for my radio drama is that the actors are very easily accessible, all the people who are acting in the radio drama are friends who attend the school where we’ll be recording therefore I have the opportunity to record most if not every day. Not only this but we’ve been able to access a recording studio inside the school that means that we can have a room to ourselves to record in without having much background audio being picked up. And if we do pick up any background noises then I have found a new noise reduction filter on the editing software I am using therefore I will be able to easily remove any background noises from the audio meaning that in my final draft the audio will be much clearer.

The Threats of my radio drama is that the only time we can really access the recording studio is during frees where actors are at home for. This means that finding the time to get time in the recording studio is very rare as we will have to get every actor in school to record at the same time as the authenticity of my lines come from actors recording them all at once. Not only this but actors are able to forget their lines which leads to a lot of stuttering in the lines which will have to be edited out, this cannot be removed via any filter which means that I will have to spend the extra time actually editing through it all.

Production Journey

 Production Journey 

 

Firstly, I wanted to get familiarised with the audio recording software that I would be using throughout the recording. Therefore, I opened the software “Garageband” on the iMac and allowed myself to get familiarised. This allowed the recording process to be much easier when I was recorded sound effects and voice actor’s lines leading to much less complications. Garageband also allowed me to tweak with the audio settings and made the sound quality better when needed. This was a very beneficial start to my production, and when finally having become acquainted with the software I’d be using I could move onto recording my audio drama. 

 

Next, I recorded the lines for my radio drama, I got my 4 actors together and recorded their lines as the script went through and re-recording lines where needed. This put all of the audio into one place where I could then adjust their quality as well as their volume with some of the actors talking too loudly and some being a bit too quiet and using the knowledge I gained from becoming acquainted with GarageBand. When all the recordings were done, I stored the files as a .mp4 file onto the cloud storage where I would then move them into the next software, I’ll be using which is “Final Cut Pro” that allows me to edit the audio clips. I do not to become acquainted to this software as I have had prior experience using this software outside of school.

 

As I said, I imported all the audio files into the software I'd be using and started editing the clips. I made sure to focus on the flow of the narrative so that everything made sense. Due to there being no visuals I would have to make sure that they can easily visualise what is happening during the Radio Drama, I accomplished this through adding Wild Tracks to make everything more realistic when they listen to it. After finishing the first draft, I then got feedback on what I should change from a third perspective and then based off that feedback I changed what they said could benefit the overall episode. After changing what they said needed to be changed the final draft was done and able to be uploaded. 

In my editing process, I made sure to edit the sound so that you could really follow the character as they walk through their different environments. By using foley sounds I layered different sounds together to make it seem that you can hear the main character walking out of the different rooms and opening doors. I had to lower the foley sounds a little bit as they were very loud, but I made sure to make the volume sound believable.

I also focused on making sure that the sounds were all cut properly. In my offline edit the feedback I got from there was that the clips were very awkwardly cut and you could also hear things in the background that aren't meant to be there. Therefore, I cut off the start of many of the clips making sure that any unneeded sounds are taken out of it.