Task Allocation Week 2

 

Production Log Week 2

 

Unit 14 - LO1 - P2

Programme Analysis

 

“The Archers” is a radio drama on the BBC that mainly focuses on farming. They release two episodes per day with one being released at 2pm and another at 7pm which are each 13 minutes long. However, on Sunday, they release a one-hour episode called an “Omnibus” which is a one-hour episode that is a collection of all the episodes released in that week. This makes it so people who aren’t able to watch the episodes throughout the week are able to catch up on the narrative as each episode leads into the next. The audience are able to access the show mainly on the BBC website however there are other services such as Spotify and TuneIn that allow for audiences to listen in as well.

 The episode starts by the host announcing the episode and then it plays their opening theme song, it then goes right into the dramatisation. It then plays out the narrative of the episode which for the 29/01/24 episode is the narrative of the characters cleaning the car and trying to open up the pub. They start with them being inside the pub fixing things where it then shifts to two characters who are cleaning a car. They then cut back to inside the pub where they’re talking about how they will be able to open up the pub again where the characters from that scene then join up with the characters from the car washing scene to tell them that the pug is going to be opened. Noises are used in the next scene to display that we are now in the pub when it has opened and that time has passed. We then proceed into another scene where the two pub owners are talking about opening the pub being the correct decision however this scene only lasts a little bit as we then cut again to the main portion of the pub where they’re talking about a beer drinking competition. We then cut to a scene where they announce the winner of the drinking competition and with that the episode concludes and their outro music plays.

The archers aim to fulfil all three declarations in the BBC’s ethos. To Inform, educate and entertain. First of all, they inform with their audience by presenting them with real life news that may currently be occurring. We can see this in the episode aired on the 11^th of September 2022 at the very start of the first narrative as it talks about the death of the Queen, informing the people about her death. It educates the audience about things that they not know about, we can see this in their episode about domestic abuse where they act out a situation where domestic abuse was taking place to display what a situation like this may be like. And finally, they entertain through most of their episodes, whether this is through jokes as seen on the 29/01/24 episode at 05:55 where they play around splashing each other with soap and bubbles.

The episode starts by their host Roifield Brown announcing that the 29/01/24 episode is Monday’s episode of The Archers and that its on BBC 4. This then transitions into their theme song that plays for 15 seconds and then fades for 5 seconds into the first narrative. The first scene starts with scrubbing noises as we learn that someone called “Tracey” is cleaning another character called “Jolene’s” car. We learn that we are outside at 0:50 as another diegetic foley sound is played in the form of birds, creating the feeling that the audience is outside with the characters. They then start talking about how the pub is getting its outside done and the doors are getting renovated. The colloquial language used by each character makes it seem as if we are a person just listening to their day-to-day conversation, it doesn’t make it seem that we are audience and the use of diegetic sounds to convey this. The scene then changes to Jolene and Kenton in the pub talking about how, apart from the electrics, they will be able to start the pub back up, which is promptly followed to another scene of Jolene and Kenton coming outside to Tracey and Emma washing her car. Tracey is trying to splash Emma with water saying that she hasn’t helped her and we promptly hear her do so due to the diegetic sound of laughter and splashing noises assuming that the water is being thrown. The two then get told that they will be able to open up the pub again and we can physically hear a sound of joy, making the audience listening at home feel happy for the pub workers as they eagerly say that they will go home and put on their work clothes while also spreading the word that the pub is opening again. After this display of joy, we then have a time jump, where we are now in the pub. We know this due to the use of diegetic noise to reflect that of a bustling establishment, with noises of glasses linking them ringing for an order. We hear them talking about how they’re going to take the empty glasses out back and they then start discussing how they should announce the winner of the drinking competition, Kenton asks everyone to be quiet where he then promptly announces the winner. This ends the episode and it is then followed out by the end music which slowly fades away. Throughout the episode there are no breaks and no more narration other than the announcement at the very start, this makes for a flowing episode where people can listen to 13 minutes about everything that is happening.

The programme uses sound to give the effect that the audience is actually with the character. They do this in multiple ways, one of which we can see in the 29/01/24 episode where when Emma and Tracy are talking to each other we are able to hear the diegetic noise of birds chirping in the background, this makes the audience feel as if they’re actually outside washing the car with them instead of just being listeners. This allows for them to be more enticed in the episode and allows for a more personal experience while listening to the episodes. There is another example of this via their theme song – their theme song acts as a gateway into the episode allowing the audience to fully immerse themselves into the episode via the theme song. It has become a staple of the show and allows for the audience to recognise the show from just listening to it, meaning that whenever they hear the theme song, they instantly correlate it to.