This week in the lecture we had a guest speaker Andy Jordan who teaches drama at the University. He taught us how he would go about directing actors which was furthered in the workshop. Unfortunately only 3 people turned up to the workshop including myself. Luckily it was me and the others from my radio drama group, so we had gained more experience than the other groups. We had three actors come in, so we all had a one on one with each actor. I worked with Charlotte Broughton who I had met in a previous workshop to go through a script based on a diary. We first read the script together and Charlotte read it how she felt it should be read, and I gave her feedback afterwards on what I thought she should emphasise and leave out. She took on my feedback quickly, underlining words and sections that she needed to pay attention to. We quickly went through one run through before I recorded her. We worked quickly and efficiently because I knew what I wanted from her as I had prepared before the workshop.

In the feedback session Charlotte mentioned that I was very professional and was obviously prepared. Personally I really enjoyed the workshop and what I gained from it. I would really like Charlotte to take on a small role in our radio drama, possibly as the Grandmother or Nurse as she has a very maternal demeanour.

In the workshops we discussed how far we had gotten with our radio projects and how to undertake casting calls.

This week we had Penny Reading come in to talk to us about actors and Radio Drama. One thing that stuck with me was that we needed to remember that we were in charge, just because we are students it doesn’t mean that we can’t turn down an application. At the end of the day it is our production so we can choose who acts in it. She gave us some helpful tips when working with actors such as adding in how things are spoken, for example sadly, or anxiously as otherwise actors will just read it out. We also had Peggy teach us some acting tips of our own in the workshop.

Personally I don’t think that the workshop was very helpful to what we were doing as we ourselves aren’t acting in our dramas, and the workshop was based around acting techniques. However it did allow us to understand the actors point of view and what we need to put in our scripts so that we know what we want. In addition, she mentioned that we need to know what we want from the actor and make sure that the actor is sure what we want from them because the more time you spend on rerecording the more money is wasted in the industry. After all time=money.

We had our team meeting with Zara in the seminar, who gave our script the all clear, although she made us aware that another group was doing the same script as us. We have created a google document between us so that we can all work on the proposal together. We are all going to listen to a radio drama that relates to our script and see what we can implement from it.

This week we looked at recording Radio Drama on location. This can be seen as easier and cheaper most of the time as sound effects and background noise don’t need to be created. The lecture was Outside and Zara took us around campus to show just some of the sounds we could achieve. My favourite part of the lecture was when we had to act as a mob, as this was something that I feel couldn’t be done as well in a studio. It really opened my eyes to the possibilities of working on location, as it makes a lot more sense to do so a lot of the time. The script that we have chosen is called Continuum. This is based mainly in a hospital and it is possible to do this on location but it may be hard to gain access and permission.

In the workshops we went through the script that we had been given. I took on the role of the narrator, so only had a line at the beginning and end of the drama. I was told to sound more dramatic, which was hard for me to do because I had never acted seriously before and I found this challenging. I’m not very good at making sound effects either, I start laughing and don’t take it very seriously, which I need to if I want to be able to do this with my own radio drama. I enjoyed making the radio drama as a group, and am looking forward to creating our dramas for real.