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Horror on the radio: We Outnumber You

2010-04-23T09:23:25+00:00

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00s0ygj

Could we do a horror on radio? Could we horrify people? Not an atmospheric, gothic spook with resonant chords and the whiff of damp tweed, but something actually scary. Something to make the audience squelch. That was the ambition.

There's a mantra in Hollywood that to be effective, a screenplay has to make your organs squelch three times while reading it. For organs read tear ducts, stomach, heart, bowels, the skin on the back of your neck, throat, toes... whatever. Are you literally physically moved by the writing? And if not, it's not ready.

Reading the final script of We Outnumber You (Friday Play, 2100 23 April) gave me a rare workout in squelching. It also reads like a list of fantastic challenges. Here are just a few, and how we achieved them.

A man, wearing a microphone, walks into a jackal enclosure at the zoo, and is attacked, killed and eaten by jackals, while an attendant crowd take pictures. Layer upon layer of sound went into this. The actor, Luke Treadaway, played it for real on his own in studio. The spot studio manager (who helps us record live effects), simultaneously chomped down on some melon very close to another mic. Separately we recorded the crowd, first screaming then stunned. We begged recordings of jackals off the Natural History Unit in Bristol, which we layered into the sound picture, together with some dog, and then degraded the whole edit to give the effect of a mashed up piece of equipment. All this work, and then the truly effective moment comes during the silence after the microphone goes dead.

A stampede of hippos that run down a crowd of visitors. Agitated hippos faithfully recorded sound remarkably - and disappointingly - like Denis Healey laughing, so that was out. However, we did find that hippos on tarmac sound very like horses on turf, slowed down, and pitch-changed, with added grunting from a mix of bear, pig and lion. And the actors did the rest, some of them running away, three of them staying and being crushed and one, the character whose foot is bitten off, holding the microphone.

A helicopter issuing a live news report crashes into an enormous bird sanctuary. Michael Shelford, the actor playing the reporter inside the helicopter, had to imagine the level of sound he was working against, and yelled his lines into the microphone. Behind him, we used the effect of a functioning light helicopter, which we then mixed with tearing metal, and a malfunctioning washing machine, and added an alarm clock (persistently and gratuitously warning the occupants something might have gone wrong). As the helicopter crashes through the enormous aviary cage, more metal tears, branches crack, wings flurry, and a cacophony of panicked bird cries add to the chaos, gradually trailing off as they all fly free, leaving only the burning of the wreckage.

A camera, set to record, is dropped fifty metres through foliage. The spot studio manager took a deep breath and blew steadily onto the mic, which after 'freefalling' for a second or two, was then hit from both sides by branches, before being dropped onto the ground, during which activity the actor - Ben Crowe - retreated silently to the other end of the studio sound trap so that his next line could sound fifty metres away.

And the hardest of all - a group of primary school children are crying. Weirdly the hardest sound to get right. It's easy to imagine children crying for attention, or crying with pain, but crying together from fear is so difficult to put your finger on. There are some stored recordings of children crying, little electronic pockets of misery on a hard drive, but they're the tears of children whose parents appear to be recording them when they should be comforting them, and not quite right. The Stalisfield Youth Theatre, in Kent, offered to cry for us. And scream. And stampede. And imitate monkeys. They were so great at screaming. Brilliant at stampeding past the microphone in mock panic. Hilarious monkey impersonators. But it took thirty attempts to get them crying right. Take after take foundered on 'boo-hoo'ing, on over-sniffing, on wailing, but mainly on giggling, and with each attempt the children became more and more miserable, understandably. And by the time they went home, they were utterly disconsolate.

So. We hope you squelch.

Jessica Dromgoole is Director of We Outnumber You

We Outnumber You is on BBC Radio 4 at 2100 tonight (23 April 2010).
Picture by Bartek Kucharczyk. Used under licence.

Postcards from a Cataclysm - short drama for Radio 4

2010-02-10T10:43:19+00:00

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00qj1qv

I love short film festivals. They're a bit like a box of chocolates: You might get an incredible story, a fantastic animation or something totally abstract and experimental. And when you do get a dud, you're safe in the knowledge that there'll be another along soon.

Radio 4 is uniquely privileged to have 45 minutes of original drama every afternoon, but it's never really tried short-form drama in the Afternoon Play slot... until now. Postcards from a Cataclysm is a collection of 'audio shorts' - between 30 seconds and 6 minutes long - packaged around the idea that an asteroid is about to strike planet earth.

Now, there will be those who say that short-form drama is yet more evidence of society's dumbing down and that in our increasingly technologically dominated world, attention spans are shrinking to such an extent that they can't concentrate on anything unless it's bite-sized and easily digestible.

But that is to miss the fact that short-form drama really is an art form in its own right. Only the most skilled of writers can craft a satisfying story with believable characters in less than 5 minutes. You only need to spend a short while on the BBC Film Network to see that when it's done well short-form can be a fantastically rich dramatic experience.

In terms of audio there's some great experimental shorts provided by the French company Arte Radio (not all of them in French).

Short-form also allows audio drama to sit comfortably into the playlist of your MP3 player. So you might get a short play or a poem nestled between Chopin and Shakira.

But, perhaps the most interesting challenge of fitting short form into the Afternoon Play slot, was making the individual pieces work as a whole. Regular listeners deserve a satisfying arc across the 45 minutes, so while attempting to make the shorts as individual and distinct as possible, we were keen they all felt part of the same story.

Whether we succeeded and whether short-form is the way forward or simply a detour to somewhere slightly different, please have a listen and judge for yourself.

Listen to one of the shorts created for the programme, Amazing Grace by The Factory:

James Robinson is producer of Postcards from a Cataclysm

Postcards from a Cataclysm is on Wednesday at 1415 on Radio 4, or each piece is available as a download from the Radio 4 website for one week after broadcast.
Follow drama company The Factory on Twitter.
Picture by Yersinia Pestis. Used under licence.

Six Suspects: assembling the party scene (and some audio extras)

2010-01-20T16:35:18+00:00

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00pk6w1

Editor's note. Here is producer John Dryden's final Six Suspects blog post - this time about the process of recording the pivotal party scene - used throughout the adaptation. Fascinating. And after it (scroll down), something marvelous: eight deleted and extended scenes, nearly twenty minutes of audio all together, given to us by John for exclusive publication here on the blog. My recommendation: put your headphones on and listen to them in sequence - it's like a scary ride through the backstreets and penthouses of the story. John's post starts with the party scene itself - SB.

The party sequence in week two - where Vicky Rai is murdered - presented a number of challenges as the sequence of events is repeated each day but each time from a different suspects point of view. The party itself was recorded in a number of different ways - Vicky's speech for instance was recorded with 'live' party crowds who he could bounce off and who could react to him. We recorded him close and from within the crowd so that we could cut between perspectives. We also recorded a lot of lines clean of the party so that they could be dropped in over the many party wildtracks we recorded.

This was mostly the case with the dialogue lines from the various suspects. We recorded a lot of crowd reactions to the different events of the party - 'anchor points' we called them. These were events that had to happen in every episode - the fireworks, the power cutting out, the gun going off, the lights coming back on, the discovery of Vicky's body. As the audience are pretty sure by now that someone is going to murder Vicky at the party (they are told as much by Arun Advani at the end of episode four), the fireworks are a kind of tease - anticipating the actual gun shot that will come later.

How the guests at the party were to react when the lights came back on and discovered Vicky lying on the ground was something we didn't decide on until late in the day. In fact we recorded the guests reacting in a number of different ways but opted eventually for the idea that they would think he was playing a joke on them. This allowed for a gradual realization that he was dead. It seemed right that they would think it was a joke at first - Vicky being the prankster type.

In terms of editing, we first of all created a master party sequence which had all the 'anchor points' but none of the perspectives of the different suspects. It was a sequence with Vicky in 'full frame' from his speech to the discovery of his death. This took quite some time to make, because it was constructed from so many different elements and we wanted it to seem like someone had turned up to a party in Delhi with a tape recorder or video camera and just recorded everything that happened there - like it was found material.

Once the master sequence was completed we used it at the end of episodes 6-10 in various configurations, dropping in the lines from the various suspects over the top. That's the sequence you can hear at the top of this blog post.

John Dryden is producer of Six Suspects

Deleted and extended scenes from Six Suspects, recorded live in Mumbai for the BBC Radio 4 adaptation:

Steve Bowbrick is editor of the Radio 4 blog

The last three episodes of Six Suspects are still available to listen to on the Radio 4 web site. A BBC audio CD is planned.
Read John Dryden's two posts about recording the series in India.
The picture, Boy Playing with Ferry - Mumbai, India, is by Gregory Younger. Used under licence.

More from Mumbai

2010-01-13T12:27:05+00:00

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00pk6w1

John Dryden's second post about recording Six Suspects for Radio 4 - SB.

We recorded a lot of crowd reactions to the different events of the party - 'anchor points' we called them. These were events that had to happen in every episode - the fireworks, the power cutting out, the gun going off, the lights coming back on, the discovery of Vicky's body. As the audience are pretty sure by now that someone is going to murder Vicky at the party (they are told as much by Arun Advani at the end of episode four), the fireworks are a kind of tease - anticipating the actual gun shot that will come later.

In terms of editing, we first of all created a master party sequence which had all the "anchor points" but none of the perspectives of the different suspects. It was a sequence with Vicky in "full frame" from his speech to the discovery of his death. This took quite some time to make, because it was constructed from so many different elements and we wanted it to seem like someone had turned up to a party in Delhi with a tape recorder or video camera and just recorded everything that happened there - like it was found material.

Once the master sequence was completed we used it at the end of episodes 6-10 in various configurations, dropping in the lines from the various suspects over the top (Exclusive sound samples from the recording will be available here tomorrow).

Six Suspects is transmitted in the Woman's Hour drama slot at 1045 and 1945 daily until 15 January. Listen to this week's episodes on the Radio 4 web site.
Radio 4 Controller Mark Damazer wrote about John's production of Q&A (the story which became Slumdog Millionaire) here on the blog in February.
There's some discussion of Six Suspects on the Radio 4 message board.
Picture by Tom Spender. Used under licence.

Recording Six Suspects

2010-01-07T15:19:18+00:00

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00pk6w1

Editor's note. Have you been listening the current Woman's Hour serial? It's called Six Suspects, an adaptation of a story by Vikas Svarup, author of Q&A, the novel that was filmed as Slumdog Millionaire. One of the most distinctive things about Six Suspects is the amazing sound - it's unusually atmospheric and authentic - utterly absorbing. I asked producer John Dryden to explain how he captured the sound of Mumbai - SB.

What next? I'd worked in India several times before. I'd done the romantic epic (A Suitable Boy), the uplifting modern-day coming-of-age story (Q&A), but what was I going to do with this larger-than-life and slightly fantastical whodunit in which all the characters were at worst evil and a best mildly unlikeable. There is little of the milk of human kindness in the world of Six Suspects. It's all highly entertaining stuff in prose, but how were we going to make it compelling to listen to as drama?

I was looking for a very particular sound with Six Suspects. Set in modern-day India, it examines the lives of the suspects in the murder of a character (Vicky Rai) who is so evil you almost like him. The characters are so extreme the story verges on comedy - but I didn't want this just to be a comedy. There seemed to be so many more levels in the novel. I wanted the performances and production to work against the comedy and create a tension that I hoped the audience would feel and would suck them into the drama. So we worked on an approach in which the comedy and extremities would appear to be happening in the real world. Key to achieving this was the sound design. Sound designer Nick Russell-Pavier, sound recordist Ayush Ahuja and myself worked closely together in the weeks leading up to recording, planning each scene in detail. Being really well prepared allowed us to be more flexible when the recording actually took place.

Every scene was blocked out in detail. There were no actors standing around fixed microphones in this production. What the characters appear to be doing - whether walking up the stairs, running down the street, driving - the actors playing them are actually doing. We recorded it all in real locations with the microphone on a boom tracking the actors in their highly choreographed performances. We didn't record any of the drama in studio except for the voice over of the narrator, the investigative journalist Arun Advani - an element that gives the drama an investigative documentary feel.

We made the drama in India, in two primary locations: one a flat in Mumbai around which were streets we could record in; the other a rural location a few hours outside of Mumbai, which was much quieter and gave us more control. We used a variety of recording techniques - the tracking microphone on a boom - radio microphones in busy locations when we didn't want to draw attention to ourselves and for phone calls - small recorders which we gave the actors for certain fast movement sequences such as when Munna Mobile runs down the street after stealing a phone. We aimed to keep the microphones moving all the time to give an uneasy grainy quality to it all. We also recorded lots and lots of wildtracks, which we could later layer under scenes in post production - again to keep this sense of movement, of things always changing, as the fast-moving story progresses.

We recorded the drama in India over two weeks in May 2009 and I then went to work on several other productions before coming back to the material in August to begin the edit. The post-production took about ten weeks. I edited on Pro-Tools building the sequences as composer Sacha Puttnam began creating themes that I could start playing around with. The themes were inspired by music we recorded in India - raw, imporivised, performances by Indian musician. Gradually the shape and style of the drama began to emerge. At this stage, the script (a brilliantly constructed script by Ayeesha Menon from the novel by Vikas Swarup) was largely put aside as the characters took on a life of their own. For a final mix I worked with Nick Russell-Pavier in the studios at Essential Music. This is pretty much how we put the production together.

John Dryden is producer of Six Suspects

Six Suspects is transmitted in the Woman's Hour drama slot at 1045 and 1945 daily until 15 January. Listen to this week's episodes on the Radio 4 web site.
Radio 4 Controller Mark Damazer wrote about John's production of Q&A (the story which became Slumdog Millionaire) here on the blog in February.
There's some discussion of Six Suspects on the Radio 4 message board.
Picture by Tawheed Manzoor. Used under licence.

Capturing the everyday sounds of Ambridge

2009-11-25T16:14:30+00:00

Only last week I was fretting about my return to work, after having had time off to have my second baby. But why should I worry? Of course I would remember how to sound-edit the programme, and I would never go into a blind panic when I had to point that microphone for the latest sound effect needed in studio! This week? I can honestly say that I feel as if I had never been away! And there really was no need to panic.

Coming back to work - even when what you do involves editing and microphones - is much like riding a bike - you rarely forget.

There is always so much to do in the run up to studio week, for me, so if I was going to pine too much after my adorable boy, and my hilarious daughter, then this was a good week to choose a return. I honestly haven't stopped.

I have already recorded on a beautiful farm in deepest Leicestershire (yoghurt-related effects) and I have had a good few children in to repeat lines after me. Then there is the hectic compiling of episodes, playing out (our speak for listening back to the final version), scheduling and podcasting.

Today, already, I have played out 6 episodes that transmit in a couple of weeks (not quite Christmas, but if I hear any more Christmas hits, I think my head may spin), planned a couple more recordings, done some episode scheduling and podcasting, and am just about to commandeer an edit suite to play out an Omnibus...

Then, when the day is done, and I can be sure that the listeners will get their daily dose of the programme, I will pop out for a good run (my other passion, besides my kids and my job), and then back home... but you don't want to know the trials and tribulations of that part of my day!

Sonja Cooper is a Technical Broadcast Assistant on The Archers and she's responsible for recording many of the sound effects you hear on the programme

Here, for your listening pleasure, are some of the sounds captured by Sonja on her recent travels:

Archers Week ran on the Radio 4 blog from 23-30 November 2009. 19 blog posts were published in all, from 17 authors. They're listed here.
Radio 4's Archers web site is full of good stuff, like a map of Ambridge, family trees for all the big clans and a detailed who's who. There's also a 'two-minute guide' for Archers newbies.
The Archers messageboards are among the busiest at the BBC - nicknamed Mustardland because of the distinctive yellow page backgrounds. They're a bit sceptical about Archers Week, though.
There are two Archers podcasts: one for the daily episodes and one for the Sunday omnibus.
Hedli Niklaus, who plays Kathy Perks in the serial, also runs the Archers fan club, Archers Addicts.
Norman Painting, who played Archers patriarch Phil for nearly sixty years, died on 29 October 2009. The last episode he recorded aired on 22 November. Archers Editor Vanessa Whitburn paid tribute to him here on the blog and the Archers Addicts have collected listener tributes.
During our visit to the Archers' home in Birmingham dozens of photographs were taken, many of which feature pictures of cast members (and an ironing board).
Twitter was put to use during Archers Week. #archersweek was the hashtag and we learnt that Tim Bentinck, who plays David Archer (@timbentinck) and Keri Davies, who writes scripts (@keridavies) are both Twitterers. Follow the Radio 4 blog on Twitter.