Dan Media Explosion: unit 19 pitch audio

unit 19

P1

I started this unit off by researching some radio dramas like 'Journey Into Space' and 'The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.'

Unit 19 Plan & Pitch

Name

Listen to three radio dramas.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b007jr6v

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00hv5wv

TITLE 1: JOURNEY INTO SPACE- Charles Chilton

Purpose	To entertain the listener and tell them a story that they can follow.
Form and style	Audio, radio drama. Old fashioned ‘Queen’s English’ accents contrasted with strong cockney accents (To finish: More detail and examples) "Serves you right for getting off your bed and putting your boots on" this is a quote from a scene which involved one of the characters Lemmy getting off his bed without putting his magnetic boots on and ending up at the top of the ceiling. This shows a stiff upper lip attitude, typical at the time of this show.
Content	It’s about astronauts who get trapped on the moon. There are hints that there is something else out there, that they’re not alone.
Meaning	A commentary on ideas and thoughts of the dangers of going into space. The commentary explains that there could be unseen dangers in space. They achieve this by playing strange unknown sounds to the audience and the characters tell the audience their opinion on what these unknown sounds could be and they think there is something out there.
Genre	Sci-fi, drama
Target Audience	20-30 years old, adult males. This will appeal to sci-fi fans and fans of radio dramas. it will mainly appeal to a middle class demographic but can be listened by anyone for free who has access to a radio.
Frequency (how often it is on)	Weekly
Sound effects used to set the scene	Footsteps, beeps indicating technology, and roars from the spaceship. It gives the effect to the audience that you are on the spaceship with them.
Character details (rough age, what are they like) Character 1 Character 2	British, male astronauts. Adult. 30-40 years old Doctor Daniel Matthews. The character is Bookish, he is reading HG wells. Captain Andrew “jet” Morgan. He logs his journey in space.
Production process (how did it get made? Can you find any information as to how a radio drama is made?) Research the writer and producer.	Written and produced by Charles Chilton. It was the last UK radio Programme to attract bigger audiences than TV. 4 series were produced by Chilton. Chilton later wrote 3 best selling novels. In this production there were more advanced sound effects and music created for the show. The music was composed by Van Phillips.

TITLE 2: Hitchhikers guide to the galaxy

Purpose	To entertain
Form and style	Radio comic drama. The Dialogue is comical and uses nerdy technical language. “The Guide says that the effect of a Pan Galactic Gargle Blaster is like having your brains smashed out by a slice of lemon wrapped round a large gold brick”. This shows the type of language and style used in this radio show.
Content	Arthur Dents house is being demolished so that a motorway can be built. At the same time Earth is being demolished so that a galactic highway can be built.
Meaning	Earth to us is really big but small to rest of the galaxy. Arthur Dents house is big to him but small to rest of earth. It is showing small things are big to us in an ironic way.
Genre	Sci fi/ comedy adventure
Target Audience	At the time of its release, the main target audience was teenagers and young adults. This radio series has become iconic and a huge range of ages including children, teenagers and adults still listen to it on podcasts and will look back on it fondly.
Frequency (how often it is on)	It was aired weekly when broadcasted.
Sound effects used to set the scene	The production had one eight-track tape recorder. A lot of the sound effects were mixed live with tape loops of background sound effects. Sound effects were created by Paddy Kingsland, Dick mills and Harry Parker. The Creator Douglas Adams wanted to create the feeling to the audience that they were actually on a spaceship. Futuristic sounds were used to create this effect.
Character details (rough age, what are they like) Character 1 Character 2	Arthur Dent- He is in his 30’s. He is a regular guy who goes down the pub and lives a very ordinary life. Ford Prefect- He is an alien on earth. He is studying and is writing a guide about hitch hiking through the galaxy.
Production process (how did it get made? Can you find any information as to how a radio drama is made?) Research the writer and producer.	Douglas Adams created this radio drama and he wrote the first 2 series. John Lloyd was the co writer for series 1 and Dirk Maggs wrote series 3, 4 and 5. Douglas Adams later wrote the novel, Hitchhikers guide to the galaxy. Simon Brett produced the pilot. Geoffrey Perking produced series 1-2. Dirk maggs co produced the final 3 series. The series was the first comedy radio drama to be recorded in stereo. This was the first BBC radio comedy to use stereophonic techniques. Before Hitchhikers guide to the galaxy was made, the use of stereo for radio dramas for deemed impossible. After Hitch Hikers Guide to the galaxy was made the use of stereo was made compulsory.

moodboard

Sci Fi Drama ideas

1. Msn wakes up and no one is around. His search to try and discover others and what has happened. set creepy mysterious atmosphere.

2. After Nasa successfully landed on Mars they discover the crew are being infected by a martian parasite turning them into monsters. Who is infected? Can they make it back to earth, should they?

3. The intergalactic police are in quadrant 9. They are trying to find and capture 'the space pirates. The space pirates have been tyrannising and destroying worlds. The space police are having little success so the task is opened up to the bounty hunters community. Meet Roland Gates, AKA 'stormfire' his self penned nickname. Can he succeed where others have failed.

4. After the nuclear wars, earth is depleted of resources and life. Survivors emerging from their bunker hiding places discover a barren world. People who were unable to find appropriate shelter have become mutants: deformed flesh hungry monsters. How will they survive in this apocalyptic worlds?

Discuss story and characters and settings
In our group we discussed several different plot and story ideas. We mainly discussed the main two ideas we came up with. One of the ideas was set on Mars and there was a alien virus trying to infect everyone. The other idea was that there were only 10 space pods for 100 people to escape and the ensuing race to get to them, only 10% would make it! We then combined these two ideas to make one story concept.

p2

Feedback on my script

All of the feedback was very positive. The only changes that need to be made is to introduce Jack ions more into the story. Make Jack a more prominent main character.

How did my pitch go? I think i was convincing at the start of the pitch. I asked a question. Have any of you seen a film or radio show where robots rule humans? I was expecting them to say no. They all answered yes and this threw me off a bit. I think asking a question in a pitch can be a gamble. It can either pay off or hinder you. In this case in hindered me. In the future i will make sure that I am prepared for both possible answers of that question. I will also ask rhetorical questions. I also stuttered a bit in the script. This was down to nerves. I will practice to be more confident with speaking in front of a group of people.

p3

script extract

music Idea for radio drama
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WuLsHkl_Xuk

P4

GROUP pitch

https://youtu.be/VdJH2sJjiD4

Class feedback:
There were two main issues with the pitch the first being we didn't explain any of the characters in enough detail for them to understand what the characters are like, The other major issue was that we didn't explain why they were having to colonise Mars in the first place. The smaller problems involved confusing information for example one piece of feedback said they were confused with all the spaceships although we only mentioned one, this could be down to us being unclear.

p5

Merit:

How did you take into account season or calendar events when planning your launch date?

- We planned our launch date for Friday 3rd June because of it being May half term and therefore Colleges, Universities, Sixth forms and secondary schools will be off for holiday allowing them to have the time off to listen in on our radio drama launch and leading up to it they will have the time to notice the advertising and will know when our launch date is, overall we planned our launch date at a time suitable for our target audience by taking into account calendar events for schools and this helped us decide the final launch date.

How are your timescales, launch date and budget realistic and feasible?

Our project is feasible with the budget because as this is a student project we need no budget because we have the recording equipment already available to us and we only had 6 characters in our script and we had enough voice actors within our group to do it without having to hire voice actors, in the end we just got permission from each group member so that we could use them in the radio drama. Our launch date is feasible because it is a new radio drama played on a Friday night for young adults to listen to, this would be normal for this time and date as it is a time where many young adult viewers can listen in and this means that it has the potential to be very successful, also this time slot isn't taken by any other radio drama and therefore we would be able to have it on.

Distinction:

Contingency plan

- If a voice actor is ill and can't be there for recording - Record a different day or get a new voice actor.

- If the recording room is booked already - Book another time slot or see if another room can be used instead.

- Script is not finished for the recording - Wait until it has been complete, work as a team to get it done together or record anyway and just try out different lines.

- Loud noises in the background (people talking, walking, door slams etc.) - Record another time, ask people politely if they can be quiet, put a sign up saying recording in progress or let the rooms near us know that we are recording.

Revise pre-production based on feedback

I revised my pre-production based on the script and treatment based on the feedback I got and the changes I made where;

Treatment changes:

- Wrote what year it was set in.

- Put a few more details on the main two characters plus a little description of two more characters.

- I added another few things about the storyline and what it leads on to.

- I put more information on the target audience slide about who specifically would like it and what type of person they would be.

- I also added some more pictures to each slide and a bit of colour.

Script changes:

- Corrected all grammar and spelling mistakes.

- Added a few more sound effects and parentheticals.

- Changed lines so that they where easier and more natural for people to say.

- Took out any unnecessary lines.

- Changed the characters so that instead of about 8 different voice actors it became 5 or 6 as I worked out who could play two or more characters and that it would make sense to combine two different characters as one because of how similar they are and that they are in different scenes.

Production Plan:

a) Recording date(s) and time(s)

29^th April: 1pm-2pm, 3pm-3.30pm

4^th May: 10am-10:30am, 10:45am-11:15am

Product launch date

June 3rd

Why that date

The Friday during May half term, it’s the time that college and universities are off timetable so it is available to the mid demographic.

b) Resources and equipment needed

Microphones, recording equipment, audio editing software, studio, voice actors, director, editor, sound technician, sound effect tools

c) Personnel/cast/crew and roles/jobs

Cast	Character
Kacper Balkota Adam Holland Daniel Welch Daniel Pritchard Sam Tindall Charlie Brett Adam Holland Daniel Pritchard Daniel Welch	Gavin Martin Worker 1 Worker 2 Boss Skip Captain Ship Pilot 1
Crew	Role
Sam Tindall Adam Holland Sam Tindall Sam Tindall Adam Holland Kacper Balkota Daniel Welch Daniel Pritchard Charlie Brett	Director Producer Writer Actor Actor Actor Actor Actor Actor

d) Budget

If professional

We will need to hire a recording studio for 3 days for each hour episode. The studio costs £160.00 a day. We will need to Hire actors and pay them for 3 days of recording. Each actor will cost £50 a day. We will provide food to the actors. This will cost £30.00 a day. The microphones cost £60.00 each to buy. We will need 3 microphones. We will use Adobe audition to make the broadcast. The cost of this of this software is £180.00. The total cost of the studio hire, actors and food is £1380.00 per episode. The total cost of the microphones and software is £240.00.

If student

No group budget. The equipment studio and software is provided by the college. Each actor and crew member will have to pay their own travel expenses and will have to provide themselves with their own food.

e) legal & ethical issues & how you resolved them

Issue

Resolved by…

Strong language

Racial language or words

References to companies or brands

Needing to have diverse characters

Copyright

We scheduled it to air after water shed.

We had a couple things that can be considered racist so we have cut them out of the script.

We had one reference like this in our script so we cut it from the script.

The original script had diverse characters although as this was a student project we didn't find the time to hire anybody for this so we had to make changes and just use what we had.

Any sounds and/or music we get for our radio drama will be un-copyrighted.

We scheduled it to air after water shed.