Unit 41 - Radio Drama

Radio Drama:

Radio drama is over 70 years old, and it reached it’s peak in the late 1940’s, and quickly became forgotten with the introduction of the television. In the mid-1920’s, some stations began to write programs that used announcers and narrators. When 1927 came around, original scripts were written for radio drama, and people also used to do adaptations of short stories over the radio.

In the early 1930’s, comedy became a common form of radio drama, with radio shows becoming so popular that they were even adapted into television programs, such as ‘Amos ‘n’ Andy’. Also, in the 1930’s, radio advertising became commonplace when companies were buying air-time to advertise their products, and as this happened, networks started to compete in their share. As a result of this, many new program forms were put into development, among which were: programs based around comedians, town meeting programs, vaudeville variety programs, among others.

In the early 1940’s, radio programs told us of how America were involved in World War II. Due to the country’s involvement in the war, news report programs almost doubled in number, and evening drama programs became more abundant over the several radio stations. Eventually, people became tired of war talk, so they turned to other genres of radio programs, such as comedy drama and thriller drama. By the end of 1945, radio stations were offering over 47 hours per week of drama, 25 hours of which were thriller drama, due to it’s high demand.

Radio also effect the early years of the television. People didn’t want to risk producing and broadcasting new forms of television programs, because it might not be accepted in the way in which they wanted, so the solution to this was to adapt several radio shows, mainly the dramas, into television programs, so that the television itself would be more widely received. Among these was ‘Suspense’, a long running radio thriller drama.

Radio drama still exists in the UK. It can be found radio stations such as Radio 4, which can be accessed from almost anywhere, even in a car, or on the internet. These radio stations also broadcast other types of program, such as comedy sections, talk-shows, news, sport reports, as well as a large variety of other genres.

Five examples of radio dramas are: The Archers, Ballylenon, Boxer and Doberman, The Decievers, and Little Blighty On The Down.

War Of The Worlds:

War Of The Worlds – Orson Welles, 1938.

In 1938, over 6 million people were thoroughly terrified by a radio show, broadcast by Orson Welles. The broadcast itself left many people believing that there was a genuine attack on the USA. The radio show began as normal, which led people to believe that this would be an ordinary radio show, just like the one they were used to listening to all the time. What they didn’t know was that they were listening to a very peculiar radio adaptation of H.G Wells’ sci-fi classic, ‘War of the Worlds’.

The broadcast began with Welles describing the intentions of aliens towards planet Earth, and other than that, there was a small introduction to the show, and then some songs were played, perhaps to lull the audience into a false sense of security, making it seem as though nothing odd would happen. Eventually, Orson Welles began reading out news reports of ‘explosions on Mars’. Even this didn’t seem out of the ordinary, so the public just carried on listening like nothing was happening.

But as most of the public missed the opening of the radio show, they took it to be a news broadcast, because of the war scares. But as the broadcast continued, the reports became stranger, eventually leading to the climactic ending itself, which made it seem that Earth was actually being attacked by an unknown enemy.

Updates became more and more frequent, and eventually led to a ‘Martian Rocket Capsule’ landing in New Jersey, and that the Martians themselves were burning people with their ‘Heat-Rays’, whilst destroying roads and bridges. The newspapers indicated that only a portion of listeners heard this part of the broadcast, but was eventually heard anyway by the information being passed between the people, even if they thought it was only a rumour. Despite the commotion it caused, the main factor that said it was fiction, was the fact that the radio show contained other famous radio voices from other stations, so it should have been quite obvious that this broadcast was for entertainment purposes only, and was not meant to frighten anybody,

This sent most of the nation into a scare, and the psychological effect it was having on the public was rather obvious. People actually roamed the streets with shotguns as though expecting an attack, and other people actually let themselves believe that they were detecting the enemy’s weapons, such as smelling poisonous gas or seeing flashes of lightning in the distance. Other people packed their belongings and left the area completely, and some people didn’t even take their family with them, as they just got up and ran away.

Historians claimed that over six million people heard the broadcast from Orson Welles, with over 1.7 million believing it to be true, and another one million people genuinely frightened. After a month, approximately 12,500 news articles had reported the incident itself, or its’ after effects.

Task 3: At top of page.

Task 4:

My rendition of the fairytale story 'The Gingerbread Man' will be a single strand narrative. It will include an equilibium, disruption, and a resolution, and it will also feature a hero, villain, and a damsel-in-distress. The primary target audience of the speech package is 13-18 year olds. Despite being a fairytale story, it includes humour that only older children will understand. Even though it is mainly aimed at teenagers, younger children will like it because it's a different story to the original. There will be a range of different voices in the speech package. For example, the gingerbread man's voice will be quite high-pitched, and the fox's voice will be quite low and rough. There will be a lot of sound effects in my speech package, as a lot of the characters actions are shown through the sounds rather them doing it when they say they are doing it. For example, a chair scraping backwards on the floor will connote someone standing up to do something. The music will generally be quite happy, due to it being a fairytale.

My second speech package, which is set in modern wartimes with a twist, will be single strand. It doesn't strictly follow the pattern of equilibrium, disruption, and resolution theory. It starts in the middle of the disruption, and ends with it too, so there is no real peace throughout the whole thing. The voices throughout the package will be very distressed, as they are in the middle of war. My target audience will be older teenagers, as it will be quite serious in parts, but will have a sort of dark humour to it. The music will be very dark overall, to connote that times are dark, and won't be brightening up any time soon. The music bed will be things exploding and crashing and people shouting.

Task 5: Treatments

Gingerbread Man: The opening scene starts with jolly background music, and the old man and woman discussing the day's plans. The jolly mood is kept up until the gingerbread man escapes from the old couple, and at this point the music picks up to a more frantic pace, to connote running. The gingerbread man will be stopped various times, at which point the music will stop, and will pick up the frantic pace when he starts running again. In the final scene, the music will become slightly darker, to connote that something bad is happening, but will become jolly again when everything is resolved.

The voices throughout the speech package will vary greatly. The voices of the old man and woman will be typical old people voices, sounding strained with age. The voice of the gingerbread man will be high pitched. The fox's voice will be low and harsh, to connote that he is the villain. The farmer will have a redneck voice, to connote stupidity. The chavs will have low but very accentuated voices, and the gangsters will have the stereotypical gangster voice.

My speech package will have two target audiences. The primary target audience will 13-18 year olds. Despite being a fairytale story, it will have a humour to it that only teenagers can really understand. The secondary target audience will be younger primary school children. They would probably like to hear a fairytale with a twist to the ending.

It will have an equilibirium, disruption and a resolution. It will also have a hero, damsel-in-distress, and a villain, but it doesn't follow the theory too closely.