Radio Clock. Own Work

ReWind Wednesday – Rainy Island Communications

This week I take a throwback look at 2 more university projects that I feel a bit more proud of, even if the end product doesn’t seem like an awful amount on the surface.

As part of my radio production module in my BA degree, I had to produce two 5 minute audio tracks.

One involved creating a fictional radio show as part one of a few given fictional radio stations, each of which was shared (in terms of a day’s schedule) between a group of a few students (My group’s was Rainy Island Communications) – planning and documenting 1 hour of that, minute by minute and record 5 minutes of it from anywhere, so long as it contained a set criteria of elements. These included:

  • A news segment with a music bed (the bed was assessed)
  • A main jingle introducing the show name and station
  • An Advert
  • A short jingle
  • A set of vox pops
  • At least one song with a noticeable segue.

Timings for these had to match the plan that was previously agreed with my tutor – just the same way as scheduling in a real station is expected and is often seen as critical. Production needn’t be the main priority, nor did the entire task have to actually be recorded live (especially since in miniature homework tasks we were already asked to record and hand in these segments individually (with a couple of exceptions such as jingles), but given this was a final year assignment, it was expected to be believable as an actual radio extract

The results of Just Mike’s Midday Munchies can be heard in the playlist at the bottom of this post. Can you identify all of the above criteria? FYI, song intro/outros are shortened as a mere demonstration of segues and where the songs would normally go. I do not own the copyright to these and I’m using them as fair use purely to identify the segments they would otherwise represent.

The second assignment, again an ideal total of strictly 5 minutes focused on radio drama. For this assignment we were asked to pick a popular script to dramatise (or to write our own as an approved script according to BBC Scene Style Guidelines) and using the techniques of the radio stage, both in studio and post production to produce a suitable 5 minute extract (or the full piece if 5 minutes itself). Given we were a small group, we ended up voicing on each other’s productions, as with some of the jingles for each other’s assignment above. For the rest, we were very fortunate to study alongside an English course and several Theatre courses (with some doing it as a combined degree), meaning that a wealth of opportunity was available to work with anyone willing to voice your chosen characters.

I decided to brave writing my own script with the prologue to a series named The Morning After (which despite the jingle, was coined before the music was chosen). This series follows the misadventures of Charlie, a bricklayer for a construction company in his local area and the people around him, with the first episode opening on his first day on the job after a heavy night on the town. That’s where he meets Dominic, his co-worker whom as he begins to realise after the night before, he shares a lot more in common that he would like, with a world he must keep consistent if it doesn’t want to collapse like a ton of the very bricks he’s laying.

The result of this project can be heard below – with plans to replace the title sequence for copyright reasons should this be fully released to the public.

Mike

Share

Have your say

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.