The Page Turner Radio Play Episode 1

[StarvingWriter]

Finally! The first episode of The Page Turner Radiplay!

Episode 1: Night of the Fox

The Page Turner Radio play is in the fantasy genre and focuses on a girl named Raven and her magical life. While Raven appears to be a normal girl she is actually a part of a magical organization that is hidden from the rest of society. Life is good...until her family is attacked that is.

Mp3: http://media.putfile.com/Episode-1-mp3
Windows Media Audio: http://media.putfile.com/Episode-1-Windows-media-audio

The Cast: (In order of appearance)

Narrator: River Angel Odin
Raven: Starving Writer
Shina: Solstice
James: Sachibelle
Crevan: Judebert
Father: WhatOcean
Mother: Sonsko-chan
Nate: Blaze
Riley: WhatOcean
Jeremiah: Klaymen1
Daire: Edwyn
Royce: Pyromaster
Asher & Aron: SiriusFan17

Extras
Teacher: MyrrhLynn
Kids: Sonsko-chan, Starving Writer, MyrrhLynn
Bad-guy: Edwyn
Bad-lady: MyrrhLynn
Office lady: Starving Writer

Wow, lots of people!

Music: Gundam Seed, Bleach, and School Rumble sound tracks
Sound Effects: Find sounds and Ljudo

Feedback would be greatly appreciated! Thanks for listening!

[UltraRob]

Yay! I was looking forward to this! Now off to download and listen...

Rob

[Sirius]

I'm so excited to see this out! As soon as I can, I'll listen and review for sure! But I'm sure it's awsome! Nya!~

[UltraRob]

(I'll leave the Voice Acting critiques to the Voice Actors, and limit myself to the production and storytelling of the episode.)

Your story's not bad, and at it's core is a good idea and an interesting setup. (I like both the idea of the Page Turner and how you present it.) The problems that I had with it are that this story suffers from a case of "too much-too fast-too soon" which is common both in young writers and people who aren't used to thinking in terms of writing for audio.

For example, take a look at your cast list, all 12 of them. How many of those people can a listener really be expected to memorize or remember in 12 minutes of audio? Yes, a few incidental voices are nice, but if too many main characters come and go the audience doesn't know who to listen to or focus on. Audio drama is a shining example of the K.I.S.S. Principal: Keep It Simple and Stupid. Take a look at old radio plays from the days of old time radio when audio drama was at it's peak, and you'll quickly discover that most radio plays had a grand total of 4 characters in them! Now, that's for 1-shot self-contained stories, but even in an episode of a series the number rarely goes above 6 for 20+ minutes of audio! (That's 6 characters in any individual episode, not for the whole series.) It seems if you go much above 6 very distinctive characters (and distinctive voices), people have trouble sorting out who is who.

Now, of course, in a visual production, this isn't a problem because we see everyone there, but audio has it's own rules and limits and it becomes dangerous to give people too much-too fast. The play was at it's best when you settled down to those three characters chatting away at the end, it was easy to follow and everyone was distinctive. You CAN have a large cast, but you have to introduce them slowly and make sure they're each distinctive enough from the others to be easily remembered by the listener.

Speaking of slowly, you also need to learn how to structure and pace your scenes a little better. That opening scene was a confusing mess (wait, who is doing what? Fox? People jumping? Lion? Huh?) which whipped by way too fast. I understood it when I thought about it, but the very fact I needed to think about it means you need to be more clear. You needed to establish where the action is and who is speaking ASAP, and then move on from there to the event and some kind of closure, but don't be afraid of being too slow or running overtime (this is internet audio, there is no time limit!).

Pacing is important in scenes, and letting the audience get comfortable with where they are are good- you'll run into more trouble being too fast than too slow with audio drama. To get an example of this, take a look at Edwyn's Kazehana Family Battle that he posted here not long ago, there's a lot of gaps between dialogue in there, but it paces beautifully. (In no small part also because of his use of sound effects, and limited cast of characters.) Music also isn't bad for separating scenes, nor is sound effects, but some kind of cue the scene has ended can be important in letting the audience know it's time to move to the next scene.

Hmm...I'll stop there for now. But, at this point I should say that I liked it overall, and think you do have talent (if I didn't, I wouldn't be spending time trying to help), but have some areas you need to improve. Experience I think will fix these as you do more, but it doesn't hurt to get a few tips as well. (I listen to as much audio drama as I can find, and try to learn from each one how I can improve what I'm doing.) Just keep in mind two phrases and you'll improve quickly I think:

1) K.I.S.S.

2) Clarity above all! (Thall Shalt Not Confuse Thy Audience!)

Rob

[StarvingWriter]

Thanks so much for that great feedback UltraRob! You're right, this IS my first radioplay. (I've only done fandubs before this) so it certainly was...challenging.
Point taken about the cast (I was starting to crindge as I was typing up the post) but I DO have a question about something you said. I do understand the whole thing about the lion and you getting confused...but how could I possibly fix that confusion? Dialog?

Thanks for all of the helpful tips! I'll certainly keep them in mind as I type up the next script!

[judebert]

Mirror1 (sexypenguins.com direct download): http://sexypenguins.com//files/560/d...urner-ep01.mp3
Mirro2 (judebert.com blog, stream or download): http://judebert.com/wasted_youth/arc...f-the-Fox.html

[Myokei-kun]

Glad to see it's done. I'm downloading right now, and I'll see how it turned out

[judebert]

I admit the pacing was a bit fast. A few of the sound effects seemed hokey. In particular, the bit where the kids were fighting: the bonk on the head was more appropriate to a cartoon than a radio drama, and the footsteps when the kid walked over to the window were way too heavy.

It was nice to have different music for the different settings. It helped a lot. UltraRob is right, though: more needs to be explained to the audience. Listening to other radio dramas, like The Prarie Home Companion, you'll notice that almost every action is announced, one way or another. You'll hear *bonk*, then you'll hear "Stop hitting your sister over the head with that truck!" With the extra dialog, we probably could've done just the first two settings, and produced a very nice episode.

I liked the performances, though. Raven was excellent, very angsty-teenager. Mr. Wishmore seems a bit disorganized to be a master spy, though. And was that Ringo I heard in the library?

I need to act more enthusiastically, too. I'm chalking it up to inexperience, this time. I'll do better for episode 2!

[UltraRob]

Thanks so much for that great feedback UltraRob! You're right, this IS my first radioplay. (I've only done fandubs before this) so it certainly was...challenging.

Radioplays seem easy until you do them, eh? It's amazing how much art is involved in making them work.

Point taken about the cast (I was starting to crindge as I was typing up the post) but I DO have a question about something you said. I do understand the whole thing about the lion and you getting confused...but how could I possibly fix that confusion? Dialog?

Judebert already hit it on the head. Something you need to remember is that radio play dialogue is stage dialogue, not realistic dialogue. When characters speak, they're doing it to convey information first and foremost- where they are, who they are, what's happening, why they're there. It's a huge difference from visual media where most of that is already set up by the pictures.

The confusion with Scene One starts right from the first moment, I know (now) she's supposed to be doing her homework, but my first thought was "she's reciting information aloud in a clear and formal style, she must be a teacher and this is a school". Then while my head was playing with that idea, I suddenly have two screaming kids running around making cartoon noises, and then she's yelling at them. (Wait? Not school? Where are we?" Says Rob's brain...) Everything tumbles along after that as I try to figure out where this is and what they're doing. The simplest way to fix that would have been to either a) have the narrator tell us where she is, or b) start with the kid noises and then have her musing about why she hates studying at home or somesuch. By starting with her speaking, you gave us the wrong audio location cue.

Another problem with the first scene is the audio levels, they don't match and it's distracting. For example, when the bad guys are breaking in, why are we hearing distant screams alternating with her speaking loudly and clearly? (I only realized that's supposed to be her when I went through it again before I wrote this.) You need to have the sound effect levels match their volume if it's supposed to be them. The sound levels for the bad guys are also too different, some sound very close, others very far away. (I'd say I spend almost as much time matching sound levels on my productions as I do actually mixing the damn things. They're crucial, and annoying as hell, even with Audition's "group normalize" features.)

Oh, and one other more minor point I found confusing was why the teenage daughter is ordering everyone around. Even her parents at the end. I think you were trying to narrate things by having her give orders, but it would have suited her better to have her narrating her actions to herself.

For example:

"Shut and lock! That should keep them busy for a moment. Where's Mom and Dad? Oh please let them have that portal ready. Where are they? We said we'd meet at the tree and...OH!!"

"C'mere little Page Turner!"

"No!"

<whack!>

"Good evening dear, out for a stroll?"

"Dad!"

"Let's go, honey. Your mother is waiting."

"Right."

"Hurry you two, the portal is closing."

"We're going to have to run honey, can you make it?"

"Race to you it, Dad!"

"That's my girl. Okay...We're almost there!"

"Stop playing you two and get in here!"

"Yes dear!"

"Yes mom!"

"In!"

"Whew! Looks like I need to train more, dear. Our daughter beat me again. (pause, sadly) Goodbye old house."

"Will we ever stop moving, Dad?"

"I don't know, dear. I don't know."

<portal closing noise>


Now the "master spy" is active, calm and cool, and does something, and she doesn't throw off the whole family dynamic by shouting orders at everyone. Don't be afraid of narration, it's your friend when doing audio drama, and often the only way to avoid a "real" narrator.

You actually started scene 2 off perfectly "Spending a night at Kingdom Quest Headquarters is not my idea of fun." Which tells us about both the location and the character, especially when combined with the phone ringing in the background. Then it goes fine from there...

Thanks for all of the helpful tips! I'll certainly keep them in mind as I type up the next script!

I hope this does help. Of course there's no "right" way to do this, you have to find what works for you, but some basic skills do seem to be common to radio play production. Keep writing!

Rob

P.S. What audio editing software are you using?

[MyrrhLynn]

Yeah after I was listening to the end product I realized that unless you
1.) Have read the book or
2.) Listened to the previous "mini clips" you would be totally lost.

For example, does anyone even know what a "PageTurner" is even after hearing the whole clip? (I think for the next one we need a narrator speech at the beginning that explains what they are.) StarvingWriter and I have read the book so many times that I think we forget that not everyone knows the story as well as we do. ^_^; I agree though that the first part is confusing even to me, and I am one of the voices!

I can't wait for the next part! (There's a lot more "talking" and less confusing action coming up. ;D )

Oh and just so everyone knows, she is using a very old version of CakeWalk to make this thing not a cool Adobe product, so some of the tips will go to waste. XD