In What ways does my media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?
Before planning my radio drama i researched into radio dramas and their conventions such as attributes of the voice, music, sound effects and significant silence. I looked at the specific radio dramas such as the Hitch hikers guide to the galaxy, twilight zone, The archers and their conventions. The radio dramas that i would say have influenced me the most out of that list would be The archers and a bit of The hitch hikers guide to the galaxy.
The archers has a soap quality. what i mean by that is, it consists of real life stories and affairs that we can relate to, with my target audience being young ladies to young women that is an important quality to keep into consideration as women like things they can relate to, when media products have this quality they are more than likely to sell their products as their target audience feels as if they have been understood. I believe the convention of the voice and regional identity plays a major role in this outcome. Generally people of middle class feel more comfortable being in conversation with people who speak informally because it provides a laid back atmosphere to build conversation on. The archers consists of a range of regional accents and some voices which are formal. i believe this was done to represent the progress in education over the year and that many people would rather associate themselves with people who speak formally as they are stereotypically linked to success although this may not be appealing for the middle class audience, it may increase the audience as a whole by reaching a wide range of social classes and in all uniting them with the element of life which is represented in the story lines which we can all relate to.
The Hitch Hikers guide to the galaxy as well as War of the world have been quite successful radio dramas due to their great use of sound effects. Sound effects play a major role in radio dramas especially because the story line can not be expressed visually which means more imagination is required from the listeners. For some this isn't as easy as it may be for others which is when the assistance of sound effects becomes handy. I listed The hitch hikers guide to galaxy as inspiration instead of War of worlds because the intensity of the sound effects can be easily compared. This may be due to the year in which it was released where technology has advanced greatly making radio dramas seem more realistic. I used sound effects a lot in my drama because its a comedy.
I challenged the use of Sound effects as i added certain sound effects for comedy purposes only not just to make my drama realistic.
Here is a clip that i have edited
Another convention I have challenged is my choice of language. We chose to do this so that our characters and the situation they are and in turn their responses to them can be related to by our target audience.
Another convention i have challenged is the use of silence. We used silence to create a dramatic effect in the last runway walk and reveal of the sabotaged dress. The only sound effect used were slow footsteps we did this to create suspense and keep the audience intrigued. We also used silence to break up the scenes. during our feedback they did say that our silent sections were the longest. however i believe this was necessary due to the nature of our radio drama being a comedy built around the fashion industry. The long gaps were needed to allow the audience to recollect previous scenes and also let the storyline unfold in their minds to keep them following. it is also used for clarity to show there is a new scene being involved. our scenes have been chosen depending on a change of setting or to show a substantial period of time has past.
