Reflections on audio 4-30-04
Apr. 30th, 2004 12:22 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
kilroySo I went to another student play festival yesterday. I go to a lot of these; this particular play festival usually entails four half-hour-long one acts, and I've been attending it for four or five years now. Every time I go there's one play that's uproariously, fall-out-of-my-seat funny; one that's deadly, deadly serious and generally really bad; and at least one that would be much better if it weren't weighted down by philosophy and attempted cleverness. The thing is, generally all of the plays are so ridden with overworked cliches in all aspects of production that I end up flinching my way through most of the festival (examples: last year they had a devil-plays-a-game-for-your-soul play, this year they had a different-actors-being-parts-of-the-mind play). The actors usually aren't that bad-- at least for student productions-- but the scripts and dialogue are frequently un-actable.
So of course I was sitting there thinking, "God, I could do better than this." The situation was unhelped by the fact that the production had an unexpected change of venue and had flat seating; I was sitting three rows from the front and had to peer through gaps in the crowd to see the actors. Granted, not seeing facial expressions didn't detract much from the show (most student actors aren't good enough to really use them); but when all I could concentrate on were the words, and the words were often the weakest part of the play... let's just say it was a very prickly evening for me.
I've tried to write for the stage before; I'm not very good at it. I don't really understand how to use space, which is pretty important. My plays either end up being sort of flat three-panel comics with no actor movement at all, or I try and do things that would work great in real life but don't show up right in the artificial space of the theater. This could be solved by a lot of practice, but the probable input of energy required would be significant.
No. I want to do something different. I want to do audio drama. I want to be able to write short works and get people to act in them and record them. I want it to be on a regular basis, posted on the web for people to check out-- and actually played late at night on student radio, if I can manage it.
The problem here isn't the writing or the acting; I can get people to do both easily enough. The problem is the bloody production. We'd need solid sound recording equipment, editing capability, good web hosting, sound effects, music... and in my experience SFX and music mixing are bloody hard. If I put my back into it I'm sure I can rustle up the technical requirements-- it's just collecting things after all. But I need a co-conspirator or three, people who know how to make this kind of show. And that's where I'm stuck. How the hell do I find such people?
Hmmm.
So of course I was sitting there thinking, "God, I could do better than this." The situation was unhelped by the fact that the production had an unexpected change of venue and had flat seating; I was sitting three rows from the front and had to peer through gaps in the crowd to see the actors. Granted, not seeing facial expressions didn't detract much from the show (most student actors aren't good enough to really use them); but when all I could concentrate on were the words, and the words were often the weakest part of the play... let's just say it was a very prickly evening for me.
I've tried to write for the stage before; I'm not very good at it. I don't really understand how to use space, which is pretty important. My plays either end up being sort of flat three-panel comics with no actor movement at all, or I try and do things that would work great in real life but don't show up right in the artificial space of the theater. This could be solved by a lot of practice, but the probable input of energy required would be significant.
No. I want to do something different. I want to do audio drama. I want to be able to write short works and get people to act in them and record them. I want it to be on a regular basis, posted on the web for people to check out-- and actually played late at night on student radio, if I can manage it.
The problem here isn't the writing or the acting; I can get people to do both easily enough. The problem is the bloody production. We'd need solid sound recording equipment, editing capability, good web hosting, sound effects, music... and in my experience SFX and music mixing are bloody hard. If I put my back into it I'm sure I can rustle up the technical requirements-- it's just collecting things after all. But I need a co-conspirator or three, people who know how to make this kind of show. And that's where I'm stuck. How the hell do I find such people?
Hmmm.