Speculative fiction may be the most popular of the modern Internet-age audio drama but for 33 years The Archers have been England’s favourite radio drama. Tim Bentinck provides some background into his role of David Archer and some work he’s done as a children’s author in this Daily Mail interview.
Category: Media (Page 31 of 46)
After decades of slow incremental changes, we’re under a blossoming of innovations thanks to the addition of incredible new technology that seems to pop up everywhere. Case in point is the new algorithms that are being used to decide who makes for a good listening voice on the air. Computers apparently are there to tell you if you make the cut as to whether your voice can be identified as “engaging” or not. Check out Aarti Shahani’s article from NPR on the subject before you make your picks for your next radio drama casting session.
Julius Purcell write an interesting article about the rise of Audio Drama and it includes such alumni as Fred Greenhalgh and Lawrence Raw and the We’re Alive team as they talk about the state of our beloved medium and its most recent interest. While most of us at the Society are thinking, “Where have you been?” it’s really about the elevation of audio drama in the central consciousness since producers like John Dryden (A Fine Balance) and Sarah Koenig (Serial) have
Bangwave Radio wants you to celebrate World Theatre Day with Radio Drama. And why not? Can you think of a better way than to listening to some great OTR like The Halls of Fantasy or The Haunting Hour? Or of course, you can just tune in to Sonic Echo every Friday night for the rest of Season 10 of the Sonic Society and get you thirst for old time radio quenched there!
If you missed it the first go around, don’t you dare miss it this time! BBC Radio 4 is planning a repeat performance of Dirk Maggs, Neil Gaiman, and Terry Pratchett‘s amazing audio adaptation Good Omens from the sixth to the tenth of April and completing the series on Saturday the 11th in a tribute to the great Sir Terry.
The Brits really know how it’s done! Tony Pitts in this article talks about how he began in a soap opera and has found himself acting in a Spielberg blockbuster in this Yorkshore Post.
How does it fit the Society? Well, Mr. Pitts points out the thing we all know,
“I love radio. I actually think that it is the most powerful medium.”
Yes indeed, they do call you Mr. Pitts!
Robert Montenegro muses in the BigThink Blog that maybe Audio Books are really the next step to bringing back Audio Drama. He notes that from a piece in NPR, that something big is coming down the pipeline with the audioverse. While this may not be such big news for the Society, we’re all excited that it’s starting to look like many others are catching up!
Sonniss has released for a limited time, for free, a ten gig audio sound effect bundle NOT TO BE MISSED by audio drama producers and creators. As this article from bedroomproducersblog explains:
Sonniss has released GameAudioGDC Bundle, a completely free to download sound collection featuring over 10 GB of high quality royalty free sounds for video game development and other creative work.
The library was released on March 7th and it will remain a free download until April 2nd. Sonniss states that they’re giving away this sound collection in order to give back to the video game developers community, despite of not being able to join the GDC2015 conference this year. They are also running a huge game audio sale on their website at the moment, aka GameAudio Special.
So get on board Sonicateers! Grab your bundle while you still can. They recommend the torrent for it!
Famed mystery writer Jeffrey Deaver, author of such blockbusters as The Skin Collector, The October List, and The Kill Room, among others has decided that his latest story won’t be released as a novel ever. That’s right, you can only get The Starling Project as… you guessed it… an audio drama!
According to the New York Times article, Audible and others are betting on the power of the audio story, and what was once just good enough for simple narration is becoming more and more “enhanced”. In other words, radio drama lives again. What a lovely release!
In an interesting article in Midroll, Paul Riismandel argues that a recent critical article from Variety entitled “Why Serial Won’t Do Much for Podcasting or Hollywood” just doesn’t get it. The Variety article suggests exactly what it promises in the title- in that the explosively popular Serial from NPR won’t make any inroads into adapting its radio series into movies or even make a breakthrough for the relatively small listening audience of the podcast.
Riismandel, however provides a couple of examples as to how that’s already happened, and podcasts are ready for the big show. What do you think?