EPISODE 4 WRITING PART 2
Series 2 of The Arc of Joan takes a non-fiction detour. I am
"playing" a dry witted narrator for an audio tour guide into creating
podcast fiction in this 10 part series. This series gives independent
producers a step by step guide and a few important hacks to help develop
and create their own audio drama series. Episode 4 covers the pre-production writing for the actors script, editing script, and editing spreadsheet.
Below you will find
the transcript to this podcast. There will be a test afterward. Jay Kay.
This tour is a basic overview of the steps involved with creating an
Audio Drama Series, whether it be a comedy or drama or horror show.
It is not an opus or the be all and end all of how to create an Audio
Drama. But, hopefully it will help give someone a general idea of what
they are
getting into before they start creating and producing.
This podcast was created on Audacity software, using the helpful resources from freesound.org and freemusicarchive.org and John Bartmann did the music from JohnBartmann.com
Hey y'all, welcome back to: Joan and the savvy podcaster. Episode 4: Writing Part 2. My name is Saylor Billings and I created the Audio Sitcom, The Arc of Joan. But this next 10-part series is dedicated to creating and producing Audio Drama Podcasts without breaking the bank. The blog associated with this podcast is located at: https://thearcofjoan.blogspot.com/
In this episode I’m going to talk about formatting your actors scripts, the editing script and the editing spreadsheet.
Like I said in episode 3, I always have two scripts of the same episode. The actors script and the editing script the goal of both is to keep things moving while you’re in production. Obviously, the actors script is pretty straight forward with dialogue and situation explanations for the actors. But the editing script is a whole other story. But if you take the time to do an editing script in pre-production it will save you much needed time when you are editing. So to explain the acting script I would send you to the BBC again. You don’t have to reinvent the wheel here, if you want to learn from the best go to the source and that would be the BBC. The website for how to format a radio drama script is at BBC Writers Room website, here: https://www.bbc.co.uk/writersroom/resources/medium-and-format/
and you’ll click on the “radio drama without audience” link. They have literally and consistently been producing audio fiction for 100 years. The end. Good luck and good night.
Just kidding.
Script formatting is basically universal for most mediums, film or TV or radio. It has to be clear and concise. I said this in Episode 3 Writing 1 but in case you’ve skipped down here I’m going to repeat myself. The actors need to know more than just the lines on the page. Where are they in this scene? What are they doing? Walking outside? Sitting in a café? Here’s what I said before: I try to write the first one in as clear a way for the actors as I can including “stage directions” like (whispers), (talking loud over party and dance music), or (while walking). This will give the actors the audio ques they need to alter their speech. You can’t have two characters who are supposed to be jogging giving their lines as if they are sitting in a quiet café. Also related both to scripts and editing; I always start with sound then voices. It’s almost like giving a clue to where you are and what’s going to happen.” I think this also helps the actors understand audibly what is happening. The only thing different I do is I number the lines so:
Scene 1 – INT CHURCH – YM’S OFFICE – TUESDAY MORNING
(YM, MURIEL)
1. MUSIC: PROGRAM THEME MUSIC UP and FADE OUT
2. SFX: FOOTSTEPS
3. SFX: DOOR KNOCKS
4. YM: Muriel! It’s good to see you back, thanks for stopping by.
I number the lines is because we’re recording in isolation and if I need someone to rerecord a line and get it back to me it saves any confusion. I can just drop “Muriel” an email asking her to rerecord Page 1 Scene 1 Lines 9, 11, 13. And why I need theme done, whether it’s a problem with the line reading, or I lost the mp3 file, or the file was corrupted, whatever. Also, I always put under the Scene number the characters in the scene. I realized it’s a lot easier for the actors so they don’t miss recording any scenes.
Please don’t go out and buy a script writing program. Yet. Don’t get me wrong there are some great ones and very useful ones to be had. And that’s fine they are fancy and can do a multitude of fancy things like pulling all the lines from one character and charting things and they make those fancy digital index cards. Some people love these programs and good for reason! And some are super useful if you’ve got a writing partner or it’s a group writing thing. But for me I ask myself why do I need this? Sometimes I’ll send over a script to an old writing pal and she marks it up the script with a different color, tells me I’m a hack and we’re done with it. You may find a writing program an absolute must have to get your thoughts organized and plot points mapped out. But I feel like they can be an obstacle to my ultimate goal. Because I will have to take time to learn how to use the writing program and really for the podcast you’re basically just putting in tabs on your word document. For me, it’s just a bit of overkill for the purpose, it’s like buying a gas leaf blower to clean up the leaves from a single tree.
Now for the script you’ll use for your editing. Same script, different format. Basically you’re going to squeeze all your tabs in a bit and make your dialogue very narrow. I always print this one out and keep it separate from everything else until I start to edit. Whereas the Actors script is basically a pre-production script this is your production script. One of the constant truisms of editing a fictional podcast is keeping everything organized, think of this as your junk drawer. (It’s messy but it’s where the spare keys and everything else useful lives.) You keep the script narrow because it’s where you write out the sound effects, time codes, notes, ideas, etc. I try to keep time codes, settings, filters used, file names, stitching notes on the left side and on the other side notes, ideas, and which take from the actors side I want to keep.
Everybody, everybody, every single person who has edited on computers has an editing program crash story or a computer crash story. It’s just inevitable that it will happen, but the severity of the crash varies. Picture this: It’s 1 am, you’ve been editing for about 4 hours, your neck hurts, but you’re on the last 3 pages of the script. Do you stop for the night or hang on; It doesn’t matter because the program just crashed. You work for 20 minutes to get it back up and running and you realize the whole episode is lost. So, just in case of a massive crash where you absolutely have to start over this is like your last line of defense. Even though you’ve saved everything in three separate places, like you should, how are you going to remember you lowered Muriel’s voice in scene 1 line 9 and gave it the effect of her entering the room? Or that you fixed a problem with the Fade In for whatever sound effect with this or that filter? Because it’s on the left-hand side with a time code and on the right you have the sound effect that you used for that line. This is why you have an editing script that looks like a junk drawer.
This is part of the preproduction writing but it could go in the editing episode as well but while you’re working on the scripts always do a Scene spread sheets that I print out and keep with the editing script. On the top is a row labeled:
Characters – Sound FX – Music – Notes. (Then below that is:)
SCENE 1
INTRO MUSIC FADES: SCNECHG.WAV
YM INT office AMB YMAMB1.MP3
Muriel foot steps CARPFTSTP.MP3
RAPID SOFT KNOCKS OFCKNKS.MP3
YM YMfile1.mp3
SCENE 2 Scene change music SCENECHG2.WAV
YM: Screams YMfile2.mp3
This is so when I’m assembling the elements of the episode together to load into the software I know what I’ll need (as in sound effects), where it is, the file name, etc. Because I use the same sound effect file for Actor #1 front door throughout all the episodes. And that door sound effect is different that Y.M.’s office door. I use like 6 different car door opening and closing sound effects but I always use the same sound effect that is assigned to that actor. For example: I have 5 actors and all of them have a front door sound effect assigned to them. I find that so much easier and it gives an audio clue to the audience. I also use the same Ambient sounds, room tones or Atmospheres. Joan’s office sounds different than Y.M.’s and Muriel’s. Joan’s office is closer to the front door so in the background you’ll hear mumbling, door shutting. She also has the biggest office so there’s a higher ceiling. Listening to people talking in Muriel’s office is a bit claustrophobic. Flat, and absolutely no reverb. Outside Beth’s house there are always crickets. It’s these kind of touches that gives your audience the audible touchstone’s that’ll register in their subconscious so they don’t have to consciously think, “ok, where am I?” which will pull their attention away. I’ll repeat this and go into more detail in the editing episode but for now this is the pre-production reason why it’s important and how to do it.
So for every script you’ll have the Actors and the Editing script, as well as a Scene Spread Sheet for the editing.
As a general reference the scripts are about 1 page per minute. I usually do about 8 to 10 scenes per episode which translates to about 25 pages. I keep saying generally and about because it really does depend on how you format the scripts, how long your intro and outro are, and how many sound effects are used. For people who are using a Plot A and Plot B structure, where you have Plot A running throughout your series and you use the Plot B as the single story structure then I usually pepper the Plot A plot points about two-thirds through the first few episodes and let the amount of scenes dedicated to Plot A number up until I have reversed the structure.
That’s it for now. Next weeks episode will go through the casting processes and people wrangling.
And if you haven’t been told yet, I hope you have a great rest of your day!
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