Archive for the 'Radio' Category
Thursday, July 30th, 2009
Running out the door…
I had plans to blog everyday this week but that didn’t happen (clearly).
I’ve been rushing around getting a few bits ready as I’m just heading out the door for a few days in London with lots going on.
My main meeting is to receive my first round of feedback for my feature film treatment (blurrily pictured) mentioned in this post before I go onto write my first draft of the script. I’m also going to meet up with one of my absolute favourite writers and all round gentleman Mike Carey who not only writes comics (as discussed in this post) but, I also just discovered, will be writing for radio on a show created by the person who ran the writing for radio course I mentioned in this post.*
Nice bit of synchrnocity, huh? And considering that’s one of the main aspects of the feature film treatment I’m getting feedback on anyway…that’s got to be a good (if slightly weird) omen, right? 
Anyway, fingers crossed it all goes well and I don’t just miss my train and ruin everything the universe had planned!
(*Those writing for radio notes are coming soon, I promise. As a lot of what we were taught was based on specific examples we heard on the day, I am translating what we talked about into more general points)
Friday, July 17th, 2009
Radio Days (full notes coming soon!)
Nipped down and back to London yesterday for the Scriptfactory’s course in Writing for Radio Drama. The course was really good and very encouraging and informative - as well as very discursive so it was much more like a seminar than a lecture and I strongly recommend it. (I will blog the notes I took here as soon as I can)
I’ve always listened to audio drama since I was much younger, especially when I suffered from insomnia as a teen - Orson Welles broadcast of ‘War of the Worlds’ being a strong favourite. But I never really listened to drama on the radio until I heard that comic book supremos Neil Gaiman and Dave McKean were adapting their own DC Vertigo graphic novel ‘Mr Punch’ for Radio 3. How do you adapt a graphic novel for radio?!? Tuning in for that, I realised that radio was for far more than just ‘The Archers’.
We spent a good amount of time discussing the example of the BBC’s adaptation of Fritz Lang’s Metropolis. Yes, I was scratching my head too - this wasn’t just how do you adapt a comic book for radio but how do you re-tell a silent film!! The answer is very very well. One of the main things I learned about adapting ideas for radio is don’t just re-tell it. You have to re-invent it. Click the pic below to download an mp3 of the whole brilliant thing.
In the mean time, here’s a brief script for radio I’ve written based on my ongoing bemusement at people struggling with the seat reservation system on public trains
SCENE 1: A BUSY TRAIN
IRRATE MAN: Well there’s 39 - so where’s 40 for god’s sake?? Are YOU sitting in it?
ME: Yeah, um, that’s not 39. That’s 19.
(Pause)
ME: 39 is probably about twenty seats that way?
IRRATE MAN: (tuts) Guh…typical!
ME: (possibly sarcastic by this point) Yeah, I dunno how they get away with it!
