After recording these sounds (door handle, curtain being pulled back, etc.), I uploaded them to Google Drive to back up the files, and named each file the scene and line where they occur so I can find them easily.
Below are some raw files of both my foley and voice recordings.
Scene 2 Line 82 is the sound of a heavy curtain being pulled back, as described in the script. I am quite happy with this recording, but I feel that I will have to turn up the volume in post production as it is a very soft sound.
Scene 3 Line 121 is the sound of a door opening. I am very happy with how old this door handle sounds as it emphasises how this is taking place in the 1800s, and I don't think it needs any tweaking.
Poem Take 1 went very well in terms of acting and sound quality, but I felt that the pace was a little too slow, so we did a second take that was much better.
Scene 5 is quite short, so I'm very pleased with this first take and we didn't need to re-record it. I think this is because before doing any recording, we did an initial read through of the script, so everyone was clear with their lines.
P6: Carry out post-production edits to the sound elements
Below is my final radio programme.
A lot of the editing process was putting my labelled clips in order, and adding sound effects (some I created and some sourced online) and music. Below is the website where I found all of my sound effects, and I only found these online when they would be very difficult for me to record, e.g. rain, birdsong, a horse and carriage. All of these sound effects are free to use under the Creative Commons licence. https://freesound.org
I used Adobe Audition for the whole editing process, as this is industry standard and has all of the features I need to create a successful radio programme. In terms of more technical editing, the most common process I had to do was changing the volume of different clips so they can all be heard clearly. I did this by clicking on the wheel on the waveform (circled in red), and dragging up to increase the volume, or down to decrease it. If there was any spiking (e.g. breath hitting the microphone too loudly), I can select one section and change the volume of that part separately.
Since I recorded the speech with just one microphone, it meant that when two characters are having a conversation, one of their voices comes more out of the left ear and one more out of the right. To fix this, I opened the waveform of that clip, selected 'Effects' along the toolbar, and from there went into 'Amplitude and Compression' and opened the Channel Mixer tool.
With the Channel Mixer, there are lots of different presets to change the levels of the audio between each speaker/headphone ear. In order to make the sound come equally out of both 'ears' (channels), I chose 'All Channels 50%', so that the audio is balanced. In order to avoid this problem another time, I would use two identical microphones to record speech between two people.
One last technique I used was fading in and out. This makes sounds less abrasive when they begin, and can be used to show when a scene starts and ends. Below, the yellow curved lines show when I have faded a clip in or out, as I am using lots of sound effects at once. This is achieved by dragging along from the start/end of a clip until you reach the point where you want the clip to be at full volume, and the software will automatically create a fade.
Since this is adapted from an existing novel, I had to chose when I would use sound effects, and be consistent with that choice. Therefore, I chose to use sound effects when the past tense is used (e.g. "I hurried on with irregular steps"), but when the continuous past tense is used (e.g. "Sometimes my pulse beat so quickly and hardly that I felt the palpitation of every artery; at others, I nearly sank to the ground through languor and extreme weakness."), I did not use sound effects. I did this because the author is describing something that happened continuously, rather than one isolated event. Not using sound effects in this tense helps show the audience that time is passing, just as in film - a montage with no sound might be used to show the passing of time.
When choosing music, I found out that any piece created by a composer who has been dead for over 70 years has no copyright as it is in the public domain. However, I needed to use a recording of a performance that is under the Creative Commons licence, so I used the following website to find performances of pieces composed by Chopin, Schubert and Schumann. http://freemusicarchive.org
M2: Present the sound elements to an audience to gain feedback
D1: Evaluate how the technical and auditory qualities meet the identified purpose
I showed my finished radio play to a focus group, below is a recording of their feedback.
My focus group felt that the sound effects and music were very effective in my radio programme, they felt that they fitted well with the tone and the time period the book was written and set in. I agree that without these additions I think my programme wouldn't have been as enjoyable to listen to for the target audience, and it wouldn't have sounded as professional. One person from the group said that she really liked the weather sound effects as they set the scene and got the audience more immersed in the world Mary Shelley was trying to create. They felt that these elements would make this radio piece very suitable for a BBC Radio 4 audience, along with the variety of accents heard in the programme, which is useful to know as this was my intended target audience.
However, they felt that at some points the music was too loud and you couldn't hear the narrator's voice well, and there were a few places where this happened throughout the programme. There was also a point where the microphone quality audibly changed, as if "the narrator was further away from the microphones" and for a moment, this took the audience out of the atmosphere created. One person also made an interesting point that recording in different locations could have created contrast as the room tone and acoustics would be different, for example in the scenes set outside. I think this is a very interesting idea, but as there are lots of variables in recording in two different locations, I think the same effect could be achieved with editing.
If I were to produce the next chapter of Frankenstein, I think I would make a few changes based on the feedback I got from the focus group. I would record the actors for the narrator and Clerval in the same room again, but with two identical microphones. This way, their individual microphone can be set up to record both of their voices perfectly, and if the microphones are the same model, there won't be a noticeable difference in sound quality between the two speakers. I think this would make the final piece sound a lot better compared to this one, as I had to place one microphone between both speakers, so I think the listener can tell that at some points they were far away from the microphone. But I would use the same process for recording and sourcing sound effects and music because my focus group felt they worked really well.
Based on the feedback I received above, I have made a few changes to my radio programme. The first one is to change the levels of the music so that the presenter's voice can be heard more easily, this is a fairly easy fix and the process is demonstrated below.
I firstly found the section of music that was too loud, this often occurred in a place where the music swelled and became more dramatic, this is written into the sheet music by the composer and is called a crescendo. After finding the desired section of music, I highlighted it and clicked on the wheel circled in green in the last screenshot above. By dragging this wheel up or down, it changes how loud or quiet the sound is. I used trial and error to find a good level where you can hear both the music and the voice, as I didn't want the music to be so quiet that you can barely hear it.
I think this improvement helps me meet the brief more because then the audio levels sound more professional, as this would be made for a BBC radio station, which is funded by the public so it needs to be to a very high standard.
The second thing I will improve wasn't identified in my focus group, but after reflecting on the programme myself and listening to the feedback from one member of my focus group about recording in a different room for more echo, I realised that the spoken parts might sound more interesting if I edited the quality of their voice. I could edit this in various different ways to add a bit of echo, or there are presets available in Adobe Audition to make their voice sound like it is coming from above you or other similar effects, shown in the screenshots below. This would improve my final piece because it will add more depth and dimension to their voices, which the audience won't necessarily notice while listening, but it will subconsciously make them more immersed in the story and believe that those characters are really there in a street or bedroom, rather than actors recording in a studio.
Above is a screenshot of the different sliders to change how an echo effect will sound, so there are lots of different options to create a different outcome. Below is a screenshot of the different preset options for the FFT Filter (Fast Fourier Transform), showing different vocal manipulation effects like underwater or a phone call, so I can experiment with these filters until I get an effect that makes sense for the genre and tone.
Shown in the second of the two screenshots above, I chose to use the effect 'Thickener' under the Reverb options. I chose this because it made the room we recorded in sound much bigger, and gave the effect that the narrator was outside, reflecting how the character is also outside in this scene. I feel that this filter makes my radio play more effective because it makes the audience forget that this is an actor in a studio - it gives a more echoey sound and makes the listener forget that they are listening to the radio and instead feel like they are really there with the characters, experiencing everything that they are.
As a minor change, I made the gap between the narration and the start of the poem slightly smaller, as I felt the pause between the two was unnaturally long, and felt like an awkward silence rather than a poignant stop.
Below is a section of my production with these changes applied.
I used Adobe Audition to edit my entire radio show, this helps me meet the brief because it is the software that is used in the industry so I can ensure my final piece is as professional as possible. Using Audition has also helped me to make my programme suitable for the target audience because I can manipulate the sounds in complex ways that will immerse them more in the radio play, creating an in-depth experience of the book. The brief states that I must "feature a dramatic and very clear actor reading the text", I feel that I have fulfilled this part of the brief because the actor I chose read the text in an animated way, and he rehearsed a lot beforehand so he knew how to build tension for what was going to happen next. The programme wouldn't have been as enjoyable for the target audience if I had chosen an actor with a very monotone voice, because the chapter is 20 minutes long so I needed to keep the listeners engaged throughout the whole thing. The actor that I chose has a slight northern accent as he is from Yorkshire, but he spoke very clearly and didn't mumble so I feel that his narration can be understood by anyone.
Another part of the brief says that I must "feature ambient sound, sound effects to create atmosphere and it must feature music to keep the audience interested". I feel that I have met this point very well because I used lots of all three of these techniques where they featured in the text. It was easy to edit these sounds in once I had found them from a royalty free source or created them myself with foley, since I added all the music and sound effects into my script, and they were easy to pick out when scanning through the script. I used ambient sound like rain, crowd noises and birdsong particularly at the start of a new scene, as these told the audience straight away where this part of the story will take place, if other people are there, etc. These ambient sounds help them to begin imagining the setting before the narrator has described it, and I included relevant sound effects when an action was written in the book (e.g. a door handle turning, running down stairs, etc.). I didn't use music the whole way through, only when there was a change in mood, and I feel that this was very effective. For example, when Frankenstein suddenly falls ill at the end of the chapter, I chose a piece of music that is more solemn, rather than the bright, happy music used in other sections of the chapter - this starts a few seconds before the narrator starts speaking, so it gives the audience time to recognise that the mood of this scene is different from the previous one, and the tone will be more sad. I feel that I used silence effectively between scenes because I added a pause at the end of each scene and between the intro and outro to mark when the story is changing - this silence will alert the audience that something new is about to happen.