Media 28/11/08

This assignment is purely based on a radio show called ‘The Broadcaster’. I have to write an analysis of the show with a minimum of 500 words.

My analysis has to explain:

The use of speech.
The use of music.
The use of sound.
The use of editing.
The realism of the play, in other words, how realistic is it?

The Broadcaster.

Speech
The Language of the play is relatively easy to understand, it’s English and the actors are well spoken so that you can understand what they are saying. The storyline in my opinion is quite awkward to get to grips with but I guess it’s like that with any play for the first few minutes. It is also a very strange storyline. It’s about a presenter who works in a normal radio station. He becomes very isolated in the studio by himself and he suddenly realises he gets smaller and smaller until he can climb up his own clothes towards the end of the play. I still don’t fully understand what the play is actually trying to say, even after listening to it lots of times. To be honest, I don’t really like it because I can’t understand it well enough to take interest in it. The accents of the actors sound North American, the narrator as well. The narrator in the play explains what is happening quite well, I found it easy to understand what was going on but I think that the narrating needed more explanations towards the beginning as to what the story is about.

Music
Some of the music in this I thought was quite catchy. The first track that is played in the studio was quite good and it kept me listening. Although there isn’t a lot of music that is played throughout the play. The majority of the play is speech talking about the presenter and the presenter talking about himself. I like the choice of music that was put into the play, some how it fits in quite nicely.

Sound
The sound that is used in the play in my opinion sets the scene. It is used to suggest movement, it suggests activity and it suggests that there is space. For example:

Movement – People walking down a corridor.
Activity – The presenter playing with the Decks
Space – People who talk from one on of the room to another, or down the phone.

These three could have been distorted or filtered to give the desired sound effect. Talking down the phone is a good example of filtering. It works really effectively and is easily believable. I think that all of the sound effects in this play are very good for the time it was made. Fade and silence can be used as an effect to some degree. A fade may be used to signify the start or the end of a play, where as silence can be used to signify a change of scene. In some cases, silence can be used for suspense but for this play, suspense isn't interpreted.

Editing
Editing is an important part of creating a play, if you have a time slot of say, 30 minutes, then it is good to delete or add scenes. For this play, it could have been much longer, maybe up to 50 – 60 minutes which isn’t any good if you want it to last for 30 minutes, which is what the running time for this play is. So it is good to edit the play and get rid of the material that you think wouldn't be any good.

For this play, it was impossible to tell whether there was any editing which is a good thing if you are the producer, you want a play to run smoothly without any glitches a ¼ ½ or ¾ of the way through the play. So I think that the use of editing has been used to its full advantage.

Realism
In my opinion, the play is half realistic and half non-realistic. The first half of the play is realistic but the second half begins to become a fantasy play when the presenter starts to shrink physically and then he becomes so small, the other presenters are able to put him inside the wall of his studio.