How have you used sound effects, voice, music and silence in your radio drama?

All radio dramas incorporate sound effects, voice, music and silence.

In our radio drama we used quite a few sound effects such as car noises, phone rings and walking on gravel. Sound effects help set the scene and enable to drama to be understood easier. In our drama we had quite alot of phones ringing as we scripted some phonecalls, if we did not place the sound effects in the listeners might be confused as to who is talking to who and even that it is a sound effect. Also when the three girls were driving to the Travelodge we added exterior and interior car noises to ensure the listeners of the setting and also when they had arrived used the sound of footsteps walking upto the Travelodge so that the listenenrs know there is going to be a change in setting. Sometimes the sound effects seem a bit to obvous but as there are no visual aids they need to be to ensure complete understanding for the listeners. Also to create a creepy element to the Travelodge we made the doors creak.

Regarding to voice, Alice played four characters so she had the hardest job of differentiating her voice within the charcter roles. It worked out quite well except from the end which we then changed. As well as a main character Alice played Mr. Pike, Olga and a radio presenter at the end. Olga's voice was easy to differentiate because she had an transylvanian accent and Mr. Pike's by lowering her voice. The difficulty came at the end when the drama was over and it was the presenters speaking, after getting our feedback we realised it was hard for listenenrs to tell what that bit was actually about.

Regarding to music we had no music in our drama whatsoever, in one scene the girls sings to a chart song and we were going to play the song in the back so it seemed like we were singing along to the radio but we then decided agains that. After listening to other radio dramas we realised we needed to add a theme tune.

We didn't have alot of silence in our radio drama only when there was a change of scene to ensure the listeners know that there is a change of scene. We didn't feel it was needed as throughout there characters were always talking and in traditional horrors silence creates tension but we didn't think this would fit into our drama as it is not a straight out horror.