Come & Listen...
to what part of my family story during World War II has inspired me to produce a little radio drama.
My parents, both are born 1937 and this way have been children during the war. They have told me about this unfortunate experience and I decided to use this assignment to work this out for me.
Further more my grandma was an illegitimate child of someone who was remembered to be Italian and Jewish and my grandpa really was worried while having to live in Nazi-Germany with his beloved wife. He actually listened to a station which was forbidden to listen to. You even could be put to death for this crime. My mother was about five years old when she actually sang the sound of BBC London in the streets, but ... fortunately nothing has happened to them, accept from my grandpa was very angry with my mother. They all survived war without being arrested or being hurt during an air raid. Yet it was a hard time for children, even harder for my dad who has to flee the parts of Germany which has been overwhelmed. He saw dead very early in his live.
I also did work for a friend and scientist, who did research about four clergy man, who actually were put to death because of radio crime. One child of one of them is still alive and can report of how it was when her father was arrested and killed. The Nazis sent the family even a bill concerning the execution.
However, nothing like this happens in the following show.
To be able to produce the show I did the following:
After I wrote myself a rough script, I started producing the show by thinking out some dialog, which is entirely spoken by myself. I simply did not manage persuading some friends to lend me their voice. They are all very busy and really very often have to help me out for my artwork.
Anyway, it is possible in Audacity to change the level of a voice. I used this to create voices of a child, a man and some women.
For some reason I suddenly had the idea to produce the show using two languages. This had made it more interesting to listen, yet it is more difficult to follow the content. I acted out the story in German, the native language of the protagonists, and laid over it a voice interpreting the dialogue.
Whenever I have finished dialogue which belongs together I thought about sound effects and atmosphere. Some I recorded myself, but most I have found on freesound.org. I have listed links to the sounds at the end of the blog.
I used Audacity to produce the entire show. When I started I did not know too much about the software, but I know now. At the beginning I often did unnecessary steps, for there have been tools and possibilities I did not know about. Like this to the end the process has fastened, which was good, for I did run a bit out of time and energy.
I can not say if all the work was really fun. I would need some distance to the process of producing to say this, because it was an intense experience. In the end I was proud, but I also compared to professional produced audio books, which have generally a kind of fuller rounder sound. I presume they have further software and hardware possibilities like sound proofed rooms and very good recording facilities and, yes, experience. Yet I like so much the experimental touch of my work, which always is interesting and exciting.
Líst of links to the sound I have used:
spring atmosphere 1
spring atmosphere & piano
piano improvisation 1
dishes
door
footsteps 1
children playing
ticking watch
footsteps 2
place atmosphere
market atmosphere
old radio music
noise find station
BBC London announcement
knocking
unlock door
piano improvisation 2
air raid atmosphere
after air raid atmosphere
waiting room atmosphere
soft running
spring atmosphere 2
steps on grass
piano melody 1
piano melody 2
piano melody 3
piano melody 4
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