LO1 TASK 2

THE CLEANSED
Setting
From the first scene of the episode that I watched of The Cleansed, the
setting that the characters are in is the woods. I get this impression from
the fire that is crackling in the background and the dialogue suggests that
they crashed a raft, so the most likely place for them to end up is the bank
of a river. Later on the scene there is also the use of crickets which would
also suggest an outside area as you wouldnt hear them from inside. When
one character is shaken the noise of material sounds like a sleeping bag. So
it would all suggest that the characters are sleeping outside in the woods.

THE CLEANSED
Characterisation
The main character is called Luke and he appears to be a ringleader for a
group of people on some sort of mission. He has powerful dreams that
predict the future as well as showing him past memories and situations
that he hasnt seen. He doesnt like the dreams as they can be very
horrific, but they help him understand why he is going on his mission and
what him and his group should do next.
The other character that you hear is called Lucy, she is worried about
Lukes dreams as they have only recently started re-occurring and she
knows that they are important for their mission. So she tries to get him to
tell her what he has been seeing which is hard for Luke because they are
painful for him to relive but she is nice to him and calms him when he is
stressed.

THE CLEANSED
Speech and words
The characters talk slowly and deliberately so there is no way that you can
miss hear what they are saying. The speech slows down when the
characters are stressed or calm. The loudness of the characters voices also
varies depending on the subject of conversation. This causes a more
dramatic mood and is used to keep you more involved in the storyline. The
words used are normal like you would talk to your friends, however the
voices that say them give them different moods. The setting of mood is
quite reliant on the sounds of the voices from the characters.

THE CLEANSED
Music
There is introductory music but there isnt background music within the
episode. The scenes are changed with the use of silence and the only other
form of sound is from the diegetic background SFX such as the crickets and
the fire crackling. This could be because the radio drama is trying to be
realistic even though it is a post-modern radio drama, so the use of
background music may tarnish the ideals of the producers.

THE CLEANSED
Silence
There is a good use of silence in this production because it is used to show
emotions from the characters as well as scene changes. In the scene that I
watched there was an emotional discussion between Luke and Lucy about
dreams in which silence helped create the emotions of worry from Lucy and
distress from Luke. The silence between the scene changes is slightly too
short and could do with being a second or two longer just to allow the
audience to be sure that a scene is changing, while still being short enough
to maintain the viewers interest.

OPEN SEASON
Setting
The location for this radio drama is a quiet town called Brattleburl, a
Vermont town with a main street with redbrick buildings as the architecture
hasnt been changed since the 8th century. You get all of this information
from the narrator Joe Gunther. So there is a narrator that set the scene for
you so you dont have the use of background effects to create the scene as
there is someone talking to you to set the mood for you.

OPEN SEASON
Characterisation
The main character is Joe Gunther who is also the narrator. From the way
he talks he seems like quite a lazy and proud man. He is a police officer for
his local town police and is quite high up in the ranks. When he sees a
gruesome murder at a house he doesnt react to it like he hasnt seen it
before which suggests that he has quite a high tolerance for graphic scenes
of violence.

OPEN SEASON
Speech and words
The man in this radio drama has a very deep and broad American accent.
He talks very slowly, almost drawling his words. He sounds like a very
confident man and full of pride as if he feels like he owns the place where
he lives because he is pert of the police force. The words he uses in the
beginning are to paint a picturesque feel to the small town that he lives in,
but then his words change to become more sinister so you know that
something bad is going to happen, especially when he says Until I got the
call.

OPEN SEASON
Music
There is introductory music which is similar to the sort of music that would
be played at the beginning of crime programs, this suggests that there is
going to be something criminal in the radio drama, such as a murder or
heist. There is also some non-diegetic music that plays in the background
while the man narrates, it is used to fill the background and is quite
calming but changes when bad things happen in the radio drama.

OPEN SEASON
Silence
At the beginning there isn't much silence because the man is narrating
about his town and his life within the town. He takes pauses in between
sentences because he has an aura of importance in the way that he talks
which makes it seem as if people will wait for him to start talking again
after a pause, rather than interrupting him. He does use silence to create
dramatic effects when he is talking, such as when he uses the line: We
dont have many killings around here.......... That was untiltonight. the
creates the mood for the next part of the story, which is where the
narration ends and it goes into first person perspective.

A BLIND MANS CONFESSION

Setting
A man is distressed and seems to be in a lot of emotional pain as if
someone has left him or he has done something really bad. We are then
brought to a flashback of him driving really fast and recklessly in a car. It
sounds as though he is not driving on a road, so its like he has no care of
where he is going or what he is going to do when he gets there, its like he
wants to be lost. He then has a car accident which sends him flying
through some trees and landing in water, this is where the scene ends.

A BLIND MANS CONFESSION

Characterisation
The man is in pain at the beginning because he got into a car accident
because he was driving recklessly on a bad road. From the emotions of
the first part of the drama it is possible that he has killed the person in
the other car and is grieving for them. This makes him seem as if he is
man that has made a lot of mistakes in his life and has hit rock bottom.
He wouldnt have been driving so wildly on a bad road if his head was in
the right place.

A BLIND MANS CONFESSION

Speech and Words
He has a very strong accent, like a middle to lower class citizen rather than
a man who has been brought up on the right side of the train tracks. He
uses very descriptive language when he talks, so he has a good
vocabulary for someone of his class. He likes to exaggerate his actions,
for example he went hurling through the air when he had his car
accident.

A BLIND MANS CONFESSION

Music
The music used in the production is diegetic because the noises that you
hear are to set the scene. So you hear loud music from the mans car, his
car racing down a bad road, the squeal of wheels as he tries to avoid the
car crash, then a big crash. As well as the weathers noises, the weather
in the scene is really stormy.

A BLIND MANS CONFESSION

Silence
The diegetic sounds that we hear during the flash back suddenly stop after
the car accident for dramatic effect because the man then reveals why he
was in pain at the beginning of the radio drama, and it is something really
bad that has effected his life beyond repair.

BLUE JAM
Setting
The setting appears to be in the future in a sci-fi sort of genre. Things
happen in this new world which wouldnt happen in the world we live in
now which leads me to believe that it is set far into the future, or set in
another world.

BLUE JAM
Characterisation
The main character appears to have depression and has taken too many
happy pills and is in a state of deliriousness. This impression is also
backed up by the fact that he is laying on the floor in some kind of doped
up trance of happiness. So the main character obviously has a lot of
issues in his past, as that is the most common cause of depression.

BLUE JAM
Speech and Words
The man talking at the beginning speaks very fluently and confidently as if
he is just having an every day conversation. So the actor that plays him
must be very in touch with his character, and doesnt stutter or add any
kind of flaw to his pronunciation. The words that are used help with the
futuristic feel of the radio drama because I didn't know what a lot of them
were so I found it hard to follow what the radio drama was on about.

BLUE JAM
Music
The music is non diegetic and has a very heavy beat to it with tones that
you wouldn't class as normal in this generation. This backs up the theory
that the drama is set in the future, because I haven't heard music like this
before.

BLUE JAM
Silence
Silence is used for dramatic effect in this radio drama, someone will say a
word that I don't recognise, which I think is the name of some alien
species because there is silence after he says it and then loads of bad
things happen to them. So when there is silence you know that
something bad is going to happen.