Today we finally completed the recording of dialogue for our radio drama. However, we did encounter a number of problems. The actor who was playing the corporal had not responded so we were down an actor. This was worrying as we had to find a replacement before 3:30 PM as the actors would be arriving. We also were told that the radio drama studio was down meaning we had to book radio studio 2 for less time. This put us in an awkward position as we had the intention of using the temporary walls to help the sound bounce in the same way sound would in a trench. Radio studio 2 did not have these as a resource.
To get around the problem of our missing actor, we decided to give the corporals role to Dom Givalry who we had originally cast as the sergeant. We also asked Clive McCarthy if he was able to step in at short notice. Fortunately for us this was very successful. Dom wasn’t annoyed at the sudden role change and took to it well. Clive was also a natural and had the perfect voice for the sergeant.
Recording in studio 2 went quite well although we were still disappointed we couldn’t use the walls. The actors were very talented and had clearly spent time working out how they would play their roles. The actor playing Thomas was particularly good at modulating his voice to sound timid which made a nice contrast to Adam who played his character to be more confident. This meant that the dialogue between the two characters sounded very natural.
After a while we were told that the radio drama studio had been repaired just in time for when our radio studio 2 booking had finished. We swapped studios and set up to continue. The actors seem rather impressed with the upgrade. We felt that since we had started recording without walls that we should finish with out walls for continuity. Had we been in there from the start, we would have fully utilised them. After recording scene 2, the mixing desk began to play up again. At first we couldn’t hear any audio but levels were being picked up. After trying to unplug the mics and change inputs we had lost all levels. At this point all the technicians had gone home so it was up to us to problem solve. After 10-15 minutes of no resolve we resorted to turning the desk of and on which, quite annoyingly, solved the problem. We then went on to record scene 3.
Just before recording scene 4 we encountered a similar problem. Turning the desk on and off however didn’t work. The problem miraculously solved itself after messing with buttons and sliders and trying different mic inputs. We are unsure how we solved the problem however putting them back in inputs 1 and 2 where they were originally somehow worked.
We finally finished at half 6 in the evening after being very pleased with the results. We cannot even begin to comprehend our luck with Clive and our other issues we ran into. Our actors were superb and were able to convince us even without sound fx. Applying sound fx will be a job for tomorrow as we have booked audio edit suite 2 9-5. It will be a long shift but we are quite confident we will finish in time. We can only hope we won’t run into more setbacks.
