by: William Penne
This week, 88.7 WPCD will be airing the Fall 2019 Classic Radio Dramas, featuring the voices of the COM 140 Voice and Diction students and produced by the COM 142 Advanced Radio Production students.
The dramas, Androids Incorporated, Dick Tracy: Big Top Murders and The Adventures of the Thin Man: The Case of the Goofy Groom, air on WPCD on Tuesday, Nov.19, Wednesday, Nov. 20 and Thursday Nov. 21, respectively, with each being aired twice during the same day, once at noon and again at 8 p.m. The dramas will also be made available to stream on the WPCD website after they air.
The first show, Androids Incorporated, is a science fiction story, originally written as a short story by Ray Bradbury in 1949 and adapted as a radio drama in 1955 by George Lefferts. The second, The Big Top Murders, was an episode of the Dick Tracy radio dramas of the 1940’s that originally aired in 1946. The third, The Adventures of the Thin Man: The Case of the Goofy Groom, was an original episode of The Adventures of the Thin Man series of radio dramas modeled after a 1934 novel by Dashiell Hammett that aired between 1941 and 1950.
Each drama was performed by students of the COM 140 Voice and Diction class and was produced by the COM 142 Advanced Radio Production students. Each class puts a lot of work into their part of the project with multiple weeks being spent on the project.
Adam Porter, instructor of the COM 142 class, says that the project is a great opportunity for the students to put their production skills to the test. The project involves intensive dialogue editing, sound effect and music mixing and gives the students a chance to work on a longform audio project just as they would in a career in the industry.
The project is a lot of work, but the payoff is rewarding, say students of the COM 142 class. The students consider the project intensive but feel that the experience is satisfying, and that the final product is something that they are proud to have created.
“This project has been really intense, but I enjoyed working on the radio drama. It has definitely taught me a lot about the intense amount of production that goes into something like this,” says Cole Daniel of the COM 142 class. “I was definitely relieved to turn the final product in, though.”
The students of the COM 142 class also create original foley sound effects, which are sound effects that are recorded by the students themselves and added into the project. This adds one more creative element to the project and challenges the students to think outside of the box for their sound effects.
“The unique project has proven to be a hit on WPCD”
Both instructors enjoy the element of collaboration that goes into the project. Each class is dependent on the other to do their jobs well, which is a significant part of any industry. The instructors feel as if this kind of collaboration and dependency on the others working on the project prepares students for what they can expect in their careers.
The unique project has proven to be a hit on WPCD. Although traditional radio dramas have not aired in their original fashion for decades, the idea of longform audio storytelling is experiencing a comeback with the increased popularity of the podcast, where more and more people are finding the audience for this type of storytelling.
Tune into WPCD at noon or 8 p.m. on Nov. 19, 20 and 21 to hear the dramas broadcasted live on the air or catch them streaming here.
