Quality of audio -e.g. is the volume appropriate? are the levels even? Is the sound clear? – This was one of the biggest issues with the show. The introduction was very imbalanced in terms of audio quality. It sounded like, throughout the show, each of the people were on different levels. It didn’t sound equalized at all. When we created our show, I threw everyone’s work into Audacity and ran an equalizer to make sure that people that were listening didn’t need to keep adjusting their audio. The audio throughout the story got better as each individual person spoke their own skit, but there were definitely different levels of audio volume. The girl that spoke about the 21st birthday sounded like her voice was muffled. I’m not sure what she used to record her audio, but it’s completely different than the others.
Quality of audio editing – use of effects, transitions, are the edits clean? – I didn’t detect a lot of effects or transitions. When they were in the car, there were sounds that they had added. For the most part, however, it was pretty much just dialogue. Since it was just one story, there weren’t any real transitions. After one person talked, it just cut and began with another person. That can become difficult with the different amount of people.
Use of sound effects- how are they used? Is it effective? – As I mentioned already, they did use a good amount of sound effects when they were in the car. I liked that they used the engine and the sounds of the doors. It really makes it more vivid when you can hear what is being told as well. As much as that doesn’t make sense, let me try to clarify. When you listen to audio, you paint a picture in your head. With the use of the sound effects, this group painted the picture for me.
Use of music- how is it used? Is it effective? – They used music as breaks for their radio show. I found it to be effective because I knew when the break was going to occur and it was a nice way to just unwind from listening to what I had already heard. There wasn’t a ton of music in the radio show because most of it was dialogue, but in between the show was pretty effective.
Does the show have a structure? – There was definitely a structure in that there was a story that I could easily follow. I would have liked to see the story be a bit more dramatic though. It was kind of bland, but that’s just me. The tones of the people sounded really monotonous. The overall story was laid out nicely though and I could follow along without any problem.
Does it tell a story effectively? Is there a sense of drama, unknown? – There were some dramatic parts about the radio show that I found to be interesting. When they used sounds to portray the car crash with the skidding, that made for a very effective story. Without those sounds, I would have to say that it would have taken a 180 in terms of how much drama there was.
If you would star this radio show, how many stars out of five would you give to the show? – I would probably give the show 3.5/5. The reason I would grade down on it is because of the different levels of audio volume and also the low quality in some of the parts. Since this is a radio show, quality and clarity are the most important in my opinion.
Cohesiveness of the production – I would say that the show was definitely cohesive. The only reason that I would say it wasn’t was because of the recording quality and the fact that the volume fluctuated so much. Also, maybe have a bit more enthusiasm in the show as a whole.
This post might sound like I dislike it more than I like it, but I believe in constructive criticism. Of course the story was entertaining, there were just a few things that were a bit more distracting than I would have liked while listening to a 20 minute radio show. I didn’t mean to upset anyone!
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