Radio drama

[lordsofelsewhen]

I wanna do a Star Trek radio drama ..how do i get started?

 

[MikeH92467]

I wanna do a Star Trek radio drama ..how do i get started?

You could start by listening to Star Trek Excelsior

Star Trek Outpost and Star Trek: Lost Frontier.

All of them have a unique approach to the Trek Universe and have solid scripts as well as strong overall production values.

Excelsior has it's own forum and welcome questions about what we do and how we do it.

One strong suggestion, make sure you have a good story before you do anything else. Maurice has been extremely generous sharing his professional know-how in several threads and even though he is a video producer many of his ideas apply just as well to audio.

Good luck!

 

[Mysterion]

I would go and listen to some radio dramas from the era they were being produced and get a feel for the way they were written and paced. The series "X Minus One" is a good place to start, they adapted a number of classic SF short-stories for radio.

 

[Mark_Nguyen]

Agreed on that. I'm a huge fan of old radio serials and that's a great way to cut your teeth on learning how to write and produce a radio play - by listening as those shows explored how it was done and became bloody experts at it.

Also, there are repositories of sci-fi dramas and serials from subsequent eras as well. Where I'm from, the CBC has a massive free archive of radio dramas and plays. And if you want to be current and have some cash to buy the downloads, try out Big Finish for an enormous range of sci-fi audio dramas from Doctor Who and a bunch of other stuff.

Mark

 

[Maurice]

You can also download for free the entire 480+ episodes of the original radio version of Gunsmoke, which was revolutionary in its use of naturalistic sound and silence. You can download them via the DOWNLOAD OPTIONS box to the lower right of this page (link). I quite like the show.

What's fun is the archive includes a few rehearsals. Check out the first 30 seconds of this one (link), where Marshal Dillion says a four letter word at the end of the intro.

 

[Kor]

Radio drama is one of my favorite methods of storytelling.

Solid writing is everything. You should have a compelling, well-constructed story before anything else. Worry about the technical aspects later.

Here are some books you may want to take a gander at:

Radio Drama, by Tim Crook
Here is a primer on script development that Tim Crook has available online: http://www.irdp.co.uk/scripts.htm

The Radio Drama Handbook: Audio Drama in Context and Practice, by Richard J. Hand and Mary Traynor

Writing for Radio: 2nd Edition, by Shaun McLoughlin

Kor