Internet-Created Free Audio Dramas?

fraser_joat asks: "The other day I finally took the time to watch Starship Exeter, previously reported on Slashdot. Coincidentally, I also revisited the BBC's excellent radio adaptation of The Lord Of The Rings, following the hype caused by the recent movies. The two of these got me thinking: while _Exeter_ was clearly a huge effort, it looks like they had a lot of fun making it. In many ways they are scratching the same sort of itch that generates free software. So what about audio drama? The technology needed to produce it is freely available, things like Ardour and Csound. So is it possible to produce an audio drama based on free texts such as those from Project Gutenberg in a distributed fashion, with contributers from all across the Net, just like with software? Would they even be useful as an introduction to classic fiction or just as pure entertainment?"

"While the technology exists to cut a play together, I see several possible problems:

• High-quality audio recording equipment is expensive, and homes are not ideal environments. Can source material of sufficiently good quality be generated without professional facilities?
• Since the actors could be widely separated, can they act in isolation in a sufficiently convincing manner that they can be cut together later, in the same way that film actors must pretend that the special effects exist during shooting?
• Are there good (royalty-)free sound effect libraries available?

I think the possibilities are interesting, if people can be gathered together to actually do it. Imagine the subtle horror of Poe's The Cask Of Amontillado, or the adventure of Stevenson's Treasure Island, all staying as faithful to the book as possible, without Hollywood's story-twisting and sensationalism spoiling it all.

It would need to be a real community effort - I fancy that I could produce a passable script adaptation of a book and help with the audio production and sound effects, but I'm no actor, nor do I have equipment at home that even approaches what would be required. What about it?"

Comments

Similar Issue

[ackthpt]

On the StoneTrek site, there's a piece concerning the distribution of these extraordinarily well done hybrid (Flintstones-Star Trek) cartoons. Music was one particular sticking point, as portions of both themes play in the episodes. Assuming a less restrictive copyright code (both shows are over 30 years old, right?) and a better spirit of cooperation between enterprises (not including the ship, no pun intended, either) it's a heck of a smooth effort and very entertaining, but will not see the light of day on TV or commercial distribution.

Oh, you can find StoneTrek here, to save some bandwidth on the home site.

Dr. Who audio dramas

[Masem]

There's been a few specially written audio dramas written for Doctor Who and featured on BBC's Cult site (can't recall URL presently), which IIRC have used some of the original actors when possible as well as some reasonably famous celebrities for additional voices.

Re:Dr. Who audio dramas

[mbourgon]

You're probably thinking of Big Finish Productions (http://www.doctorwho.co.uk/), who have done a ton of Audio Dramas, most newly written for them, typically by the original writers and starring the original cast members. Well worth the effort to get, especially if you spend any time in a car.

Alternatively - look around, there's already a ton of audio dramas, most done decades ago. It's called OTR - Old Time Radio. Suspense did "The Dunwich Horror", Lux Radio Theater did a ton of movies (most with the original cast - it was a way to advertise the movie), X-1 did stories by Sturgeon, Heinlein, etc. And frequently the collectors own the original tape, and have cleaned it up before posting mp3s.

Alt.binaries.sounds.radio.oldtime is a good term to google on (most people who do it are OTR geeks), or a good newsgroup to look at.

Way ahead of you

[Straker Skunk]

There's a charity that specializes in doing exactly that, through the efforts of volunteers.

(I've been thinking of giving it a go someday....)

I've been trying to do this for a while.

[rdewalt]

So far the hardest part has been to get the Voice Actors to record with the same settings, as close to the same way as possible.

Nothing like a VA who doesn't understand the format request, giving 4khz/8bit when you ask for 44khz, 16 bit.
Or the VA who speaks three angstroms from the microphone.
Or the VA who practically whispers so quitely the 'cut off' clips most of her audio, and what you -do- get is "household" noise.

I'm still going to keep attempting this. I just find that the hardest part is Voice Actor wrangling.

Online Voice Acting

[TheGatekeeper]

My younger sister is an AVA, or Amateur Voice Actress online. There's quite a community of voice actors, who frequently produce original radio plays, and those based on books, movies, anime or TV.
Fanfiction is perhaps the most popular form of online voice acting, as the producers and actors are able to take more liberties. Fandubs (generally the fan-dubbing of anime) are quite popular, as are rewriting books into script-format and recording them.
These generally turn out fairly well, sometimes better than professional dubs, and the actors record their lines in their own homes, without ever having met the rest of the cast.

The most popular site for AVA's is FLAVA (Fun Lovin' Aspiring Voice Actors).

The VAA (Voice Acting Alliance) is a very good place to learn more about how these productions are made.

One of the most popular original online radio plays, which is beautifully mixed, is Legacy of a Hero, and definitely sets the standard for amateur producing and acting. LoaH is highly recommended listening.

My sister's AVA resume will give an example of the range of productions.

In short, online voice acting, in people's homes, mixed with lines of other cast members whom they've never met, can work out incredibly well, and have been doing so for several years.