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

Plays and actors...

[MosesJones]

I'm really sorry to break it to all the geeks here BUT you do actually need to act to do Radio plays. It can be much harder to convey feeling when all you have is a voice.

People who can act have a skill, just like coders. And lets face it...

No one has ever said that communication is the strongest skill that a geek ever had.

Re:Plays and actors...

[PCM2]

People who can act have a skill, just like coders. And lets face it...

No one has ever said that communication is the strongest skill that a geek ever had.

Wrong side of the bed this morning?

I didn't read anybody talking about destroying Hollywood and ushering in a new era of Internet-produced audio drama as our only form of entertainment. All I read was somebody offering up an idea. Sounds like fun to me. Don't be a dick.

Audio drama is perfect for science fiction

[harlows_monkeys]

Before television was popular, there were many radio dramas. I'm way too young to have heard them originally, but I've heard rebroadcasts of some, and what stands out is how good science fiction can be on audio.

Consider something like the the bar with the aliens in "Star Wars". In an audio drama, all you have to do is have a few words by the narrator (something about a typical seedy spaceport dive, with a band of aliens playing exotic instruments), and then some simple sound effects, and the listener gets an image of the place.

Not "the" image...but "an" image...which is better, because everyone gets the image of the perfect seedy spaceport dive for them.

In a movie, all we get is the director's image...and unless they spend a lot on costumes and effects, it's a cheesy image at that.

When you don't have to spend most of your budget on effects, you can spend more on story. Many classic SF stories that we'll probably never seen done well on the screen were done in the 50's on radio.

Finally, audio works great in the car.