The codes and conventions of other radio dramas analysis

I have decided to listen to two different radio dramas and see how they have used in specific; sound effects, voice, music and silence in their radio dramas. I will be looking at "The Twilight Zone : The Lateness of the Hour" and "The Archers: (7th October)".

I will first start off by analysing the production of The Twilight Zone episode. The episode begins with the theme tune, i recall as "Out of Limits by the Marketts" this spooky but characteristic music immediately screams a horror, spooky type radio drama.

The narrator then speaks in this over powering voice to introduce the show, and also throughout the show speaks inbetween scenes to describe the room, and mis-en-scéne, this is effective in building an image of the surrounds around the room and makes you feel involved in the radio drama as you are able to be told the specific details involved i.e. 'A beautiful home, designed for comfort and convinience.'

Actors speak with rising and falling intonation, cleverly makes their sentences roll off their tongue, music playing in the background helps to build the tension when things are happening, also the speed that the actors talk helps to do this. I feel that i can also in some way see how their paralinguistic feature that are being used, and their facial features. Dialect is Recieved pronounciation, aswell as the extended use of vocabulary, i.e 'Beverage', which is an older term for a 'drink', helps me to believe that their target audience is the older generation that would relate to the use of words such as that.

The sound effects are all ones which you would expect to hear when watching a film, very descriptive, footsteps, shuffling, door opening and closing, kitchen utensils moving around etc. This gives a developed way of setting the scene, and if the drama was stripped of this, im sure it would be no where near as developed.

The second radio drama that I am analysing is an episode of "The Archers". From the beginning of this radio drama i can already seen the difference between this episode and the "Twilight Zone". For a start the episode starts off with a cheery "theme tune" that lasts for a limited couple of seconds, so im not sure if that would be called a theme tune.

There is no introduction to the episode which seems very informal and unprofessional. The episode seems like I am listening to a phonecall, or a conversation between three people, therefore I am finding it difficult to build any images on the characters/mis-en-scéne. Silence is used to differenciate between the scenes. I also believe that this radio drama is for the older generation as there is not alot going on, and the characters all seem to be older.

There is a very limited use of sound effects, which isn't good as I can't build any of the details of the scene using my imagination. i.e. Moving car sounds and cups banging.

This radio drama is a vast difference to "The Twilight Zone" Personally i enjoyed the first radio drama alot more than the second, this is mostly because of the sound effects, how the characters communicated and the narrator helped to target the audience and involve them in the storyline, as though giving them secrets to the scene, and what to expect. This analysis has helped me to understand what a good radio drama should conclude of, and what it shouldn't. I will be using similar conventions to "The Twilight Zone"in order to attempt to make it much more of a radio drama, rather than a conversation.