Marketing & Demographics

FMP

Audiobooks and radio plays hold a strong position within the market, appealing to ages anywhere between very young children for a bedtime story, to the very elderly who enjoy listening to books instead of struggling to read small text. The size of the audiobook industry is near a billion-dollar industry. In December 2004 the Audio Publishers Association estimated that the size of the market was $800 million. Since then, audiobook sales exploded due to easy access, downloading them from sites like Audible. A huge percentage of the audience is made from people with impaired vision whether partial or fully blind, people with dyslexia who struggle to read and slow readers. With the evolution of technology, recording books and downloading them onto mp3 players/iPods has become easy and popular in this day and age. Knowing and targeting your audience is a major part of marketing. Placing advertisements within glasses shops, music shops, hospitals, and learning centres means getting your product to the people who are most likely to purchase the audiobook. Whilst those who listen to audiobooks more often than not go out looking specifically for them, sometimes people dont know what is out there and need to be presented with something new that they havent tried before which will encourage them. It introduces audiobooks to people who would have never thought about it nor come across it. Worldwide popular books such as Harry Potter spiked sales in the audiobook industry and in recent months, Fifty Shades of Grey. The success of an audiobook usually has much to do with success of the printed book; with radio plays it depends on the success of the play itself which can be a huge influence on the popularity and sales. Having Hanging on the Old Barbed Wire performed twice in two consecutive years over a weekly period, means it has full potential to stir up some interest from locals, people with enthusiasm for the subject of WW1 and even more so for the actors involved and their family and friends for memorabilia. Audiobooks stand out and set themselves apart from the crowd. Theres are millions of books on Amazon and over 100,000 audiobooks on Audible. There is a massive difference in numerics and what is physically out there. Audiobooks and radio plays can be placed within not only literature, but also entertainment; fulfilling two marketing regions. Hosting the audiobooks and radio plays on reputable audio hosting sites and digital media player applications such as iTunes, Soundcloud, Audible and Podbean markets the product, creates interest and makes it accessible to the entire

world. Another media is Radio stations such as BBC Radio 4 who host audio books on their shows. Using these medias as a marketing tool will increase the number of people who will potentially listen and buy the product at hand by placing it in hotspots targeting the customer demographics. I will use all the social media and hosting websites to market my product and put it onto the evergrowing internet. I will use the Miskin Theatre to my advantage and stir interest with the actors involved or even future students to advertise what they may be taking part in in the near future and what they will experience by joining the acting course at North West Kent. Production & Recording Techniques With the magnitude of people involved in one radio play, organising a recording schedule and technique proved complicated. Doing it scene-by-scene and recording individual monologues made the process a lot easier and more efficient. When recording single monologues or small scenes of 1 - 5 people, the vocal booth was used. The Lauten Horizon LT-321 was placed in the vocal booth and the clients were placed around it, equidistant from it to get an even signal when recording. Although trying to reduce the problem it would cause to have each person at different distances from the mic, voices vary from person to person sitting on different frequencies and volumes which creates an uneven signal input. This was fixed during post-production using compression. Recording bigger scenes with a larger group of people required using the more spacious live room. The microphones used were 4 Neumann KM184s to capture each group of people and general ambience. The setup of the microphones depended on the scene at hand eg. having a scene where there are actors sitting in separate groups, the mics would be placed in each group area getting a more direct isolated sound but when it came to a scene involving recording a football match scene, the mics were tactically placed in a square capturing all of the sound from every angle. Pop shields were crucial for recording speech because people naturally speak with plosive sounds. Even though pop shields were used, there were occasional plosives within the recorded audio. I used the EQ to cut low frequencies from about 20Hz to 100Hz as this is where the plosive sounds lie.

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Physically recording the play was simple enough using two channels for monologues and sound effect channels for anything otherwise. Each piece of audio was labelled with a code making it easier during post-production to place it in order. The first part of post-production involved finding all of the audio and making sense of it all, creating different arrange pages in order to not only keep the file sizes small, but keep it as simple as possible. Once all of the audio was in place, I started work on the first page listening to the scenes and referring back to the given brief. I used a compressor on the speech to reduce the dynamic range of the performances to make it smoother as mentioned earlier. Sound effects were a major part of this project and are used frequently throughout. They are a vital part of audiobooks and radio plays because the listener is relying on their ears to hear the scene instead of visually seeing the surroundings. Using YouTube, Logics library and various other website to seek sound clip resources to use within the play, I found many different pieces of audio to comply with the scene portrayed. Wind audio was the main sound effect because of the constant changes from inside to outside within the play. Wind can be used as a great scene changer because it creates an ambience that is subtle but very noticeable when it abruptly vanishes; the listener can tell that it is now a different scene/environment. Other sound effects used included rain, footsteps, bombs/explosions and other intricate details such as sounds of smoking, all used to guide an image into the listeners imagination. Use of panning meant physically being able to represent the position of the source of audio to the listener making it even easier to picture and imagine the surroundings being delineated. Plugins and effects were a big aid when setting an atmosphere with the use of reverb, echo, tape delay etc. to determine the surroundings and size of the space. For example, in large, desolate, outdoor spaces there is a slap back echo effect when shouting so the echo or tape delay plugin combined with reverb is perfect to create that quick reflection of sound wave and big acoustic environment. Another tool I used frequently was volume automation. On sound effects mainly the

wind to bring it in and out of the speakers where needed. On some parts of speech, I used automation because of some clients who tended to have a much louder and more powerful voice. Even though there was a compressor, I wanted to draw away from over-compressing every piece of audio on that channel by increasing the threshold of the compressor. Instead of creating an entirely new channel for those select pieces of audio, I decided to manually automate the volume at the points when those voices which were significantly louder to balance out the volume. Without the input of modern technology with sound effects and plugins, it would be difficult to record audiobooks and radio plays and stimulate the listeners imagination without recording the scenes in the exact environments they were set in which, in turn, would be impractical and time consuming. Where possible, foley was used to create our own sound effects. In one scene, a grapefruit was torn apart to represent the gory removal of human flesh. The transition from the original recorded audio to post-production and adding effects wasnt always simple with the recordings from the groups in the live room. Natural reverb made some of the scenes that were required to be dry and more central difficult as it proves challenging to remove reverb that has been recorded. Where possible I used the expander to try and reduce the amount of reverberation which works like a gate but instead of completely shutting off just reduces the signal by a chosen amount when the gate is closed. This keeps the sound natural and doesnt cut off any of the speech. In relation to my proposal I think I have completed three quarters of my target as it has not yet been posted on any host sites and therefore cannot gain my goal of 10 downloads and havent advertised it on Tumblr as of yet. I also cannot FULLY complete the radio play as there are minor pieces of audio missing which need to be recorded and music which will be added at a later date by someone else within the Miskin. Aside from those small incompletions, I believe I have succeeded in the technicalities and production of the radio play and complied to the deadline creating a good quality radioplay. Supplementary Roles I have assisted in a few of my peers projects working as an engineer, tape operator and technical and instrument assistance. Working as an engineer for Sams project, I miced up drums and did a soundcheck for him. I used several mics including 2 Neumanns, an Audix F14, two Audix F10s, an Audix F15, and a Shure SM57 and a Shure SM58. These microphones were chosen specific to their frequency range which is suitable for different parts of the kit. I used standard overhead placement with the Neumanns as directed by Sam as he wanted more of an overall sound of the whole drum kit instead of a more direct sound. To do this properly a XLR lead is used to measure the distance

from the middle of the snare to each of the overheads making sure theyre equidistant. The Audix F14 kick mic was placed about 4 inches inside of the drum to capture the deep, low frequencies by also get the slap of the drum skin. I made sure the hi-hat Audix F15 was a good distance from the centre of it and checked the positioning of the microphones before doing a sound check with Sam, getting signal level perfect and ready for his client/band member to come in and record. I assisted him when problems occurred with signals, changing cables where necessary. Working again with Sam I was a tape operator for him when recording guitar and listened with him to get the tone he was looking for offering advice where appropriate. My next supplementary role was working with Kevin, as he was not confident in doing so by himself I restrung his acoustic guitar for him and tuned it to standard ready for recording avoiding problems with broken strings and saving time. Lastly, I have been a second pair of ears for almost all of Alexs tracks offering constructive criticism and a fresh approach when he had creative blocks or needed some advice. Having another person listen to and analyse your work can help you see something from a new angle and therefore go forward or move past a mental block. It can also spark creativity when talking about what could be added, took away or what would sound good further into the song.