Notes from the Audio Drama Festival, 2019

I am so excited to be here. I am sitting in one of Goldsmith's lecture theatres listening to Journey into Space, a BBC radio show from 1955. A group of British 'spacemen' are heading into the unknown. The keynote speaker, Professor Seán Street, is giving his reflections on audio’s ability to explore fantastical worlds.

What follows are notes I took at this amazing two-day event

Day 1

Professor Seán Street covered the feelings experienced by listeners of different works, his own personal experience and the history of radio's effect on listeners. Obviously, the infamous War of the Worlds broadcast was explored. What an amazing moment in the history of audio production. Fictional radio had always seemed in control, but in this one broadcast, Welles' direction, probably influenced by the live recording of the Hindenburg disaster a year prior, led to people believing that the Earth was really under attack. The broadcast included musical interludes during apparent interruptions and cuts to dead air. Welles even delayed the broadcast's commercial break so when listeners of the rival station NBC, bored by a Charlie McCarthy/Coffee ad, turned over to CBS they would come in mid-broadcast and think it was real. 1938. Jesus. The things that were going to come. That time and place in the world. That's terrifying.

The writer's panel on Sci-Fi and Fantasy audio drama had some interesting ideas. I particularly enjoyed Judith Adams discussing her attempts to insert more women into her adaptations of classic works. She got in trouble with the William Golding estate for casting a woman to play the narrator. She moved on to adapting the Earthsea novels of Ursula K. Le Guin for BBC Radio 4. Le Guin wanted to create more gender ambiguous characters but didn't feel comfortable rewriting her beloved novels because she felt it would betray her readers (J.K. Rowling, take note!). The opportunity in writing the show for radio meant that Judith Adams could try to avoid using pronouns and bring in some of the feminist readings that Le Guin wanted. Another interesting takeaway from this panel was from Julian Simpson who wrote The Case of Charles Dexter Ward, he highlighted the opportunity that podcasts offer of being more flexible with time than radio shows; instead of adding filler or cutting content to fit the standard 27 minute structure, one can make the work the length it needs to be. Sarah Woods, who wrote Borderland, was supportive of this, adding that because you can write episodes of very different lengths you can experiment with adjusting the format. The writer can opt to use a different style to convey information in a 2-minute episode than a 15-minute episode.

Oh Gods, this is great. There's a 45m listening of Borderland, a dystopian story. The lights are off and about 75-100 people are sitting in the dark, listening quietly. I have to shut my laptop to reduce the amount of light. But before I do, I'm going to write a sentence of celebration in honour of this community.

*Borderland plays*

That was a very serious story. The BBC description: "In the not-so-distant future, the UK has fragmented. Layla and her daughter go on a desperate mission across the borders of England and Wales and over the Irish Sea." I strongly recommend it for people who want to have an understanding of what the refugee experience is like. One (spoiler-free) detail that Sarah Woods pointed out in the post-listen Q&A session - there are life jackets that are sold to people taking a boat voyage which will actually take in water and pull the wearer under the water. The story, and this detail, reminded me of the statements made by refugees I've met at The Bike Project. I was surprised when the producer, James Robinson, answered a question that none of the audio was recorded on location. All the dialogue is recorded on microphones and all the foley (sound effects for us lay people) is recorded separately.

The Producer's panel is hosted by the awesome Ella Watts, someone I happened to hear in the Podcast Hour on the BBC the other day (Incidentally, she recommended some of my favourite podcasts: Wolf359, The Truth, Stellar Firma, The Bright Sessions) and who basically has the most amazing job as a consultant in audio fiction (kind of a "Why not do this, BBC Sounds?" role). The term producer is pretty all-encompassing in radio, so the panel is made up of all kinds of audio creators. Today is about sci-fi and fantasy so the questions are geared in that direction. Panel shares the idea that in stories, we can test out ourselves morally and socially. There's also the unusual situation that there is a lot of pioneering work in audio drama in the podcast sector but also there's this long history of audio fiction radio. The independent scene is doing something slightly different from the institutions of BBC and Audible. There is now starting to be some crossover between them, for example, Audible will have people come in from both BBC and podcasts and creating radio fiction the way people feel comfortable which is a refreshing idea especially given the cuts in the BBC. For a long time, the received wisdom of the BBC was that people younger than 35 were not interested in speech content which left the space which podcasts were able to fill. BBC are playing catch-up now with BBC Sounds commissioning drama. There is a question on how to make fictional sounds work for real people and the recommended research is to look at Ben Burtt: he designed the dinosaurs in Jurassic Park (real animals), the lightsabres in Star Wars (waving a mic around a project and a broken mobile phone) and the lifting of the lid of the Ark of the Covenant in Raiders of the Lost Ark (moving the lid of a toilet cistern). Some amazing facts there. Another amazing question is how producers take into account where the listener might be when they are listening to a piece of radio fiction. Audible producer Mariele Runacre-Temple says that they always make sure they get their sound designers to listen to their creations on low-quality headphones because no matter how much effort they put into subtle layering of sounds, people will be listening to these shows on the train or while walking to work, so they have to make sure that people don't accidentally miss important plot points because a sound effect is too subtle. But on the other hand, people have their own mixing-desk in their head, honing in on the sounds that are relevant to them. I asked the question of what is *needed* right now in the community, apparently 'discoverability', how can we assess how good a podcast is and learn about new good podcasts, I will think about how this could be achieved.

I was pleasantly surprised during The Sound Technologists panel by the presence of Elizabeth Moffatt, a sound designer at my friend Alex's podcast network, Rusty Quill. An interesting reveal about the Rusty Quill community was that some of the audience of their horror podcast, The Magnus Archives, are actually hearing-impaired and so they provide transcripts of the podcast. They also list trigger warnings for each of their episodes after finding that some of their community would react negatively to some of their themes. One of the consistent values I have found in the business management of Rusty Quill is the respect they have for their listeners; this may go some way to explain their remarkable successful in the UK podcast industry (it was reported on a the BBC's Podcast Radio hour that they generate ￡6k/month from their Patreon supporters).

Before leaving the event for the evening, I met Fiona who is an admin for the Audio Hub Facebook group. I listened to her podcast drama Dashing Onions on my way to a friend, it was good!

Day 2

This day has had a fortunate and awesome start. I was late for the keynote talk so instead of interrupting it, I decided to have a cup of tea and wait for the break. Another person joined me and introduced himself as Tom, I recognised him as Tom Crowley, who stars in two of my favourite podcasts: Wooden Overcoats and Victoriocity. He seemed pleased to meet a fan of his work and we were able to sit and chat until the break came. He also introduced me to Wooden Overcoats co-star Felix Trench, who has just released a new podcast about Europe called Euro Pro Quo, which I'm looking forward to checking out.

My first talk of the day: Steve Carsey, commissioning editor for Audible, describes the business model for Audible. Audible's audio drama needs to be similar enough to its audiobook contents. Their business model depends on subscribers who earn 'credits' and most customers will do a value-for-money comparison, so audio dramas predominantly need to be a comparable length to an audiobook, at least 5 hours. They have a good understanding of their customers and what will draw customers to listen. They also have 6 categories of shows they will work with:

• Brands (e.g. Aliens, X-Files, Assassin's Creed) because of their profile. It's easier to promote it, attract new listeners including ones and get a worldwide audience, despite being expensive and having complex deals.
• Public domain (e.g. Jane Austen's Emma, Treasure Island, The Jungle Book), again these stories will have a good profile and international potential. Audible feels more comfortable reversioning these stories and creating new versions. They do really well in the US, possibly the Downton Abbey effect. They are aware that there will be competing versions of the same titles but they are also comfortable with their commercial and creative competitiveness.
• International stories (e.g. Amok by Sebastian Fitzek, Robin die Flucht by Rebecca Gable), translations of foreign language drama scripts - it is a cost effective production model because they know that foreign audiences relate to it, but they aren't necessarily recognisable at a local level.
• Authors (e.g. Agatha Christie, Terry Pratchett, Mark Dawson), these appeal to audiobook fans, particularly if the writer is well known or recognised, but they are not always high profile and can be difficult to promote without well known casting.
• Creatives (e.g. Jeff Wayne), which was not expanded upon.
• New Writing - only about 20-30% of Audibles audio drama are completely new creations. Stories with a pre-existing IP will have an easier-to-target audience. But if you are interested, there are competitions, grants and new talent initiatives (e.g. This is your pilot speaking) and you can pitch Lydia at [email protected]. When you email, don't email the document, email an idea, explain why you want to write it and a brief bit of your experience.

Before lunch there were a series of pitches made to a judging panel made up of Jessica Dromgoole (BBC), Steve Carsey (Audible) and Jacqueline Malcolm (Colourful Radio), all of whom are commissioning editors who receive many pitches for their channels. The questions they asked the pitchers were mostly about characters, the tension and relief of the stories, and the journey of the stories (including how they end). If they liked the pitch, they would also ask about the format of the story and some of the finer details of how something was produced. The first pitcher gave a sci-fi idea but was told that while they had an interesting hook with a particular area of their meta-story, without specific character story, drama and growth, their pitch was incomplete and missing the heart of the story. The second pitcher had designed an emotional mother-daughter drama within a context of lack of mental health services in the NHS, they were advised to edit the way they ended the story but were largely given approval and positive feedback. The third pitcher described a 70's love story between a song-hunter and a singer, which starts sweetly but ends negatively; they were told that basing an audio story around a song was a great idea and that the character tension was interesting but that there was an uncomfortable sense of misogyny in some of the basic plot elements and that the concept of a song-hunter was not well explained during the pitch. They were also advised that if an editor suggests taking a story in a particular direction, you should be flexible to accept that because it's a two way process. The fourth pitcher came with their ukelele and pitched their musical while singing a song about how they were pitching. They pitched a narrative in ancient Greece following characters who change the rules given by the Gods and start changing the dreams that people are given and hiding in people's dreams. The distinction between the dream world and the real world would be represented by the dreamworld being musical. The panel responded with questions about structure, tone, story logic, location and clarifying the basics of the story and advised that the pitcher work on describing the story more clearly.

Another communal drama listen, Roy Williams' The Interrogation... for some reason they're not turning off all the lights this time. Bit odd. Interesting show though, well written police drama with excellent dialogue. The author spent time with the police to get the correct tone and style.

The final section of the conference is here. I'm sitting and listening to three new radio short plays. There is something so exciting about sitting here listening to first readthroughs of new work. The air is electric and everyone in the auditorium has their eyes fixed on the performers. These plays are not why I am here, but the vibrancy and life that is coming from these performances are. I grew up listening to pretty good radio but it was only on at 6.30pm (or was it 6?) on one radio station. BBC 7’s launch was a landmark moment for my consumption of radio but it was still mostly reruns of older radio shows. Today with podcasts and new investment in audio fiction writing from organisations like the BBC and Audible and the opportunity to learn sound production at institutions like Goldsmiths, there is so much more quality audio fiction out there such that I can listen to great shows pretty much any time and largely for free. We are in a 'golden age of audio fiction' as expressed by Tim Crook. I heartily agree.

Post-conference edit: If you think you want to get involved in creating podcasts yourself, give it a go, join the Audio Drama Hub Facebook group where you'll find a supportive crowd. There is also a ￡3 million content fund from the government that audio drama creators can apply for: https://www.audiocontentfund.org.uk/ - so it's definitely doable.

And if you can't find something to listen to, or really want to recommend a podcast, why not join my Podcast Recommendations WhatsApp group: https://chat.whatsapp.com/E82x0pLjWABHx4fTRfNkko - we look forward to welcoming you.