Hi folks,
I’m taking another look this week at the advice offered by Erik Barnouw in his Handbook of Radio Writing (1947). This time the attention is focused on “shifting the scene” of a radio drama using a technique known as the “sound effect transition”. These techniques are common sense but nonetheless easy to overlook.
Scene Shifting (part 3)
Sound Effect Transitions
Particularly useful in action drama, the sound effect makes a great means of shifting the scene. As with the pause transition, it works best when the setting of the new scene is foreshadowed by the concluding words of the old. It is also more effective where the sound background is repeated/repetitive (as such sounds can be faded out easily without creating confusion).
For example, a protagonist ends a scene by mentioning the need to catch a train (fading out), the sound of the train is introduced (fading in), and the conductor asks for tickets or calls “all aboard” as the sound is faded into the background.Advantages
Where the fade-in has been handled by the sound effect, dialog can come in at full volume and get right down to business.
The sound effect transition is also a very quick transition. In some cases it can even overlap a scene (particularly useful for flashbacks)Disadvantages
The sound effect transition tends to work best in action stories and doesn’t lend itself particularly well to stories with a home atmosphere.
The sound effect transition also works best where the effect is created through an ongoing background noise (such as an engine, background babble of a theatre or restaurant etc. that can be faded in and out).
In our scripts we generally don’t use the sound effect transition but it does get used to good effect in our Gaslamp Mystery serial.
If you’d like to see some examples of how scene setting is handled in the scripts we publish be sure to visit http://weirdworldstudios.com/product-category/our-products/. We have lots of free samples you can download.
See you next time.
– Philip Craig Robotham
