Matilda goes audio…Progression…

At the start of the week  four of our six group members (Nick, Matt, Madelin and myself) went along to meet the rest of the drama students to try and find our Matilda for our audio drama. Once again I stood and pitched our project, who we needed and what we expected of her, one girl approached us interested in the part (Lucy Varney) and we exchanged contact details. She has since emailed me and we have told her of our interest in her and to give us time to develop script ideas.

We then made sure that we did some research on the task and the procedures of police interviews. In my opinion it was quite a complex thing to research as this can be quite classified information. Eventually I came across PACE interviews (Police and criminal evidence) and there techniques. It also came under consideration to go to a local Police station and ask them what kind of things they get out of interviews but I felt that it may have not been wise to ask them kinds of things.

When we re-grouped again on Wednesday17th only four members of the group turned up, again the same two decided they couldn’t turn it, one without an excuse. None the less we started to get a feel for where the script was going. Deciding on the pre-plot for Matilda and the other nuts and bolts that went into making the script make sense. We also had to make sure that the timings we correct for the script as during standard police interviews have certain sayings which take up script time, but gain authenticity. We didn’t write out a script but we currently have a vague outline of what we are going to put in it. at this stage I don’t know if not having a script is a bad thing but we will have to wait and see.

The final step that we took was finding a location to shoot the drama. Previously we found a room which we thought was right for the interview, it had some gentle noise and felt quite compact and claustrophobic, the kind of atmosphere we were going for. Eventually we found another room which we felt, unless otherwise, was the right choice. It was quite empty and hollow and authentically felt like a Police interviewing room which was what we wanted to make the interview sound as authentic as possible. We took out the audio recording equipment and tested out the sound and overall at this stage, we felt convinced we found the right place to record our drama.

Tomorrow we go in and pitch out idea, almost again and hope for some more good feedback. The script needs to be finished as soon as possible as the longer we leave this, the longer we take for the rest of the project. Although we are all unsure on the time scale of the project it’s very important that we stay on track and get the project complete efficiently.