Radio Blog - Solo

For my solo radio work I have decided to do 1 monologue, 1 short childrens story and 1 ADR video game. 

Posh

The material I have chosen are parts that I believe shows the versatility in my voice, I feel that I am good at doing a posh upper class accent and so I chose a monologue which would show that to the best of my ability. Posh by Laura Wade is about a group of Oxford boys that are in a club that has been going for years. Alistair, who I am playing is in his first year and has a brother who is a 'legendary' member of the Riot Club. The monologue is a mature piece that talks about society and a pub manager in a inferior fashion as he believes its turning his 'country to fuck'. As this is an audio recording the character needs to be less naturalistic as I only have 1 outlet through the microphone to convey the overall message and what my characters objective is as the audience can't see my body language or facial expressions. I will imitate a very posh upper class English accent, I will do this by picturing a posh dinner with other upper class men who believe they are superior to the common man. I will also be very articulate for the audience to understand what I am saying and as the posh upper class accent is very articulate already. Throughout the monologue Alistair's target is to belittle the bar manager who he believes is rude. He is also giving his view on society and how things should be. I felt that finding his objective would help me get to grips with the character and understand the intention behind the monologue. The actor and the target by Declan Donnellan is a technique I feel best suits what I want to find from this monologue. He says how 'You can never know what you are doing until you first know what you are doing it to'. He goes on to say, 'The target can be real or imaginary, concrete or abstract, but the unbreakable first rule is that at all times and without a single exception there must be a target'. As Declan had pointed out I need to know what or who I am having an affect on. In this scene Alistair who I am playing is rallying up the other men in the room as there are parts where other members in the Riot club talk but I cut it out to make it into a monologue. I feel Alistair is trying to persuade the other men that they are superior. By getting the most out of my voice and performing it to my greatest ability I felt I had to have a better idea of the character and so I wanted to research people that I felt were like Alistair in real life. My first example of a posh snob would be someone like Jordan Belfort from 'Wolf of Wall Street' who constantly see's himself as better than everyone else as soon as he gets the taste of money. He's been quoted saying 'I have been a rich man and I have been a poor man, and I choose rich every fucking time', he then goes on to say how he is a 'winner', this reminds me a lot of the character of Alistair as they are both snobby and look down at who they believe are inferior, the poor. Another character that is also greedy is Patrick Bateman from American Psycho a wall street big shot who turns psychopathic due to greed. He has been quoted saying ' I have all the characteristics of a human being: blood, flesh, skin, hair; but not a single, clear, identifiable emotion, except for greed and disgust'. I don't think this is an accurate representation of Alistair as he isn't psychopathic, however he is overzealous when it comes to money. 

For my childrens book I first planned to read Five Minutes' Peace by Jill Murphy, after reading through it a couple of times I found it difficult to do 5 different elephant voices and remember the tone and accent for each elephant as there is a mum dad and three baby elephants that are all at different ages. The story however is a great story for audio recordings as there are many different emotional levels that you can play with the mother getting annoyed to the children having fun. I felt this was too difficult of a task for me to do and I felt my voice wouldn't match the elephants voice anyway. I felt my talents would be better showed in the story of Goldilocks and the Three Bears by Robert Southey, I think that I will be able to portray Goldilocks voice by doing a high pitch innocent voice that would be given to a stereotypical girl. I felt I portrayed this well and even the parts where  Goldilocks is scared or shocked, by imaging the stereotypical blonde girl in my head screaming after seeing something shocking. I will also be doing three bear voices, for father bear, mother bear and baby bear. For each bear I intend to make them quite characterised and over the top so its more entertaining for the target audience which are children. The father bear I will put on quite a loud powering voice that has a lot of presence this is to give off the idea that he is the biggest bear and this is his territory. The Mother bear I have decided to put on quite a posh sound voice to make her seem innocent and caring which are traits a stereotypical mother would have after raising a child. The baby bear I have based of the character of Gavroche in Les Miserable who is a young cheeky boy who loves to play and I think this cockney type voice is perfect to be funny for the younger audience and to insinuate a small bear character.









My other solo work is ADR or automated dialogue replacement in which dialogue is replaced as why the name is given, for our ADR we did video games, I decided to be in the Fallout 4 Trailer as I believe the part is a strong one and best shows my ability of doing a gritty subtle American accent, I also asked if I could do the 'PEGI 16' start for the trailers, as I have heard the voice many times over my childhood and felt I could replicate it. For the Fallout 4 Trailer, my line was 'Haven't you been paying attention? You don't  find the institute the institute finds you' After doing further research the line is said by Conrad Kellogg, the institute is in Fallout 4 and is an organisation that has certain agents, Conrad Kellogg is an agent that is sent out to find people kill them and kidnap them, however no one is able to find the institute and goes along with the line that people will never find the institute but if they want to find you they will. Much like a Mafia sort of based establishment. For this I really listened to the character and how the voice was being put on, as said before I felt actor gave the character a grittly voice that was quite powerful. Having done further research I know that Conrad Kellogg is a powerful character in this game. After listening to the first audio recording a couple more times I noticed how he puts emphasis on the word 'find' in 'you don't find the institute the institute finds you', this simple bit of emphasis gives off many messages that help me to understand the characters objective, I feel that by emphasising the word 'find' in this line he sounds very patronising and is almost belittling the man asking the question as to wonder why he asked to 'find' it. I think this also makes him sound more powerful and gives off the impression that he feels he is superior to the one asking the question. For my other short part I said 'PEGI 16' which is said at the beginning of Fallout 4 to show that it is a 16 rated and above game. For this short bit I need to be rather articulate as I have to get across the message that children younger than 16 shouldn't be playing this game. I will give y voice quite an authoritative sound by sounding monotone in order to get the message across that the  age rating is serious.






Throughout my solo work I have enjoyed working on different voices in order to get a complex and versatile amount of material together that will be beneficial to me in the future should I want a voice reel.