WAR OF THE WORLDS RADIO DRAMA

War Of The Worlds by H. G. Wells was adapted into a radio drama in the 1930s. It used techniques that were quite revolutionary, and that ended up causing some people to believe that the drama was real life. To start the drama, an introduction was given by Wells then music was played, making it seem like a normal radio broadcast, not a drama. Then they used the phrase "we interupt this programme..." which made it seem like it was real news being broadcast. The pace of the drama steadily got faster and faster as an increasing amount of suppossed news bulletins interupted the music. The frequent cuts was a good use of building tension. Also the juxtaposition of the pleasant music and the increasingly more distressed news reports make the listener more intent on finding out what was going on. Silence was also used well to add an uncertain atmosphere. Clips of reporters suddenly cut out to silence every now and then to make it seem as though something had gone wrong. The only thing that let the atmosphere down was the way that the reporters described every detail of what they were doing, which reminds the listener they are listening to a drama. The vocal description is the only way to get across what is going on in radio drama. War Of The Worlds used sound effects well, but not as often as they could of done. When they did use them, they were perfectly in time with what the reporters were saying. They also created a sense of realness because the sound effects were as loud as the reporter's voice. The drama doesn't even have commercial breaks until fourty minutes in when the drama changes. It broke lots of rules and conventions of radio drama in the first 40 minutes, but after that, it conforms. A narration from a survivor describes events that have happened over a few days, using the voice over helps listeners to grasp the passing of time more. Also, the narrator meets another survivor and the classic scenario in radio dramas of two people talking ensued for a while.

War Of The Worlds was all together very entertaining and the technicality was sophisticated.