Radio case study

Consider the assertion by Bonnie M Miller and others: “The pictures are better on the radio”. Do you agree? 

I disagree with this statement, as radio and film are extremely different. While still being comparable, films focus on the visuals while radio can only focus on the audio. 

Radio dramas can easily envelop the listener with its use of foley, layered sounds and narrators descriptions. But this medium requires the listeners to create their own visual worlds, or seek out advertising/magazines of said radio drama.

On the other hand, films contain the same enveloping techniques as radio dramas but have a focus on narration and visuals. There’s no need to search for material as its normally shown on screen. But because everything is shown it leaves nothing to the imagination, whereas radio dramas are your own visual worlds.

Listen to Rockethouse Productions, 1997, Touching the Elephant and write a paragraph on your blog describing the nature of radio listening.

Touching the elephant was an interesting auditory experience, focusing on how something looks and feels using foley and narration. When Danny feels the trunk, you hear her hand rubbing against it and it sounds just how she described it, “wrinkly with little tufts of hair.” This concept moves around to different elephant bodyparts.

When researching this piece, I discovered “Touching the Elephant” is about four blind people touching and feeling an elephant for the first time. This gives more context to the piece as a whole but also makes me realise that radio is the perfect medium for this. Thinking of the quote “all radio listeners are blind.” We are in a similar situation to what these blind people are in, where we cannot see but we can hear and feel.