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Zorp City Radio: The Biogenic OOZE Exclusive

This is another uni project, this time to create a 6 minute condensed radio show. The pitch is as follows: Biogenic OOZE are a famous band from the planet Glorp in the far future, and are about to release a new album then go on tour. Galnix Spherian of Zorp City Radio has scored an exclusive interview with the band's drummer (G'lrk) and guitarist (Z'nar).

The idea is basically a combination of me wanting to do Spinal Tap but as a radio show and Eren wanting to do something sci-fi. Some of Spinal Tap got in - the drummer interview was largely inspired by Nigel's guitar room - but the concept did drift a bit as writing progressed. Originally the guitarist was going to be completely fed up with the drummer, which crept in a little in one line ("G'lrk might like to think they're the heart of the band") but mostly got binned while writing the script. I also have to specifically call out "Galnix Spherian" as one of the best fictional names I have ever heard. Full credit to Eren on that one.

Sonic Orbit and Spiral both feature in the show. Spiral is a previous hit by the band, and Sonic Orbit is a track from their upcoming album. Details for both of those are available on their respective pages.

We haven't yet decided where to publish the Exclusive, but once we have I'll add a link to it here.

Production

The very first things recorded were some auditions for voice actors. We ended up using people from our own group for everyone except the presenter, because nobody else really had what we were looking for. The audition recordings got used as placeholder guide tracks before we got the real recordings done.

The first things recorded that stayed in were some field recordings of traffic and Metrolink trams, as well as some crowd noise from the cafeteria in the Maxwell building on main campus. The field recordings were used to create the intro soundscape, alongside some static from a real radio. We also recorded me, Eren, and Louis reading out some random stuff to create the effect of someone tuning into other stations along the way to their target. I read from Euler's Wikipedia page, Eren read out that one speech from Hamlet, and Louis told a joke wrong. The idea was it would sound like someone on the streets of Zorp City tuning in just in time to catch the interview, which I think we managed pretty well.

The next thing was the guitar sting for the jingle. I wasn't present for the actual recording, so I basically got handed a Pro Tools session with four takes of the same sting and got to work. I grabbed the best two, tweaked the timing a little, double tracked them, then recorded myself reading out the station ident. Later we went back and added a synthesiser and a kick/crash hit, just to fill it out a little.

After that was the studio recordings with Eli, the voice actor for the presenter. We basically just shoved him in the live room with a mic and got two or three takes of the studio scenes. Nothing really interesting to report there.

Unfortunately I wasn't present for the location recordings, because I had work that day.

There were some rather interesting edits I had to make. For example, Eli didn't actually say the S in "cosmos", so I had to grab one from elsewhere in his lines and slot it in.

Credits

See also credits for Spiral and Sonic Orbit