Crawl Out Through The Fallout

Inspiration

When writing the script I was heavily inspired by the Fallout video game franchise. The games are set in a post-apocalyptic America some 100-200 years after a nuclear war, which left the country and its people in ruins. However, some people manage to survive and form communities in the wasteland.

While I wanted to use the wasteland as a backdrop for the drama, I wanted the focus of the story to be on the people as I find that the idea of morality and humanity is an interesting point to build around when constructing a story in this societyless, seemingly morally ambiguous setting. This setting also allowed me to trap the characters in one space in a way that makes sense for the plot.  It was important to me that the characters felt real and that their roles in this world were not romanticised or stereotypical because I wanted the connection between the characters to build slowly and have an impactful, emotional payoff.

The ‘Red Riding Hood’ parallel actually came to me after I outlined the characters and some plot points. I enjoy stories that twist existing stories from fairy tales or history and place them in a new setting as they play with the expectations of the the audience and the conventions of the narrative structure. I liked the idea that Red was running from people who are characterised as ‘bad’ only to find that she was in the house with a bad person the whole time and that the drama concludes with her making the choice whether or not to fight. I wanted to her to be the hero of her own story, even if she was slightly reluctant to take on this role.

We looked at different drama’s that had similar elements to our drama to get more ideas on how we wanted to our drama to sound.

Drama 1

Pod plays is BBC radio 4 series of short drama’s that last typically around 4-6 mins long. In this drama series it focuses on locations, most specifically beds. It uses 3D audio to fully immerse the audiences.

The drama is called bed and is written by Ed Harris, it is a dark comedic drama that uses the audience’s members as their main subject. It starts with a woman asking you about the pain you are feeling but you can’t talk. It then comes clear that you are a Robot that has been brought in for repairs, the women then decide to take you to one of the other doctors and you rolled through what sounds like a busy hospital. She leaves you for a moment to go get the doctor, while she’s gone a guy finds you and think you have been left out as no one is around and you can’t answer him. He then starts taking parts of your body that he can sell for money and wheels you outside ready to be put in ‘the scrapper’. The final thing he says to you as you go in is that he always wondered whether robots feel pain or not and the only way to check is to look into their eyes.

I really liked this drama and though it was a very clever use of the 3D audio effect to truly immerse the audiences, especially when you where being wheeled through the hospital as you heard the people pass you by and even the foreshadowing of the scrapper as you hear it pass by. It somethings we want to use in our drama to put the audience in the main characters shoes. I also liked how it was entirely clear what was going to happen throughout the drama e.g. not knowing you’re a robot right at the start and it just being implied, it kept me interested because I wanted to know what was happening and where the story was going.

Drama 2

The Cleansed is an audio drama produced by FinalRune Productions . It is set in a post-apocalyptic future where fuel shortages and war have caused outrage in the USA, which has led to martial law. Homegrown terrorists have taken out the electrical grid and food is scarce. The prologue is presented as a radio show aimed set in this universe, hoping to build morale and make people forget about their struggles.

This is an interesting style as it gives it a sense of realism, especially when the reports come in about an attack. The actors deliveries are very convincing as hosts, military, and college students, which is something that we want to take on board when casting our actors, as they really sell the narrative and style. We also liked the juxtaposition of the gun firing and the cheesy, cheerful music of the radio jingles

Drama 3

Pod plays is BBC radio 4 series of short drama’s that last typically around 4-6 mins long. In this drama it focuses on living rooms. It focuses on two main characters, Leia is going away to Australia and Myla is struggling with telling her about his feelings before she goes. In order to get him to tell her what’s wrong Leia gets inside his head, Literally. She sieves through his memories until she finds what’s upsetting him. After looking around she asks him to come with her to Sydney. Then they break the 4th wall by addressing the audience listening in. She then gives him the chance to go into her mind and that’s how the story finishes, with him living in her head.

I think its very clever how they differentiate between inside his head and in the real world. I think this would be good for our drama because we want the audience to see things through Reds perspective and understand her internal dilemma.  The 3D audio is very immersive and is clever how they show her moving around his head. We would want to use the same idea to show the two characters moving around the room to see how they start far apart but end up getting closer and more comfortable with each other. The use of sound effects to mimic then shrinking to fit in each other’s head was good as it gave transition to the audience between mind and real world. For our drama we plan on using sound effects of muffled banging and crashing to show the chaos that is going on outside to highlight the danger the main characters are in.

Creating Red

I knew that I wanted to be an anti-hero or reluctant hero who felt as though she had run into a lot of bad luck. I decided to use pre-existing tropes of mercenary-type characters in media when constructing her outward personality. It made sense for her to have a tough exterior as she had been struggling to survive the ruthless wasteland but I didn’t want her to be completely closed off as this would have made it difficult to write dialogue between her and Edward. I also had an idea of what I wanted her backstory to be so it made sense for her to be distant to begin with but a nice person underneath as she had been raised by a loving family, who had taught her to be kind and nice to other people, but after losing them she was scared of getting close to other people and making herself vulnerable again.  By making her see the atrocities of the world first hand as a child, I felt that she would be distrusting of others even if she did want to see the best in people.

Creating Edward

            Originally, Edward was inspired by the old, wise wizard characters from fairytales. However, as the story developed I found myself moving away from this idea and more towards him being isolated because of his guilt. While I knew that his backstory was going to be pivotal in his character arc, I still wanted him to have development when he is in the house with Red. I made time for the two characters to have small moments that allowed them to open up to one another and talk about their pasts but in these moments I purposefully made them unequal. Red notices that she has divulged a lot of information about herself while Edward hasn’t. Edward’s progression is less about when he chooses to open up about his past and more about the fact that he does it at all. In his own words, Edward is standoffish and a tad rude but in the end he feels as though he owes Red an explanation, which is his own way of showing that he cares about and respects her. He even talks about what he’s going to do for her if they escape, which not only shows that he was listening to her story but that he is trying to make their last moments together a little lighter and optimistic.