Intention & Social Impact

My intention with this capstone project is to 1) create an entertaining, clear, and immersive sound experience for my listeners and 2) discuss mental health, mortality, and friendship through my main characters and their relationships to each other. I hope that I will achieve a highly successful audio drama (potentially with video clips accompanying, I am still trying to reach out to different locations to see if I have their permission to film there) that achieves all of my goals and is easily accessible to people with all kinds of backgrounds and abilities. I am not sure how big my audience will be/how many people are actually going to listen and be interested in my audio drama, but my hope is that the storyline and the characters will impact them emotionally, and that they will be more open in the future to audio work/audio dramas as opposed to other mediums such as film, music, television, etc. 

Best & Worst Case Scenario

The best case scenario for the impact of my project would be that whoever listens to it really resonates with the emotional narrative, and is inspired to listen to more audio work and maybe even go into audio work themselves. I also am planning to include a transcript/description of the audio drama, to make it more accessible to people with hearing disabilities. My hope for them is that they would be able to also get the full emotional impact of the storyline, and be encouraged to consume similar media with accessibility catered towards them as well. The worst case scenario for my project is that no one will listen to it and/or care, and that people with hearing disabilities will not feel included or like they can properly follow along with the audio drama. 

How My Personal Experiences Influence This Project

Since none of the voice actors I’m using are ever going to be on camera, I didn’t really specify their races (also, I don’t necessarily think that is always needed even in film). The two main characters are women, so I definitely think that my identity as a woman influenced this decision. Not because I don’t feel that I can “write” male characters well, but because the female experience in society and female friendships are something I am intimately familiar with and interested in, and so I wanted to explore that more in this project. 

Because the main character in my script is a famous musician, and that is not something that I have experienced firsthand, that is definitely a lived experience that is missing from my approach to this project. However, I do know the basic logistics of how the music industry works. And the setting of the audio drama takes place outside of her music career and outside of the public eye, more so in a personal sphere. Being a famous celebrity is absolutely a huge part of someone’s identity, but they also have very real and universal human problems just like the rest of us. 

More Inclusivity?

There are not many male characters (just the main character’s husband, but he certainly does not get as much airtime as others) in the audio drama, so that could be a community that isn’t necessarily represented. Also, most of the main characters are middle-aged at the start of the script, so young people could also be an underrepresented community. However, I would consider myself on the younger side, so I do bring that perspective into my writing. That being said, in order to make this project more inclusive, I think there’s a lot of room in my script for “extras”, or characters who maybe have a few lines but don’t necessarily warrant being named or considered an integral part of the project, but I will definitely try to diversity those roles as much as I can.