I might not like horror much but I do like the effects they get, a lot. I've posted one of their plays before to give you an example of what can be done with fairly inexpensive recording equipment - I assume they're still using the Zoom H2 on location with the actors standing around it,* the reason I posted about them before. Yuri Rasovsky, in his book I gave a link to yesterday, talks about the quality of live performance that the old radio shows done in front of an audience can get. I do agree that it can be a real plus.
John Ballentine does a lot of things I like, like posting full credits and using an ambitious number of cast members while doing a good job of separating characters, not always easy when you are dependent mostly on the way they sound. And, as I said, I like the live, on location feel of and I love the idea of doing so much with minimal equipment and expense. I think that the creator is the one who sets the rate of their production probably helps in quality. I think theatrical production is probably best done on adequate but not absurdly expensive resources.
Like me, he also was turned on to radio drama through the CBC . I live close enough to Canada so I can get radio from there using an antenna on a good radio. Though I preferred their non-horror, non sci-fi productions to Night Fall.
Unfortunately, the fine radio drama department of CBC radio was closed by the damned Harper government - conservatives are essentially crooks, goons and vandals everywhere and every time - , but the memory lingers on. I doubt the funding of broadcast radio drama is coming back (though I'll bet you could get good stuff on community radio). The future of that as other arts is in the hands of the artists. And those hands usually don't have much cash. And the whore house of Hollywood isn't likely to be interested in art, anyway.
* I wish I could link to an interview which seems to have been taken down, of John Ballentine talking about the production of "Hungry Hollow" in which one of the male actors read the lines of the female lead because he hadn't found the right actress to voice it, putting her voice in months after the male characters had done their roles on location. I didn't hear that interview until after I heard the production. I don't recall having suspected that was how it was done at the time.
Note: I'm posting this early because the wind is howling and I don't know if the electricity here will stay on.
* I wish I could link to an interview which seems to have been taken down, of John Ballentine talking about the production of "Hungry Hollow" in which one of the male actors read the lines of the female lead because he hadn't found the right actress to voice it, putting her voice in months after the male characters had done their roles on location. I didn't hear that interview until after I heard the production. I don't recall having suspected that was how it was done at the time.
Note: I'm posting this early because the wind is howling and I don't know if the electricity here will stay on.
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