Close your eyes and listen. Listen closely. What do you hear? Do those sounds tell a story, do they take you on a journey, do they let your imagination fill in the detail picture. The art of writing a radio drama requires “putting a blindfold on” and letting the words and sound effects tell the story.
 
Learn the art of writing a radio drama with Hennie Maas and Dr Estelle Zeeman.
 
The workshop will be interactive. Attendees will be required to write a three page script that must be submitted by 2016-07-08. The presenters will read through the scripts and chose a few that will be performed by attendees and recorded on the day. The recordings will be played back to illustrate the techniques that work and those that don’t.
 
The theme for the script is winter. It can be any genre but still with a winter theme, for example, action, thriller, drama or the winter of my discontent. The three pages do not have to be a complete story with a beginning, middle and ending, it is a snippet that could be at any point in the story.
 
The script must be written using the radio drama formatting. The formatting can be found at the following links:
 
www.rsg.co.za/promosie.asp?id=184
litnet.co.za/assets//images/vermaak/RSG-RADIODRAMA-HANDLEIDING-2014.pdf
www.litnet.co.za/rsg-sanlam-radiodramaskryfkompetisie-2014/
downloads.bbc.co.uk/writersroom/scripts/bbcradioscene.pdf
downloads.bbc.co.uk/writersroom/scripts/radious.pdf
www.irdp.co.uk/scripts.htm
 
Basic sound cues should be used, for example, wind blowing, door creaking, branch scratching against a window. Where music is used, identify the specific music that will be used. The sound effects indicated on the script will be used during the recording.

More about the presenters:
 
Dr Estelle Zeeman is a seasoned “microphone” person.  Since a very young age she was exposed to microphone work with the Afrikaans radio.  She acted in numerous roles as radio actress and later became familiar with film work as well having acted in several Afrikaans films. She spent the greater part of her career with the drama department at the University of Pretoria where she also attained her doctorate. Her speciality field was radio – presentation, writing scripts etc.  After her retirement she still does voice work for radio productions.
 
Hennie Maas joined the SABC in 1965 as a production assistant. In this capacity he was required to assist with a wide range of radio recordings and direct broadcasts. He also worked in the sound fx department for a while and in this way was exposed to a variety of drama productions, producers and actors. He later moved over to the news department as reporter. After working for three years with the Dutch World Broadcasting System in Hilversum, Holland, he joined the Afrikaans radio service as an announcer. He remained with the Afrikaans radio service for the bigger part of his career. After his retirement he is still involved with radio programmes which are produced at his home studio.