In our first week of Story Lab, we got straight into it and began to explore the idea of what makes a story by looking at two examples of storytelling. Our first example was a more conventional way of storytelling, that being the 1931 film ‘Frankenstein’ and our other example would be described as more unconventional, being the 1938 radio drama broadcast by Orson Welles, The War of the Worlds.

Both of these examples happened to be from the same era, the 1930s, which was quite interesting beginning point to our exploration of storytelling. In this day in age it seems easier and more accessible for anyone to create a story in any medium and publish to the world, thanks to the advancement in technology. Yet in the 1930s, you had to be more creative in your means of storytelling. Which is why The War of the Worlds stood out in its time, causing much controversy.

When listening to the radio drama in class, what stood out the most to me was the production values. You could almost describe it as a theatre production, it was so perfectly well timed as well as the extent they went too, to layer each sound creating atmosphere in each segment. It’s seamless flow made people honestly believe it was a true news broadcast crossing from post to post across America reporting this UFO landing. Pretty amazing stuff, It may be a tad dated but I must say I really did enjoy it!

Will be interesting to see what is next to explore in next week’s lessons.

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