Sounds Like Radio Episode 01
Cesca was certainly going to have her hands full keeping this radio station afloat…
“Can you hear that?” Kevin asked.
“Hear what?” The last thing Cesca needed right now was Kevin finding some reason to halt the day’s recording.
He had a habit of trying that on.
To Kevin, Sounds Like Radio Studios was less a going concern and more an arena for his technical talents.
It was one of those days already, for Cesca: firstly, the office looked like a bomb site because Miriam, the youngest member of the team at nineteen, seemed to have been “tidying” again.
Secondly, the studio accounts were in the red.
“It’s the sound of drilling, I think,” Kevin said.
He made it sound like the end of the world had arrived.
Cesca sighed and pushed back her swivel chair.
Its wheels met a pile of scrunched-up quarter-inch tape on the floor and came to a squeaky halt.
Cesca made a mental note to make sure Miriam was told in no uncertain terms not to throw the pile of tape away: it was used in the recording studio to create the sound effect of leaves crunching underfoot.
And now that the studio had gone digital, it was like gold dust.
Miriam had been given a short lesson in what was important in a radio studio, but Cesca was concerned she hadn’t been listening.
Cesca went to stand with Kevin in the lobby, listening.
She could see Caleb Jenkinson, the actor who was working with them that day, sitting behind glass in the small reading studio, looking grumpy.
“It does sound like drilling,” Cesca said.
“‘Our Boys In Tunis’ is ruined! I’ve got several minutes of this terrible noise all over my play!”
“Calm down, Kev,” Cesca said, adopting the soothing tone she’d got so used to with her colleague.
“You can just delete those bits.”
Kevin Bradshaw over-reacted to everything. A kink in his favourite microphone cable could make him hyperventilate.
“It’ll be temporary, I’m sure,” Cesca said.
“You know how certain noises can penetrate from a long way away via weird structures in buildings.
“I’ll take a look round and see what’s going on.”
“Caleb won’t like it if I delete, Cesca,” Kevin said, giving Caleb a look of anxiety through the window.
“He gave his best performance for the end of episode five. He said so and the producer agreed!”
Sounds Like Radio was situated on the unclear border between urban and suburban Birmingham.
The other occupants of the street rarely gave any trouble, which was why the drilling sound was puzzling.
When Cesca and the team had first moved in with specialist builders to convert the property, several of the neighbours had stood for days in the road, pretending to chat or clip their hedges but clearly hoping to see Judi Dench or Eddie Redmayne going in for a day’s Shakespeare.
But Sounds Like was a small set-up and not starry.
Cesca, Kevin and a small band of regular freelance producers churned out radio plays for independent audio companies, audio books (the studio’s bread and butter) and advertising voiceover work.
The two studios and the editing suite were mostly underground and had all suffered from damp.
There was a cramped drama studio, a smaller readings studio with only a table and a microphone cupboard and a sound FX store that doubled as the office.
Upstairs was a kitchen and what they called the “Green Room” but which was really a lobby, shared with the flat above.
The studio’s owner was a businessman who mostly lived in Marbella. Cesca and her colleagues kept the show on the road.
Sounds Like Radio was permanently on its uppers, but was dedicated to making great radio.
This was the first time Cesca had felt the walls vibrating.
“Caleb is going to lose his mojo,” Kevin said. “Maybe he’s calling his agent. He’s got a horrible agent. Horrible to us.”
“Caleb has been at this game for decades, Kev. He doesn’t need his mojo to read… what is it you’re recording?”
“Narrator links for the World War Two play – I told you. ‘Our Boys In Tunis’.”
“Well, that’s all right, then!” Cesca pulled back her shoulders.
“Add in some bombing effects later in the edit, a bit of rumbling tank maybe, and you’re good to go! All those low frequency sound effects will mask any drilling on the recording.”
Kevin actually looked disappointed. He was keen on obstacles and disappointed when someone took them away.
“I’ll have to change the mike,” he said. “Use something less sensitive.”
Cesca sighed.
“Of course you will.”
Kevin changed microphones constantly, and it usually meant he had to get actors to start again, because voices inevitably sounded different with a different microphone.
Cesca was supposed to be Second Engineer to Kevin’s First Engineer – he was forty-three to her twenty-nine – and to assist him technically.
But in practice she was also the HR manager and accountant who tried to keep the place insured, supplied and clean.