Mini Assignment #2: Audio Script

The Assignment
To write a five-minute audio feature for a general interest audience aged 20 - 45 based on one of the interviews linked below. Although this assignment asks you only to integrate commentary and interview material, it still practices valuable skills for enlivening multimedia, particularly informational and educational multimedia, with the spoken word.

On almost all occasions when you need to use the spoken word, you will be integrating those words with other, complementary elements (other sound, images, texts, animations, etc.). This assignment should help you to balance spoken word that carries a narrative line (via a narrator or commentator) with ancillary material that enriches the spoken work.

Objectives of the assignment:

• to apply the basic principles of news writing in a new medium
• to practice writing for the voice
• to understand the function of commentary and interview raw material within an audio feature
• to learn to write into and out of interview material to blend commentary and raw material into a compelling story
• to use precise, relevant detail to convey your story to your chosen audience
• to create closure for your reader at the end of the story

What you need to do

1) Choose the subject of your feature after reading/listening to the interviews linked below.

2) Decide on the theme you are going to follow in the feature (you don't have time to include everything your subject discussed in such a short piece so you must concentrate on one angle). Then identify your hook, the one idea that will capture your audience's attention and drag it into your report. Note your theme and your hook before you begin your script.

3) Using the traditional radio script format we discussed in class, write your script as if your feature were going to be broadcast on either NPR's All Things Considered or on a commercial radio station that carries shorter news broadcasts and bulletins.

4) Write the script for your own voice, as if you were going to be the reporter/commentator recording it for transmission.

5) Include with your assignment two paragraphs in which you identify which competencies you applied to the execution of this assignment. Why were those competencies important? To what extent did this assignment improve your fluency in a particular competency?

Potential subjects