The other day I stumbled across a new blog called simply “Audio Drama Review”, done by an anonymous blogger whose stated intent is to provide the “raw unvarnished truth” in an effort to encourage people producing audio drama to improve their work. The writing is sharp and well thought out overall, and for the most part it’s constructive criticism, which I feel is something our little medium has lacked.
One of the problems with being an audio drama producer is that we generally don’t get a lot of feedback for our work (on average, 1 piece of feedback per 100 listeners) and when we do get feedback it tends to be supportive rather than critical. Now, when I say critical I mean critical in the proper sense of the word- ” an effort to see a thing clearly and truly in order to judge it fairly”. Not just attacking, but breaking down, and making suggestions on how things need to be improved via constructive criticism. I myself had to feel around for a long time, improving based on experience and comparing myself with other’s works, because nobody was there to tell me what I was doing right or wrong when I started. So in my opinion one of the things the AD community has needed for a long time is a Simon Cowell or Kevin O’Leary, a skilled observer who throws pity into the wind and gives their honest opinions, good or bad. This may finally be that person.
My only reservation is that so far in an effort to be “honest” the writer of ADR has so far been a little bit polar, with the reviews tending towards the very good and the very bad, and not so much in between. I know some of this is the writer finding their style and position they’re going to take, but the one for Lightningbolt Theatre of the Mind was far more extreme than it needed to be. I hope that their reviews in the future are no less honest, but a bit more constructive.
Update: I’ve had it pointed out to me by Audio Drama Review’s blogger J. Snowe that while his reviews do run the gambit from very favorable to poor, they aren’t as polar as I first believed. I hadn’t read all of his reviews, and it appears I managed to read most of the more extreme cases and missed the more moderate ones. (My own fault for making judgments without reading his complete body of work.) Fair enough. Well, then I guess I have no reservations at all on recommending people to read his blog! ^_^
