ABC Radio National has joined with the ABC’s New Media & Digital Services to explore new boundaries with “an exceptional multi-platform radio drama experience”.
The two ABC Divisions have produced a pilot, multi-platform ‘radio play’ experience that pushes the boundaries for radio listeners with Checklist for an Armed Robber ( abc.net.au/checklist).
This premiere multi-platform radio and online drama will be broadcast on Radio National on Sunday 11 and 18 April at 3pm Australia wide.
“An innovative, audio-visual online experience has been developed to enhance the associated, intriguing two-part radio drama that explores the chaos created by two events that happened at the same time in October 2002 on opposite sides of the world.”
Checklist for an Armed Robber is “an extraordinary interactive experience” and the first of its kind produced in Australia, made possible by the collaboration between ABC New Media and Digital Services, the University of Technology Sydney and Radio National.
Developed by award-winning writer Vanessa Bates, and with an all-star cast including Lucy Bell, Jodie Dry, Andrea Moor, Tony Poli and Mark Owen-Taylor, the radio play intertwines the bloody final hours of a Chechen siege of a full theatre in Moscow and a bookshop robbery, held up by a young man with a sawn-off shotgun in Newcastle, Australia.
The Checklist for an Armed Robber multi-platform production uses imaginative graphics, rich specialist audio and video to allow the audience to weave between the events of the bloody final hours of the Chechen siege and the Newcastle robbery, to reveal the locations and the players involved, to further explore the themes of the radio drama and to uncover the emotion below each of the surfaces.
Head of Content for ABC New Media and Digital Services Ian Vaile says: “For the first time, Radio National listeners can go beyond the radio play narrative to explore the emotions of the characters and the motivation behind their actions. This level of interactivity brings a whole new dimension to their listening experience.”
Two different worlds, two different conflicts, two different attempts at negotiation, two different outcomes…one weekend. Explore the interconnection by clicking below.