It doesn’t seem like there are currently any guidelines for audio dramas. There was some conversations here without much resolutions:
I wonder if there could be some agreement on join phrases to capture, where applicable, original writer, adapter, performer, and title character. This is just suggestions, but I’d be interested in what people in the space think.
For example
Agatha Christie adapted by Michael Bakewell performed by June Whitfield as Miss Marple, Carolyn Pickles, Julian Glover, Joan Littlewood
I usually just add the most prominent credits from the packaging or storefront. I feel bad cutting out contributors, but otherwise the release artist credit can get totally out of control (for audio dramas).
That existing release credit is how I would enter it as well, based on the Amazon page. The rest I would add to relationships (which people can always tag with!)
Guidelines would be great, as long as we can accept that there will always be grey areas with audio dramas.
p.s. Ooh, a Kiwi character! I’ll have to check out how they do with the NZ accent…
I agree, some of the audio drama releases end up with very long cast credits. I’ve been having a bit of a head scratcher with the Twilight Zone radio dramas.
You should invite in people who have added huge numbers of audio dramas like @avamander and @eloise_freya for their opinions, and look at things like Dr Who as a lot of time was spent on those. Dr Who also overlaps audiobooks, audio dramas and many variations.
In general the names on the cover end up as the artists, writer first then major actors. And the cast list from the booklet are performers added as relationships. The people who adapted it are part of the Release Relationships.
I am not sure who from the cover gets picked as important enough to add as the main artist credit. But it seemed sensible to keep this to a limit.
As an example of a simple “adapted for radio” drama - one off play in episodes. I added this years ago, with all the credits at Release Level.
Note here the Release Artists are as found on the cover. And the credits from the booklet go at Relationship level.
Agreed. adapting the audiobook guidelines something like this.
The release artist should be the writer of the audio drama, followed by a join phrase such as “performed by” or “starring”, followed by the performers. If the release credits the original writer and the adapter, the original writer is credit first followed by an “adapted by” join phrase, followed by the adapter. If there is a join phrase on the release, the join phrase in the release artist credit should match that. Otherwise, use an appropriate join phrase in the language used on the cover of the release.
That is for situations where we are lucky enough to have a release cover to go by. Most of the audio dramas I add are primarily from BBC radio. Grabbing a random one from the website looks like this
Should this be credited to just the writer? Or the writer and a handful of cast members?
There is also the question of track artists. Should we follow classical convention and only credit the writers on the tracks or should be include the entire release artist credit?
I always copy the release artist credit to the tracks, unless common sense dictates otherwise (for instance, an introduction is narrated/written by someone else, I would credit that track to the narrator/writer).
Yup, makes sense to me, seems like the writer is the most prominent artist for these types of releases. It would be great to have some guidelines in place for future reference, although everyone seems to be in agreement over the basics.
p.s. O wow! Those Graphic Audio releases look awesome, yet another thing to add to my ongoing list of things I need to listen to
A word of caution re. Graphic Audio! Though there are some ‘serious’ titles (for instance the Demon Cycle series is pretty good), my partner and I were mainly listening to them because of how bad they can be
For the world’s cheesiest writing and acting I can highly recommend “Ghost Finders” and “Ishmael Jones” titles haha
Cheesy audio dramas are my guilty pleasure, not I definitely have to check them out.
I generally agree, it’s rare to see that credit but it does happen like for example some of the Dirk Maggs releases
I do wish the writer relationship had some additional attributes to indicate whether the writer was the original author or the adapter. Especially with the latter HHGTTG releases where you have characters by Douglas Adams based on a book by Eoin Colfer with a script by Dirk Maggs but no ability to differentiate the writing credits.
Well that’s perfect! I’ll give it a vote and a comment.
I can’t quite decided if it’s better to have an adapter relationship or to have a writer (original) attribute. My thought process is that the adapter is the primary writer for audio dramas (since they have literally written the script) whereas the original author is more passive. Ultimately, I’d like to be able to filter the original authors works so that I can differentiate between primary and secondary works.
