Agnus Audio

Project Overview

Advent Stories was a Catholic radio drama series produced for broadcast by Radio Maria England. I joined the project late in the production process and was responsible for editing, cleaning, and designing sound for the existing recordings in preparation for broadcast. At the time of my involvement, the project material lacked technical consistency, and creative direction had not been gathered into a single working document. Director notes and sound cues were instead distributed across an extended email chain.

Challenges

The incoming audio displayed wide variation in recording quality. Levels differed between scenes, background noise was present across many takes, and tonal consistency had not been established. These issues needed careful correction to meet broadcast standards and ensure a clear, cohesive listening experience.

Alongside the technical challenges, the organisational structure of the project required remedial work. Rather than receiving a consolidated brief, I had to analyse several weeks of email correspondence in order to retrieve direction notes and sound cue information. Without assembling this into a usable reference document, accurate editing decisions would not have been possible.

Workflow and Techniques

I began by extracting director commentary and cue instructions from the email chain to build a coherent working brief. This created a stable foundation for all sound editing and design work moving forward.

The post-production workflow involved multiple stages of audio processing. These included noise reduction to remove unwanted background interference, equalisation to ensure tonal consistency across scenes, and compression and level normalisation to meet broadcast loudness standards. Dialogue editing focused on continuity, pacing, and clarity, ensuring that performance transitions felt natural and that storytelling remained intelligible throughout.

Final quality checks ensured that all deliverables met the station’s technical broadcast specifications prior to submission.

Outcomes and Learning

The completed series was delivered to broadcast standard and met the creative objectives of the production team. Joining mid-project required rapid technical adaptation and independent organisational problem solving, both of which strengthened my ability to stabilise complex productions under time pressure. This experience reinforced the importance of having a unified production brief and efficient asset management workflows in audio drama post-production.