Setting, in all storytelling, is both a place and a time, for example:

THE CAVE - 1,000,000 B.C.

or

LINDSAY'S FROZEN LIVING ROOM - NEXT WEEK

or

NICOLO'S TUMMY - TWO HOURS AFTER EATING A GALLON OF ICE CREAM

Setting the scene in any of the above will require triggering the imagination of the listener.

Always remember that YOU, as an audio writer are a hypnotist! Whatever you suggest, the audience is compelled to construct in their minds as they seek to understand what they are hearing. The audio dramatist can use voices or sound effects or music, or a combination of any of these elements, to cast a spell over the listener.

Writing for audio theatre requires conveying settings and actions with clarity. Since each listener conjures their own separate reality, they can all be different--and some of those "different" realities may bring confusion as your story develops.

Where Are We????

Before I suggest some techniques to help with your scenic shifts, I'd like to recommend that throughout your script you employ SCENE/SETTING/TIME headings. This is what film scripters here in Hollywood call "Master Scene Lines" or more commonly, "Slug lines."

SCENE FOUR: INT. HESTER'S CAR - 4 A.M.

SCENE EIGHT: EXT. CALYPSO'S ISLE - SEVEN YEARS LATER

While this information is never heard-as spoken to the listener, it makes things VERY clear for the director, composer, engineers, actors and sound effects artists. If everybody creating the program knows WHERE/WHEN they are, they can better work to reinforce that scenic change in their performances. In a way, the difficulty of conveying this scene change to the cast and crew echoes what your task is in redressing the soundstage of the listener's imagination. Often, I find myself on shows where the crew has to intuit the setting and time from the dialogue or sound effects cues because the writer wasn't clear in telling us her intentions. We mount the show and sometimes we've guessed wrong or the scene is murky to both cast and listener.

So, the first rule is: BE CLEAR.

Scenic changes require some signal to the audience so they can keep things straight. If you have too many transitions or they are too tricky to be conveyed clearly, you will lose the audience. And unlike a stage or cinema audience, audio theatre patrons can leave any time they wish-they'll just turn off your show. Some things (too many brief scene changes, quick, one-line flash-backs/flash-forwards, complicated action sequences) are not easily conveyed through sound alone. If you confuse, you lose. Be careful.

Now, onto the nuts and bolts. There are a number of ways to suggest time transitions. Use voices. Use music. Use sound effects.

Spoken Spells

Have the narrator say, "Ah, but thirty years earlier, Giacomo was still a struggling jester in the court of Ludovico Bersanetti..." Or if you are not fond of much of a narrator's presence, be drier with, "It is 1542, at the court of Ludovico Bersanetti" and put some music, perhaps a horn fanfare, under this to suggest the scene change.

Have a character change their focus to, in effect, look off into the distant mists of time and explain, "But it was different when *I* was a boy.. Back then, we didn't have the luxury of reality shows, we lived our OWN realities..." as you begin to fade him down and fade up the scene he is recalling, with walla or ambience or whatever to demark it as NOT where we've been sitting just now.

You can even have a reverb effect on this recollection speech get "wetter" (more pronounced) on his final words. "... lived our OWN realities..."

My radio adaptation of Charles Dickens' "A Christmas Carol" kept the realities straight by using reverb for the voices of Scrooge and the Ghosts, but kept all the other characters "dry." And when Scrooge is transitioning from the spirit world of the graveyard to his own bedroom, I had him begin his pleading with his voice bathed in reverb, while we gradually "dry up" the reverb until he was fully back in the present with no reverb on his voice. There are all sorts of sonic magic tricks you can use in audio theatre.

Cross-Fades

You can use a cross-fading overlap of the two scenes to suggest how memory comes forth to obliterate the present. You can also JUST use the cross-fade between two scenes without any voice leading us there, but this may merely suggest some OTHER scene and not your Proustian time-shifting intention.

Or you can cross-fade overlapping lines spoken by the same character at different ages. A grandmotherly voice begins, "I was known as 'Prairie Rose,' a nickname given to me back in 1845 by my beloved pioneer Pappy when I..." Now, have a young girl speak in tandem with the older voice, but have the youngster fading in on the part of the line "... Prairie Rose,' a nick-name given to me back in 1845 by my beloved pioneer Pappy when I..." Have that young voice fade up while the old one fades out.

I use this technique for letter reading in my dramas. One character begins reading a letter from someone and we cross fade to the letter writer's own voice--with or without a touch of reverb, as needed for the transition. Their reading in tandem for a few words signals to the listener that this is a transition. And this cross-reading can also shift the scene from the rowdy gold fields of California to a very proper Boston sitting room, depending upon what dialogue comes before or after the letter is read.

SIDEBAR:

I should warn you about using the same character on either side of a transition. This goes for ANY scene-with or without your time shifting intention. As a consequence of our audience being "blind," when a character speaks the last line of an outgoing scene and then also the first line of a in-coming scene, the audience often doesn't realize we are now in a different place/time. They think the old scene is back after some little pause. This is an example of un-clear writing for audio. At some point the audience WILL get it that this is a new scene, but their having to "fix things" in their head will pull them out of the drama for a moment--and that is not desirable. You need to be smooth in all scene changes.

So, in transitions between scenes, you need to "cleanse the palate" for the audience. This can be done with a sufficiently long musical "curtain" or a change of tone as the character switches from being "in scene" (an active participant in the drama) of the previous setting to being in "narration mode" in the new setting. I often have some other character speak the first line of the new scene, just to break the audience's previous understanding of who they were focusing on.

Meanwhile back at the time transition thread...

Gliss to Bliss

To signal "here we go with a time shift," you can use a musical figure, such as a harp glissando or sustained arpeggio on an organ or keyboard. This may seem corny, but it works. The audience KNOWS this is a "dissolve into another time." Don't discount the hoary devices of old-time-radio, such as narrators or glisses. Just endeavor to use them wisely.

You may even split the musical figure into what my SFX mentor Ray Erlenborn calls a "go-vinta" and a "go-voutta" motif, (A go-INTO for the traveling into the past and a go-OUTTA for the return to the present.) When scoring radio dramas, I'll often use an ascending glissando for the "go-vinta" and a descending gliss for the "go-voutta." Audiences intuitively respond to these devices. It's partly a learned behavior and partly a psychoacoustic trick.

Contrasting period music can also accomplish a time transition. You can play say, techno-music to convey "Modern, Hip Now" and a harpsichord or hurdy-gurdy to suggest the distant past--and use these motifs for your go-vintas and go-vouttas.

Sound Effects

Similarly, you can use contrasting sound effects. For example, to depict NOW, you hear a writer typing on his computer keyboard as he intones, "Dear Blog....". To depict the past--like 20 years ago--use a typewriter's clacking keys. To go further back, use pen and paper or chiseling on stone tablets. And to go all the way back to pre-literate times... the sound of Oog scratching his head and muttering, "If only there were writing."

The Sound of Nothing

There are many ways to convey scene transitions in audio theatre. The BBC's long running and masterful, "The Archers" series uses... silence! NO narrator re-setting the scene. NO curtain music. They use a brief silence between scenes, sometimes fading up some ambience to suggest a setting of a shop or street, but mostly relying on the dialogue and the actors' tone of voice to "paint" the new set with the least obtrusive means. Their lack of a transition device IS their device. Give a listen: http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/archers/