葉世雄-Ip-Sir_600

Ip Sai-hung (also known as Sir Ip) is currently the head of Digital Audio Broadcasting at RTHK (Radio Television Hong Kong). Over the thirty years of his career, he has witnessed the decline of radio dramas in Hong Kong. With his Master degree background (in literature) from Hong Kong University, Ip is a specialist in the research of Cantonese songs. His publications have included The Development of RTHK and Cantonese Songs and Opera in Hong Kong from the 1950s to the 1990s, The Heritage of Cantonese Opera in Hong Kong, and Cantonese Opera and the Modern Stage. In 1997, Ip, in collaboration with the Education Bureau, produced a CD-ROM about Cantonese opera — the first educational CD-ROM produced by the Education Bureau as well as the first Cantonese opera CD-ROM.

Talk about Radio Dramas

“In the minds of the public, the one thing people know about radio dramas are that they are purely entertainment. In principle, radio dramas are like all other forms of media and could indeed be purely entertaining; yet, they could equally express the serious subjects and explore the meaning of life.”

– Ip Sai-hung

Ip Sai-hung (to be abbreviated as Ip): Nowadays those who know how to produce radio dramas have all retired, since they are getting on in their years. After the radio drama unit was disbanded around 2001 or 2002, the form of the radio drama has already been absorbed by other kinds of programs and became skits or short dramas of a dozen minute length or so, inserted within other variety shows or programs. In contrast, a proper radio drama production — due to the high cost and to the lack of talent — no one is really willing to start. A radio drama needs a basic budget of about 7000-9000 dollars per hour, while a DJ with a one- or two-hour program takes home a monthly salary of 20000 dollars, so the gap is really too large.

After the radio drama unit was disbanded, the younger members went over to TVB and film companies to do sound acting. I just met up with Lau Chiu-man, who used to be part of the radio drama unit; now he works at TVB providing the voice of male main characters. There is also Lo Kar-ling. They do voice acting because their training for radio dramas include many techniques related to articulation. Voice acting makes use of these techniques — though not to the full. Voice acting is really different from radio dramas: voice acting is about “taking in the cartoon character”; the voice has to match the “cartoon character”. If the voice is too distinctive, it wouldn’t resemble the character. However, the voices in radio dramas have to have “color”. “Color” is what is distinctive about someone’s character (this of course can be fabricated) — say, once your voice is heard, we could know if it’s evil, loyal, sweet, or childish….. Once you have such distinctiveness in your voice, then you wouldn’t do any good acting any other characters.

Sound as a Box

Ip: As I just said, the voice is very distinctive. When people play certain characters, they can be very distinctive — which is what’s special about the actors in radio dramas. The voice of DJs can’t be too distinct. A DJ has a neutral sound, and this “neutrality” has two meanings: first, it is a neutral sound out of all sounds; second, it’s a neutral sound between the male and female voice. Deng Ai-lin’s voice is really “neutral”; you could say she is a man or a women, and either men or women like her. When we listen to radio dramas, Brother Chung (Chung Wai-ming) has a loyal voice. If we get him to play a bad guy, it wouldn’t do at all. Uncle Gamgong of Eighteen Floor Block C is definitely a voice of the little guy, so it would be a waste to use him as the main character.

Sound seems like a whole bunch of boxes. We have signified this to be an evil voice and that to be a loyal voice. How did this come to be? Perhaps we heard it from the belly of our mothers, having heard bad guys speak. Yet this is passed down, since every country or people is different. Sometimes when we hear someone from a minority group speak, we might feel this guy has nothing good about him, but in fact he is a hero. In our minds, certain sounds are defined — and this is what is special about radio dramas.

A Bygone Companion On Air

Ip: Radio broadcasts up to the 1990s were a way for the masses to pass the time. If people liked a program, they paid attention; if not, they just left the radio on. So expectations weren’t very high. As long as there were no swear words and bad models people were satisfied. Just because something is popular doesn’t mean people have high expectations; people with real expectations were actually in the minority. Once something starts going downhill, it’s not that the thing in question is going bad; in my understanding, when something else starts taking its place, then the original gets replaced, and people will look for a new amusement. Radio broadcasts make you feel like you have someone around you, but still you need to feel interested enough to turn up the radio; if there’s no sound, you’d wonder whether the station or the radio was down. People don’t focus on listening to what you say until they feel what you’re saying is relevant, at which point they pay attention. In this case, even if people demand quality, that is only focused on one or two individual programs rather than on all programs; at this point, radio dramas became something that did not need much quality.

In our understanding, radio dramas aren’t something that the masses need to listen to, because they could watch TV series and so forth. So when TVB moved from Enjoy Yourself Tonight towards TV series, radio dramas already faced a challenge. We have already discovered and found another type of programming, the DJ programs. They’re cheap! Critical! And they replaced radio programs as the main programs. Being unlike TV programs, DJ programs are something else and don’t need to compete with them; they just need to win another market — or even absorb the market for radio drama. The shift from radio dramas to Cantonese Pop in fact took in audiences that used to be fans of radio dramas. An audience of those 3-5% who absolutely needed radio dramas did not have an effect on the overall listening habits.

When I first joined the profession, radio dramas reached the height of its popularity. Every week between 1.5 to 2.5 million people tuned in; on a single day, there were some 500,000 listeners. At the time, there were lots of factories, and all the factories listened to romantic dramas about people meeting and being forced to part ways. Once factories headed north [to mainland China], what to do then? They have all moved away now, so there’s no market. Eighteen Floor Block C had the advantage that it was really close to the little guy, with a relatively stable audience, so to this day it can still

Mass Broadcasting in the Future

Ip: Actually the death of the radio drama had many causes, its high cost being one of them. I believe that radio dramas will always have its fans, but they will not make up the mainstream and appear to be at odds with the whole model of mass broadcasting in the future. Because the future of broadcasting will be focused on certain audiences and produced at very little cost. We’ll have many frequencies; Albert Cheng Jing-han has 7, but in fact there could be 30 or 40 frequencies. Each frequency will have very few listeners and so won’t attract a large investment. Radio dramas certainly cannot be produced regularly under such a model. This is why individual story telling could reappear again. At least it’s cheap! If one guy is a DJ, and another does storytelling, isn’t this a race to the bottom? I find it very interesting. One person’s expenses are low. People like Lee Ngor, Cheng Gwan-min, Deng Ji-chen, Lei Ngo, Siu Seung — these are all one person narrating in different voices.

I want to emphasize one thing: sometimes it’s not a question of something being good or not, but of creating an equilibrium between the costs, the audience, and market trends. This is why I truly believe when we really have thirty or forty channels, storytelling could undergo a revival. You often say to me how it’s a pity if radio dramas were to disappear; actually, it’s more of a pity if[1] individual story telling disappeared. In terms of the manipulation of the language, having a single person interpreting several different voices is a real skill. Yet fashion changed, and radio dramas took over individual narration; radio dramas have different voices and are more plural. So if radio dramas weren’t so expensive in terms of costs and investment — hiring a whole bunch of people, recording studios, and so on — they could in fact survive a little longer, up to now. But it is true that labor costs are a major issue. I think places like Vietnam, Indonesia, Cambodia must still have radio dramas, because of the low labor costs; in mainland China, they still exist (labor costs in second- and third-tier cities are still low). Such actors didn’t make it as singers, TV actors, or film actors, and so became radio drama actors instead. So when I see their programming schedule, there are both radio dramas and many individual story tellers.

Sounds That are Perhaps Preserved, Transformed, Absorbed

Ip: Under its extreme economic development, Hong Kong has lost a considerable portion of its traditional performing arts or culture. I really don’t know how we should preserve them, or whether we should preserve them at all. My feeling is that even if you want to find someone able, you won’t be able to, so it’s probably best to safeguard and preserve the older recordings. In radio drama, what is important are the recordings and the scripts. Unfortunately we haven’t kept the scripts; we only have fragments. We should safeguard them — and let posterity decide whether they are useful or not. There is no need to be dejected. I think radio dramas haven’t died; only the traditional model has died.
Just today I heard a little radio drama produced by Michael Leung and Sara Lee. They wrote a radio drama called “As Loyal as the Clouds in the Sky”, based on “As Loyal as the Clouds in the Sky: A Seven-Day Romance”. In fact “Eighteen Floor Block C” is most unlike radio dramas; they use the form of the radio drama to put forth their opinions instead of displaying a certain dramaticality. But such transformations will allow radio dramas to survive; the mode of survival will not be a continual reproduction but instead a process of absorption or transformation. This has happened before in Cantonese performing arts. The Cantonese Naamyam, wooden fish and Lung Chou (dragon boat song) we’ve heard about are all part of this Cantonese performing tradition, but you won’t see anyone today carrying dragon boats and singing for a living. However, we do still see “dragon boat” episodes in Cantonese songs; in absorbing it, Cantonese opera has preserved a certain form of it, no? At least the melodic structure has been preserved, so unconsciously, such older forms have been preserved.


[1]Personal narration relies on the skills of the individual to perform different roles as well as to create the ambient / surrounding sounds. The narrator creates and constructs the story and the plot, serializes and narrates it — all in one person, so this could be considered the highest skill in broadcast. Back in the day, actors known for their narration included Lee Ngor, Deng Ji-chen, Chung Wai-ming, classic representatives of the genre, each with his or her own style.

http://www.rthk.org.hk/classicschannel/liaozhai.htm (15 Jan 2013)

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葉世雄(尊稱:葉Sir),現任職香港電台數碼台台長。入行三十年的他見証香港廣播劇之由盛轉衰。出身自香港大學文學碩士,葉Sir是粵曲研究的專家;曾發表的論文,包括:《五十年代至九十年代香港電台與本港粵曲、粵劇的發展》、《香港粵劇的承傳》、《粵劇和現代劇場》。一九九七年葉Sir與教育署合力製作粵劇光碟,是教育署第一張光碟教材和首張粵劇光碟。

話說廣播劇

「電台廣播在大眾裡,他們心目中只記住一件事,廣播劇是屬於娛樂性的東西。原則上,廣播劇和其他媒體一樣,可以說是娛樂性的,但一樣做到用來表現嚴肅、探討人生的功能。」

– 葉世雄

葉世雄(下簡稱葉Sir):現在懂得製作廣播劇的人都已退休了,原因是他們的年紀都老了。約2001至2002間廣播劇組解散後,廣播劇這種形式,這種手法已經被不同的節目形式吸收,轉化成十多分鐘的輕鬆小品或短劇,加插在其他綜合節目裡面。反而一個正正式式的廣播劇製作,因為成本高、缺乏人才,所以大家都不太願意開。一個廣播劇最起碼的預算約7000至9000元一小時。DJ做一、兩個小時節目月薪是20000元,相差很遠。

廣播劇組解散了後,年青的便去了TVB、電影公司配音。我最近見到劉超文,劉超文以前是廣播劇組,現在去了TVB配男主角的聲音,還有羅嘉玲。做配音是因為廣播劇訓練中包含有關發聲的技巧,在配音用得著,但也不是完全用得著。配音跟做廣播劇是很不同的,配音要「食公仔」,聲音是要跟「公仔」配合。如果聲音太突出,無論怎樣說都不會相似。廣播劇的聲音是要有「色彩」的。「色彩」是某種人性格的特色,這當然是虛擬的,例如你的聲音一聽便知道是奸的、忠的、甜美的,或是很孩子氣的…一旦有了這種聲音特點,你演其他角色便會有不好的影響。

聲音好像一個箱

葉Sir:正如剛才所說,聲音是很有特色的。當他們一演出某類角色時,便會很突出,這是廣播劇藝員的特點。DJ的聲音不可以太突出,否則人家會認為你是「斬柴佬」、「賣魚佬」。DJ是中性的聲音,中性有兩個含義;第一是在所有聲音中較為中性,第二是男女之間可能是一個中性的聲音。鄧藹霖的聲音就很中性,你說她是男又可以,女又可以,男女都會喜歡她。我們聽廣播劇,鍾大哥(鍾偉明)的聲音便是忠的,要他演奸角,我們總會不滿意。《十八樓C座》的金剛叔,一定是小市民的聲音,給他當男主角便浪費了他。聲音就好像一個個箱,我們標誌了這是奸的聲音,這是忠的聲音。這是如何得來的呢﹖可能是在母親的肚子裡便不斷聽到,看壞人說話,諸如此類。但這是流傳下來的,每個國家、民族都是不同的。我們有時候聽一個少數民族說話,覺得那個人像奸的,其實是他們的英雄。在我們的心目中,對某種聲音其實都有定位,這是廣播劇的特點。

往日之空中良伴

葉Sir:電台廣播,在九十年代或以前是大眾消磨時間的工具,喜歡聽的節目便留神,不喜歡聽的節目仍然是開著收音機。所以要求不太高,只要不講髒話、不教別人做壞事情他們已經滿足。流行的東西不代表人們對他的要求高,真正有要求的人其實佔很少數。當一件事開始走下坡,最主要並非那件事走下坡;在我的見解,是有另一樣東西代替後,便會放棄原有的,而去追尋另一樣新的東西,新的樂趣。電台廣播是你覺得身邊有伴,還要覺得有趣才會開大聲收音機;無聲就會問電台是不是壞了,收音機是不是壞了,而不會刻意去聽你說什麼,直到覺得說的東西適合,才會留心聽。在這個情況下,就算需要有質素,都只是針對個別一個或兩個節目,不是對所有節目都有要求,廣播劇便淪為不需要很有質素的東西。在我們的認知中,廣播劇亦不是普羅大眾必須聽的東西,因為可以看電視、劇集。所以當TVB由歡樂今宵走向以劇集為主導,廣播劇已經開始面對挑戰,我們已經發現、發掘另一種節目叫DJ節目。便宜!針對性強!代替了廣播劇作為皇牌節目。與電視劇不同,DJ是另一種東西,完全毋需要競爭,只是爭取另一個市場,甚至將廣播劇的市場也吸納了。由廣播劇到粵語流行歌曲,其實所吸納的觀眾部分都是廣播劇的觀眾。3-5%必須聽廣播劇的聽眾是做不到大型的收聽率改變。我入行時正值廣播劇高峰期,星期一至五約150、250萬人次,一天就有50萬幾人次。因為當時工廠多,所有工廠都是聽悲歡離合、愛情故事。工廠北移,怎麼辦呢﹖全部搬遷了,就沒有了市場。《十八樓C座》的優勢是很小市民,市場比較穩固,所以到現在都能維持較高的收聽率。

未來的窄播

葉Sir:其實廣播劇之死主要原因我認為,成本貴是其中一項,廣播劇我相信永遠有「擁躉」的,但形成不了一個主流,而且與未來的廣播的整個模式又好像背道而馳。因為將來的「窄播」—針對某些聽眾群,用很便宜的價錢去做廣播;我們會有很多頻道,大班(鄭經翰)都有7條,其實可以有30、40條頻道。每條頻道擁有的聽眾群少了,便不會有大型的投資,廣播劇如果用此模式生存就一定不能經常生產。所以單人講述可能會重新出現。便宜嘛!你一個DJ播歌,我一個人說故事,是不是大家鬥便宜﹖我覺得這是很有趣的,一個人成本輕,李我、鄭君綿、鄧寄塵、瀟湘…一人扮演幾把聲音。我想強調一樣東西,有時並不是說那東西好不好,而是在成本,聽眾群,再加上市場的趨勢,如何做一個平衡。所以我深信,如果真的有30、40條頻道時,單人講述[1]真的可能會復興。你經常跟我說廣播劇沒有了便會很可惜,其實單人講述沒有了更可惜,語言上的運用,一個人演繹幾把聲音,是一種很高的技巧。但潮流過了,廣播劇代替單人講述,廣播劇有不同聲音,更多元化。所以廣播劇如果不是錢貴、投資的資本多,請一組人,又要錄音室等,其實生存可能會長久一點,甚至到現在仍然可以生存,但實在是解決不了人工貴。我想在越南、印尼、柬埔寨等地應該還有廣播劇的,因為人工便宜,內地仍然有廣播劇,相對來說,二三線城市的人工便宜。那些人當不了歌星、電視藝員、電影明星,便當廣播劇明星。所以我看他們的節目表,會有廣播劇,亦有很多單人講述。

或被保存、轉化、吸納的聲音

葉Sir:香港在極度經濟發展下,相當多的傳統表演藝術或傳統文化是沒有了。應如何保存下來,真的不知道。是否需要保存也不知道。我認為是找人演也演不到的,最好將以前的錄音好好珍藏。廣播劇最重要是錄音、寫作,很可惜我們沒有保存劇本,只有部分仍在。保存下來讓後人決定將來有沒有可用的地方。不用灰心,我覺得廣播劇還未死,是傳統模式死了。我今日才聽到梁繼璋、李麗蕊他們造了一個小型廣播劇。用《義薄雲天七日情》寫一個叫《義薄雲天》的廣播劇。其實最不廣播劇的是《十八樓C座》,他是利用廣播劇形式來發表意見,不是一種劇情來的。但這種轉化令廣播劇得以繼續存在,存在的形式不一定是繼續生產;而是被吸納或轉化,這種現象在廣東曲藝裡是出現過的。我們說的南音、木魚、龍舟,這都是廣東曲藝。現在不會有人拿著龍舟周圍唱歌行乞,但我們在粵曲的片段還可以見到龍舟,粵曲將其吸納時必需將其形式保存,是不是﹖起碼寫的曲式要保存,這無形地也將龍舟、木魚、南音的曲式保存下來。


[1] 單人講述,純靠個人口才去扮演不同人物、演譯環境聲音,又由主講人自己創作、構思故事橋段,集編劇、敘述、演員於一身,可算是播音的最高技巧。當年以單人講述而聞明的播音名聲,各有風格,李我、鄧寄塵、鍾偉明是其中表表者。資料來源: http://www.rthk.org.hk/classicschannel/liaozhai.htm (2013年1月15日)