reaction on war of the worlds

While I was listening to the sound clip about the War of the Worlds, my sister showed me eyes which had a puzzled expression and asked me "ate, ba't ka nakikinig ng news?"

If I was one of the listeners back in 1938, the initial feeling would be fear. The story was delivered like a long news report so I would have been scared and alarmed. News reports narrate current events and their style made it more convincing to the listeners. The narration was effective and convincing that it actually wounded like a real news report and everything happening in that broadcast were live. The description of the "charred" corpses of the people weren't that descriptive. Probably because people from back then were conservative and they must have a wild imagination because if the corpses would be described in detail, they might not handle it, which will cause insomnia. This sound clip must have captured the emotions of the listeners back then because if it didn't, modern-day directors and producers wouldn't have created a movie out of this.

But as a present-day listener, I am quite impressed by the delivery of the story. The descriptions of the monster was vivid enough to be imagined though the background sound didn't quite convince me. I also thought that, since there was a "disclaimer" in the end of the presentation [that the events were just fictional],

The clip also reminded me of the radio soap operas our former helper used to listen to. The only difference is that, even the thoughts of the characters in the radio soap were narrated. In War of the Worlds, only what was happening and the conversations were narrated. In the latter part of the broadcast, the journal entry of the protagonist was narrated. It really depicted the solemness and the lonely emotion. He would describe the feeling of being alone. He says even the squirrel could sense that it's the only and last one of it's kind. Although I wasn't convinced about the protagonist's happiness when a man came in the picture. If I was the "last man on earth" then a few days later I would finally see someone, I would sream, jump for joy and be the most hyper person on earth. Literally.

So all in all, what made the broadcast convincing was the way it was narrated. They set it up like it was a news report so the people felt that they were really attacked by martians.

I actually giggled at the disclaimer at the end saying "we are not really attacked by martians. This presentation is just fictitious" or something similar to that. I don't know why but that sounded funny.