Professional Practice: Recording Voice Over

Professional Practice: Recording Voice Over

Since there was a lot of information to convey in this commission I needed an effective delivery method Blumer says ”Film is not a visual medium, it is a story telling medium”. (Blumer, 2010). I knew early on that the best way to convey my intended story in this project would be through the use of voice over. 

Bernard wrote that “narration or voice over if done well can be one of the best methods to move your film along” (Bernard, 2010, p. 205) and from the other commissions I have looked at almost all of them tended to blend voice over and PTC's. This is someting I intended to do in my project. However, I also made sure to record the entirety of my script in case the PTC's didn't work. 

I had recorded an initial take for the rough cut viewing of my project, which although worked, wasn't as effective as it could have been. Additionally, when I met with the guildhall to show them my rough cut they asked me to change some of the language I used which gave unintentional negative connotations. 

Another thing that was raised in that meeting was our target audience. They were able to give a clearer idea of the age of our primary audience (primary school children) Jason Birmingham advises that"When you come to actually recording your voice, try to think of the mic as the ear of your listener"(Birmingham, 2011). As such i wanted to make sure that my voice over was as easy to follow and understand as possible.

So after a script re-write I headed in to the sound booth to re-record the voice over. 

This time I was using a higher quality mic and recording directly in to audition. This provided several advantages, the main ones being that I could instantly play/listen back to the recording to assess it. As well as being able to instantly chop out bits that didn't work. 

On one hand, the recording wasn't as hard as I anticipated since I was reading my own words. 

But on the other hand, the pressure of being in the booth did mean I stumbled or tended to miss out some bits. So in that respect, it wasn't as easy as i had expected. 

However the more I read through and rehearsed the script the more I was able to recite it without needing to pause and look at the paper. 

I recorded multiple good takes so that I could choose which one fitted the best with the edit, and overall this process went smoothly and effectively. 

Bibliography
Bernard, S. C., (2010). Documentary Story Telling. 3rd ed. s.l.:s.n.

Blumer, J., (2010). Documentary Story Telling. 2nd ed. s.l.:s.n.

Birmingham, J., 2011. Producing Professional Voiceovers At Home, Part 1. [Online]
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