I ended the previous blog post about providing a client with a customised recording of one of our Expressive Voice Agency voice talents reading relevant copy, by saying
“Now we wait, trusting that an innovative blend of voice and communications technology will result in both a new client and an interesting Vocal Branding project.”
So … what happened?
Well, the client really loved our audio, but he also really wanted to explore using an in-house voice to read the script. Well perhaps it is fair to say that he was quite excited about his voice being used.
Though there would certainly have been some significant advantages to using a professionally trained voice, we agreed to visit the site with a high-quality sound recorder.
When I was told that the client was keen to use their own staff voice, I originally considered bringing the client-voice to our recording studio, but (rightly it turned out) I decided not to, because I suspected that he would feel more stressed and anxious in the closed-in space of the booth, which could add to his stress, negatively impacting the naturalness and warmth of his voice. When I mentioned this to him after our 1.5 hour recording session, he told us that he does actually suffer from claustrophobia.
It took us a while to find a suitable room which wasn’t too noisy or too echoey. We did have some difficulties with noise from air conditioning in the room we settled on, which couldn’t be turned off, but the room was book-lined, which did help minimise acoustic echoes.
Fortunately, the result from this job was reasonably good, the client is pleased, and the quality was adequate and appropriate for a short in-house staff development video of this kind. But… in almost all cases, it just isn’t possible to create the level of polish and articulateness desired, when novice voices are used.
Ironically, it doesn’t always end up being much cheaper either, because it can take perhaps five times longer to record and re-record until suitable ‘takes’ are obtained, and the post-production editing work tends to be far greater also. Because we recorded on-site, rather than in Vocal Branding Australia’s recording booth/studio, we also had to spend time playing round with the audio to try and cut down the background air- conditioning noise from the recording.
I will write a post soon which goes into some depth about the tradeoffs of using a professional voice talent or a less experienced voice (or perhaps your own voice) in recordings. There are actually a lot of factors which need to be considered. The right decision also differs markedly depending on the format and nature of the spoken information.
As a side note, the rates charged by professional voice talents are really a recognition of the ease and efficiency they deliver when recording a script. A professional voice – when well directed – can respond immediately to requests for different reading styles, intonation etc, and can provide multiple interpretations of the script, allowing the perfect expression of the information and ideas to be captured.
If the client provides us permission, we will post some “before” and “after” recordings from this job, and also put up the mock-up script our professional voice talent read over the phone, to better demonstrate some of the points raised in this post.
Please feel free to post a comment if you have any questions about this post, or about selecting the right voice for a job.
Yours vocally
Tim Noonan
