Get A Better Broadcast, Podcast and Voice-Over Voice

0201 - Be Prepared But Flexible   Be prepared but flexible Flexible? Yes, many times the director and the clients at a voice-over production will disagree amongst themselves on how a script should be read, what words are the most important, or the tone of the overall read. As the voice actor your job is to bring your experience but to read in the way that the client asks you to. And if you ha...

0200 - Taking Apart A Voice Over Script Pt 3   ·        Big Name Kitchen Electricals o  Another way to signify importance of a words is to give initial capitalisations. That’s what’s happened here, but it’s unclear why. ·        AT STEWART’S!!! o  Another punctuation combination: capitals and n...

0199 - Taking Apart A Voice Over Script Pt 2   That script is not helpful! ·         Save o  This is bold and italicised, but it’s unclear why. Certainly there needs to be an emphasis on this key word, but how that emphasis differs from the not-bolded, but capitalised and underlined word that follows is unclear. ·     ...

0198 – Taking Apart A Voice Over Script Pt 1 The marks ‘built in’ to the script by the writer should give you an idea of the intention behind the words, how they ‘heard the words’ in their head as it was being written. But sometimes the various bolds, underlinings, italicisations and CAPITALISATIONS and exclamation marks can be more confusing and contradictory rather than give reassuring direction...

0197 – How To Be A Better Reader How to be a better reader To be a better reader… become a better reader! ·        Read more content – magazines, games cartridges, cereal packets… ·        Read out loud ·        Read umpteen different styles, even ones that you have no immediate...

0196 – She Fell From Her House When You Make A Mistake On Air This may simply be a result of poor sight reading, not having enough time to pre-read a script, not marking it up correctly, reading too fast, being distracted, being stressed, not understanding a story well enough to be able to presume where the grammar was taking the reader … or because of a scriptwriter who has not checked their work...

0195 – Over-Rehearsing Over-rehearsing However, (!) recording a script over and over until it’s perfect (whatever that is!) doesn’t necessarily help. It’s possible that you read it so much that you forget what the overall message is, or you see too many conflicting messages, causing you to get locked in a certain rhythm or tone pattern. With a voiceover you may have recorded so many versions that...

0194 - Rehearsing Your Script Rehearsals If you have every watched “ Strictly Come Dancing ” or “ Dancing with the Stars ” on the tv, I would imagine that you have never presumed that neither the pros not the amateurs simply rock up to the studio, take to the floor and perform faultlessly. In a similar way to the dancers having to get their legs and arms and torsos (and everything!) to learn the r...

0193 – Marking Up For… An Awkward Word Marking up for… an awkward word To flag troublesome terms (ones that might cause pronunciation problems, we looked at these before), consider drawing a box or circle around it, with a how-to-say-it guide just above.   It’s back! It’s big! It’ll save you money! {Stewart’s Big Holiday Weekend Sale!} Big money deals from big household names! Krupps! Philips...

0192 – Marking Up For… A Faster Read Marking up for… a faster read (more on the ‘speed of a read’ later) Some texts are presented quickly to add excitement and others more slowly to give perhaps a more luxurious feel. But sometimes scripts aren’t read at a constant speed at all, but have different flow-rates within them. This adds interest to the message and also allows the reader to ‘skip over’ s...

0191 – Marking Up For… Tone Marking up for… tone (more on tone later) It is usually straightforward to record a commercial voice over in the correct tone, because you will have had a chance to read it in advance, rehearse aloud, and focus on that single say, 30 seconds, before the recording starts. Trickier is newsreading when you have story-after-story, all of varying content, and even though you...

0190 – Marking Up For… Questions Marking up for… questions Do you know how question marks are used? Of course, you do! But I wrote that sentence to illustrate how, when you read it aloud or in your mind, your tone of voice rose when you spotted that ‘ ? ’ at the end. In English intonation, sentences usually rise in the middle, and end on a downward note. Sometimes called ‘uppers and downers’, they...

0189 – Marking Up For… Inflection Marking up for … inflection (more on the inflection, later) Where emphasis is the basic ‘thumping’ of a word, inflection is the gentler (and often more effective) tonal-lift. This is sometimes within a word. The former may be marked with an underlining, the latter perhaps with an arrow above, indicating the direction of the inflection. {Stewart’s Big Holiday Weeke...

188 – Marking Up For… Emphasis  Marking up for … emphasis (more on the emphasis later) Usually, such terms are either written in CAPITALS, or underlined . A double underlining, or a CAPITALISATION that is also underlined, will usually mean something needs to be stressed (I dislike that word too – see later for why!) even more.   The product name – mark this in some way. The ‘rules of int...

2021.07.06-0187 – Phrase Markings: A Practical So you could spit a sentence into phrases, or cluster phrases with an elongated circle or bunch the words together by-hyphenating-them. Marking up your script in this way shows you at a glance that everything within the oblong has to be said as a complete thought. It’s less often used than some other mark-ups, and difficult to show in print but you ca...

2021.07.05-0186 – Marking Up For…Phrases Marking up for … a phrase Your script will have punctuation for sure, but of course, that’s an ‘artificial articulatory construct’ – in other words, we don’t speak using punctuation. We adlib stories, conversationally sharing information as inspiration strikes us. And as very often a sentence carries more than a single message you need to be aware of where...

2021.07.04-0185 – Dashes and Ellipses in… Scripts But in scripts for news or commercials, they (or dashes --) are likely to be used as a more eye-catching alternative to a comma. They help break up a sentence more obviously so the reader can see a series of phrases, and where a slight pause may need to be taken, either for a breath or for effect. Take the sentence: The leader of the council h...

2021.07.03-0184 – The Full Stop/Period and Comma The full stop / period This indicates: ·        Where a breath may be taken ·        A half-beat’s pause in the read-back ·        A change of idea (and likely then, a change of tone) ·       &nbs...

2021.07.02-0183 – Now *You* Mark-Up For Breaths Transatlantic flights from the UK to the United States could take longer because of climate change. Researchers at the University of Reading say that global warming is likely to speed up the jet stream slowing down planes heading for America. Transatlantic flights from the UK to the United States could take longer because of climate change. // Resear...

2021.07.01-0182 – A ‘Marking Up’ Practical Here’s our raw script. New data has revealed car production in the UK fell to its lowest September level for a quarter of a century. The Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders said just under 115-thousand cars rolled off production lines last month. The industry says uncertainty caused by the pandemic and a potential no-deal Brexit is undermining conf...

2021.06.30-0181 – Marking Up For… Phrases and Breaths Marking up for … phrases and breaths In copy written by someone else, full stops (or ‘periods’), commas and other punctuation (such as dashes and ellipses…) will, obviously, already have been included. They show the author’s intended or suggested way of reading, but don’t necessarily follow it to the letter (!). After all, the script is unlikel...

2021.06.29-0180 – ‘Marking Up A Script’ Tips Making annotations on your page will help you communicate your message. Normal punctuation will only get you so far, commas giving a basic idea of phrases within a sentence, and full stops showing you the end of a complete thought. To help you interpret copy to be read aloud, particularly for broadcast and particularly to make it sound ‘conversational’...

2021.06.28-0179 – If *You* Don’t Understand It… It may be at this stage, or certainly after you have read the item a couple more times that those questions are still unanswered. It is rare to go on air and reading something that you do not understand yourself. You are the conduit of the content from say, a reporter or a copywriter to a listener. You have to understand the story or the message to b...

2021.06.27-0178 – Basic Script Analysis You may think it’s easy to ‘read out loud’ from a script. But converting copy to authentic audio is a skill. After all it may not be written the way that you yourself would have written it, perhaps with different phrases, sentence length or rhythm. This is where we start to explore such issues. Now read it: ·        Wh...

2021.06.26-0177 – Marking Up A Script This is where we start to turn a bland page of text into something more resembling a musical score, giving us directions of how to say each word and phrase, in a polished and conversational style. If the script has been written by someone else, a one-second glance will tell you: ·        Whether it’s ‘easy on the eye’, b...