Fun with voiceover
Tuesday, May 12th, 2009It’s a quiet morning here at FLF, aside from Jamie’s (our freelance animator’s) iTunes playing over the office sound system. Jerry’s in New York City today, Mike the Intern isn’t in on Tuesdays, and it’s a perfect opportunity to catch up on some work.
As I type, I’m actually listening in on a voiceover session. Jerry’s on the call too, directing the talent from New York City. Our client is listening in from Malibu, our sound engineer Matt Smith is recording the session in Las Vegas, and the talent, Kevin Lockhart, is reading his heart out from Colorado. He’s actually shouting different versions of the word “Unstoppable!” into the phone right now… so fun to listen to. Here’s the last commercial he voiced for us:
We have a pretty streamlined system for all of this… Here’s how we select and record voiceovers for our commercial productions at FLF Films:
- First, I send out the script to a few different sources and solicit auditions.
- Once we have auditions, we pick our favorites. If we can’t choose between our favorites, we’ll send the various auditions to the client and let them choose. In other cases, we’ll just put our favorite voice in the rough cut and seek our client’s approval for it.
- Once we’re all agreed on a voice, I schedule a recording session. We always have to have the talent, the ad agency or client, Jerry, myself, and our sound engineer on the phone for it. I usually just conference everyone through the magic of my iPhone.
- I send out the final script to everyone involved, then we all get on the phone and record the session. We usually do a few full reads, and then get into line-by-line readings. Jerry directs the talent. Sound engineer Matt times the talent and keeps notes on which takes everyone likes. The agency or client chimes in as much or as little as they like.
And that’s pretty much it… that’s how the announcer voice ends up in commercials!