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Hey. Good read overall; I’m just going to touch on things that (I think) could use improvement.
Voice acting-wise: It needs a little more energy/believability. The inflections were mostly-all good and there, but they felt underpowered if that makes sense. If I were trying to give the read, I would imagine that I were a warm teacher giving confident(~authoritative) yet nurturing caring advice (“Nature’s Way is the obvious choice”. It also felt like the word “Sambucas” could use a bit of tweaking, especially since it’s part of the brand name. Try several variations and practices until it sounds second nature. Overall not bad for a first read though.
The technical aspect: This part overshadowed the Acting part because it was the first and last part I noticed initially. I’m not sure what your personal context is so take as needed. If you’re just practicing/honing your skills then absolutely do that first before dumping excessive amounts of money into proper equipment/environment treatment. That being said
– There’s a steady hum/hiss throughout the clip that will absolutely rend any audio engineer’s ear.
– You had a number of both plosives and rustlings in the clip. There’s also minor things in the background. Some things you might not be able to control because of your budget, but using a popfilter (or pencil trick) and some other actor techniques, will cut down on the quality being effected.
– There was a subtle echo where you can just tell the room isn’t sound treated. It wasn’t super-noticable, but its something you want to be aware of when you do sound treatment in the future because not even the best DAW or microphone will help you remove it AFTER you record, short of a pact with the devil.
– If you’re just starting out, don’t worry about this til late game but using a custom EQ will help compliment your voice.
but, like I said, if you’re just starting out or just messing around for practice, don’t hyper-focus on the technical/equipment aspect; training your voice always comes first. So those were my thoughts anyway. I don’t mean to be harsh, and I only say as much as I did because I know there’s a deep well of potential.
Cheers on your journey! Keep at it.
(ps – traditionally auditions are submitted in .mp3 files and final project in .wav files – yours is in .m4a > minor detail to look out for in the future, but also probably why your attachment didn’t appear with a handy-dandy website embeded player for this forum.)
