Recently in a Chili’s restaurant, the server, carrying a big mouth burger to a customer collided with another server carrying a tray of nachos. Each customer got more than they expected. What could have been a disaster turned out delicious. Tangy tortilla strips, jalepenos, and pesto on a burger grilled to perfection. Chili’s new NACHO BIG MOUTH BURGER. Nachos and burger! On a collision course with destiny.
Hi Bil-Bo, really good work and production! I love the sound effects too. Excellent energy and pacing, and with emphasis on good key words such as “grilled…” Very professional!
Nice delivery and friendly style to this commercial Bill. It’s also smooth and well connected not a trace of any what they call disjointed type delivery. Now if you haven’t already go get some d**n jobs!
Hi all,
Please provide feedback on technique, not studio issues. Thanks for your help!
SCRIPT:
The year was 1972. Richard Milhous Nixon was president. Seemingly honest and trustworthy, few citizens really knew what was going on in the background of his administration. Here’s historian David Reynolds.
Hi Kevin, really good! This is a good genre for you. I think you could speed it up a bit, especially during ” few citizens really knew what was going on in the background of his administration”, that phrase seemed to slow down unnecessarily. Good job on this one!
Hi, Kevin! This is a great narration piece for you. Your voice comes with its own gravitas, so when the words you’re saying have a lot of weight to them you don’t need to add any drama or weight or anything. You can make it a nice conversational read, as if you were were saying to a young adult, “Listen, this is a crazy story! It was like this:” A lead-in like that draws the listener in. If you’d like, here in the forum, keep it in the recording so we can hear how you’re workin’ it.
You also have nice diction, and that means you don’t have to over-enunciate. One thing you can do to get into the conversationally of a script is to summarize that first little bit in your own words like: “So, back in ’72 President Nixon seemed like a great guy but nobody knew he actually was hiding some pretty bad stuff.” How do you think that might affect your read?
Testing out recording in my completed vocal booth for the first time! Still waiting on the actual mic/setup I will be using to be delivered, but any comments focused on performance or sound quality would be much appreciated. Thanks!
University of Akron: Points of Pride
This… is our next stop in life.
Home to 25,000 fearless dreamers.
And though we hail from near and far,
and study hundreds of different majors,
we all experience the power of ambition.
Ambition that’s launched 50 start-ups,
spawned 350 patents,
and pushed countless programs
to be the nation’s best.
Here… at the University of Akron,
We don’t rest at the classroom door.
Our experiences grow with internships and
coops that launch careers… not just jobs.
Experience the power of many.
Hi CYeschenko! Good, very clear read. The pacing was great and it was very easy to understand as a nice informative piece. I too agree with Dena in that “internships” is typically accented on the first syllable (not the second syllable). Good job! This is a good genre for you.
Hi there! I thought this was a nice read and a good fit for your voice. I thought you could pace it a little bit more carefully. You seemed to keep a very quick tempo throughout. In natural speech, we tend to speed up on the not important words and give more attention to the important words. For instance: ” 50 start-ups,
spawned 350 patents, and pushed countless programs to be the nation’s best.” You can give more weight to the important words. Varying your pace and slowing down on the important words will help it sound more conventional and allow us as the listener to know what is important. And at the same time don’t get too in your head about the pacing (two opposing things LOL) But really nice work!
Hellooooooooo CYeschenko! Love the relaxed quality of your voice! You’ve got some great stuff in here which means to really serve you I’m gonna be nit-picky. :). The goal is not to correct anything in this read but to show you how to think about your future reads. (see Disclaimer below LOL)
Overall I’d say just have a lot more pride in being a part of U of Akron.
This… is our next stop in life.
You can give a bit more weight to “this” as if you’re saying: “Right HERE on this spot”
“Our” almost sounds like “are”
You hit “next” and “stop” pretty equally, I would suggest hitting “next”… Think about the actions of those words, or rather the action of one and the inaction of the other. We want to build the anticipation. Aaaaaaaand there’s a “t” in “next” I couldn’t hear.
Home to 25,000 fearless dreamers.
“Fearless” is a delicious word! Hitting the 25,000 is fab but I think “fearless” needs some love, too.
And though we hail from near and far,
and study hundreds of different majors,
we all experience the power of ambition.
“We’re all really different”… that’s what those first two lines are saying. I’d love for you to say those first two lines with the same casualness… and in about the same amount of time! So a bit faster, but with the intent of communicating “We’re all really different”. And I think doing that will also change your delivery of the third line, maybe bringing out “all” a bit more.
And I would lean on “power” a bit more than “ambition” because you get to address ambition directly in the next line.
Ambition that’s launched 50 start-ups,
spawned 350 patents,
and pushed countless programs
to be the nation’s best.
I like this! You hit the numbers nicely… think of “countless” as a number, too. And you can ignore all those commas and say it all as one thought.
Here… at the University of Akron,
Look, look! Here’s the “Here” I was talking about! And you nailed it!!!! Notice how they’ve used the same style of punctuation, too. So the arc of these is “This…” (ooh, what’s this?) “Here… (oh! I get it!).
This is the first time we hear the client name so you can give it a bit more weight… maybe landing down on “Akron” a bit.
Our experiences grow with internships and
coops that launch careers… not just jobs.
“experiences” is a delish word, too… you can totally bring that word out.
IN-tern-ships is the preferred pronunciation, I think, over in-TERN-ships.
In the last three words I’d love to hear a bit of “but you’re gonna get great jobs, too!” Yeah… it’s subtle, but you can totally do that.
Experience the power of many.
“Experience”… you just said how they grow.
“Power”… in our ambition.
“Many”… 25,000 + 50 + 350 + countless!
This is a great culminating sentence… you get to wrap it ALL up right here. I’d love to hear more pride and gravitas.
I hope most of that made sense.
FULL DISCLOSURE: I’m working super hard to develop not only my critical ear but also my ability to express – in, hopefully a helpful way – larger concepts of script analysis. So – yikes – this is super long! It’s another way I’m working my craft. THANK YOU for posting this and allowing me to really explore it. There’s so much good in the quality of your voice, and I’m only giving you things to think about that you can apply moving forward. Good, good work!
Dena
This reply was modified 3 years, 10 months ago by DenaDahilig. Reason: typo
Thanks, Mitch. Yeah, lists are tricky. I imagined the video might be showing the item one at a time, so the pauses made sense. Other lists are hard not to sound like a Powerpoint slide. :). And good catch on the 5/8’s as well. Thanks, again.