JDM
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Hello all,
I had my third coaching session and was asked to upload more practice pieces to the feedback forum, so here goes. Any comment is appreciated! Among other things, I have been working on trying to make dense scientific and medical stuff sound “friendly,” per my coach’s instructions. I worry that my attempts at friendliness often lead to my speeding up too much and pitching my voice up too high, though. I’d be grateful for your thoughts!
Hi Ryan,
I like your voice! Comments on your pieces:Superman Museum
-I think you can slow down significantly and take longer pauses between beats. Museum-goers are presumably going to be moving at a leisurely pace so that they can look around. There’s no need for you to rush.
-“Welcome to the Metropolois Superman Museum” can sound more excited and grand. You’ve got cool stuff to show people; you can be delighted that they’re there to see it all!
-Words that I think you might consider hitting at least slightly harder: “find NUMEROUS examples” “of SUPERMAN merchandise” “the LONG and GRAND history” “most BELOVED superhero”
-I don’t think “memorabilia” needs to be emphasized.Explainer Video
-I think you might try hitting “paramount” slightly harder.
-I’m losing the word “in” in “professionals *in* sewn products”–it sounds like it could be “N” or “and” and I’m having to infer from context (“sewn” could be slightly clearer, too, because when it’s not pronounced with extreme delicacy it is at risk of sounding like “zone,” since that’s a more common word); just watch your enunciation there.
-The list of “reducing cycle times, increasing productivity, and delivering greater quality at lower costs” could use a little more variation in tone. (You did very well with the first list–“Visibility, Performance and Predictability”!)Ben & Jerry’s: I like your read! You might want to speed up slightly, though, both because it’d pep things up to give the fairy a slightly more manic pace and because I’m assuming that this is meant to be a 60-second spot and you’re at 68.
Nit picks:
I like your choice to change “ing” endings to “in'”–but you ought to make sure that you do it consistently throughout.
I would make the emphasis “really WEIRD in your freezer” rather than “really weird in your FREEZER,” because you’re contrasting the item that you’re going to give them, not where you’re going to place it.
I would take less time to pretend to find your place at “So, where was I?” because I feel like the pause is a bit too long and the elongated “So” kills your momentum. (It all has to be super quick to avoid interrupting your flow.)History Channel: This needs much more gravitas. If your voice can go lower and sound more resonant without straining, pull out all the stops for this one. The repeated question–“Who would you be?”–sounds as though the copywriter meant it to feel almost hypnotic, so you’ve really got to sell it.
Nit picks:
“What would you feel?” needs to sound less cheerful and more dramatic.
Is it “Who would you love?” or “Whom would you love?” (If the copywriter made a mistake, there’s nothing that you can do about it, but be careful not to omit the “m” if they have it written correctly in the copy.)
The final sequence of questions is much too rapid-fire. Find somewhere else to speed up your read a little bit in order to buy yourself a few seconds to slow that down a tad. (I noticed that you spoke more slowly in the first half of the commercial, as though you didn’t realize the time crunch until near the end, so start by looking there.)Lender’s Bagels: No, alas, you cannot do that accent. (I think that you knew that already.) If you really want to try the spot, perhaps you could read it in something akin to your Ben and Jerry’s fairy voice? Maybe you could try to have New York energy even if you don’t have a New York accent.
P.S. You seem to be having some audio quality issues, but I imagine that you’re aware of the problem so I’ll leave it at that.
P.P.S. I tried to post this whole reply a moment ago and it disappeared somehow. Hopefully it won’t show back up as a double post. If it does, my apologies!Hi, all. I had my second coaching session last week, and I’m still working on making my narrations sound conversational–especially when the copy gets a bit grandiloquent. Here are two attempts at the Cosmos practice piece from the script library (the one with “blue nitrogen skies”). For the first one, I tried to be fairly conversational while not completely fighting against the rather high-flown register of the text. For the second one, I tried to push it about 15% further. Please let me know how you think I did and which one you like better. I’d also be grateful for any general critiques. Thanks!
Hi, all. I had my first coaching session, and now I’m just uploading a couple of practice recordings for feedback.
Re Decoding N**i Secrets: I was told that I needed to go slowly enough that one could imagine the narration working over documentary footage but that I also needed to avoid pausing in ways that would make it sound weird given that it is actually audio-only. I was also told to give individualized inflections to the items in the list that starts about 23 seconds in so that that part wouldn’t sound boring. How did I do?
Re Corneal Epithelium: I was told that I ought to sound friendly and personable. Again, how did I do?
Other feedback is also appreciated!
Lastly, I’m still figuring out my home-studio setup, and I’m not very familiar with any DAW yet to boot. I’m realizing that I have sound-quality problems that I don’t know how to solve. Does anyone have a favorite YouTube tutorial for learning Audacity or REAPER, or for trouble-shooting home-studio issues?
Thanks much!
I prefer your second read. (I felt like the first one had an air of “Once upon a time” to it, as if you were going to tell me a fairy tale–which actually suited the opening perfectly, but which I think might have seemed a better overall fit to me if the copy had given you more of an extended narrative arc to work with.)
Four small notes:
1. I think that “the server carrying a Big Mouth Burger to a customer” ought to be said as a single fluid utterance, because the participle phrase “carrying a Big Mouth Burger to a customer” functions as a necessary modifier for “the server,” identifying which server at that restaurant you are talking about (i.e., not a different server, such as the one carrying a tray of nachos). Your pause gave me the potentially confusing initial impression that the restaurant had only one server.
2. You might try seeing what happens if you rein in your emphasis of “delicious” about 10-15%. I found it fun but just a *tad* much.
3. I suppose Chili’s is not known for being authentically Mexican, so perhaps you made the right call. But you might try pronouncing jalapenos without anglicizing the penultimate vowel and see how you feel about it.
4. If you want to, I think that you have more room to have fun with “on a collision course with destiny.” In any case, I would suggest avoiding ending with a fading cadence.
