VO-BB - 19 YEARS OLD!

Mike Harrison · Last edited by Mike Harrison on Sun Feb 25, 2018 5:38 pm; edited 1 time in total

EDIT: This editing survey request was initially made in 2012. At some point long after receiving a number of responses, I removed the survey document from my server, making it unavailable.

But because someone tried to access it within the last day or so, I thought I'd put it back. Those who responded in 2012 and anyone not interested may ignore this completely.

For those interested in what the survey asked, here it is:

http://mike-harrison.com/vobb/VO-Editing-Survey.doc

A further explanation appears several posts below, along with an apology to those who I'd led to believe I was asking their participation again.

I'm doing everything wrong lately. <sigh>
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Mike
Male Voice Over Talent
I have taken leave of my sensors.

Bruce · Posted: Sun Feb 25, 2018 11:20 am Post subject:

Holy cow Mike. I look at that 64 question form and feel like Robert Mueller's team is out to get me on something.

Instead of going through all that let me just say that I try to do as good a job as possible narrating in the first place so I don't have to do a lot of editing. I try not to breathe loudly between lines and phrases which helps. A total absence of breaths however can make something sterile, "robotic".

I edit based the context of the material too. If it's a relaxed piece I read and edit gently. If it's high powered I'll be tighter.

As editing is something of an art, made better by careful listening to other narrations, lots of practice, and treating your material professionally, breaking it down into mechanical bits and pieces kind of takes the "fun" or "art" out of it for me.

B
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I'm not a Zoo, but over the years I've played one on radio/TV. .

ConnieTerwilliger · Posted: Sun Feb 25, 2018 1:32 pm Post subject:

My eyes crossed and brain shut down when I looked at the list of questions. But a noble effort to get information...

People will disagree, but editing is fun!

Newbies need to learn whatever software they are using to find the best tricks it offers. Learn to do some editing by sight, then use the ears and eyes for detail work.

They need to work toward fluency to avoid lots of mistakes that need editing.

Breaths are important for storytelling, but not gasping breaths, so find a way to minimize breaths during the recording session or learn something like Izotope to reduce the breaths automatically. Don't remove the breath - just reduce the amplitude if needed. (That being said, some commercial copy is designed to have all breaths removed and the lines practically overlapped - not a normal thing, but something to be aware of if venturing into hard sell radio and TV copy.)

A related caution on breaths, if the end product is going to be used in something like Captivate, breaths need to be "practically" silenced (not removed, but reduced in amplitude) due to the way the audio file is compressed when it goes into that program.
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MBVOXX · Posted: Sun Feb 25, 2018 2:15 pm Post subject:

I let the editor do the editing.

Mike Harrison · Posted: Sun Feb 25, 2018 5:27 pm Post subject:

I didn't want to state at the time I originally posted this (in 2012) that I was requesting this information in order to get a consensus to make a case with someone who'd hired me to edit. It was felt I was spending far too much time on things that clearly didn't matter to this person and - apparently - didn't matter to the client, either.

Two examples (which I'd never before encountered and which I've never forgotten): this person had the truly wonderful ability to take in a lot of air and plow through an amazing amount of text... only to stop between two words not separated by a comma or other punctuation, making it impossible to edit cleanly. This would happen repeatedly. Then there was the time there was no retake done after a loud truck drove by outside. Those were the oddest, but I wasn't to do anything with loud breaths, or mouth noises... well, you get the idea from this and the questions in the survey.

I finally had to ask for an example of editing this person was satisfied with. I heard. I don't work with that person anymore.

My apologies: I only posted this again because someone had found the original post, but the survey document had long been removed from the server, so I only wanted to make it available again. Please... no one has to go through this again if you'd already done so earlier.
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Mike
Male Voice Over Talent
I have taken leave of my sensors.