VO Weekly Workflow – Audiobook Considerations

The past few months I’ve been involved in a series of audiobook projects without actually stepping behind the microphone. I’ve had the distinct pleasure of directing several local authors giving voice to their own words, as well as running recording sessions for talented narrators who just didn’t want to deal with the mechanics of production. Add to that the consistent increase of audio clients who have been hiring me to master their audio, simplify their workflow and improve the quality of their personal recording spaces, and it’s meant I’ve had a lot of time to consider refinements in this long form narrative genre.

Audiobook work is complicated in terms of time and investment. Granted, I’ve left video game sessions so exhausted I had to nap in my car for a bit before heading home, but in terms of the hours one must spend, the details that need to be wrangled, and the complexity of balancing performance and technical requirements, audiobooks demand a lot from the voice actor.

Captain of the SS Audiobook

Audiobook recording and production also has an interesting momentum. I imagine it’s a bit like captaining a large ship in treacherous waters. When making a concise course adjustment, it can feel like an endless yawning lag before the bow responds. Often on an audiobook project, decisions made weeks before don’t affect the process until much later. Minor changes of microphone position or vocal energy that didn’t feel significant in the daily recording sessions suddenly stand out in sharp definition when listening to recorded chapters back to back. As an avid audiobook listener, I often can tell precisely the phrase which was inserted as a pickup, or the energy shift of a new session.

Since most audiobook narrators are responsible for the quality of the results, how can we improve the listener experience ? If you are new to audiobook production, or even pondering whether to consider it, most of the voiceover skills you’ve developed will transfer. As one of the more intimate genres, the critical talents of being connected to the story and leading the listener on a journey do pay off. However, that now needs to be maintained on a much larger canvas.

Considerations for recording your audiobook project

Though it can feel overwhelming, if we get a few things handled correctly, it can make for a much more efficient process. Here are a few things to consider while setting off on your audiobook journey and building your narration skills:

• Take time to dial in a consistent recording setup. If the mic position or the recording space itself varies each time you record, it will be difficult to maintain consistent quality and tone. My first recording space lived in the end of a hallway in our house. There was a 10 minute setup task before I could work. Part of that was measuring mic placement/position and hanging treatment in exactly the same way. Minor changes of mic position can cause abrupt changes in recorded tone.
• Record at a consistent time of day. That prevents fluctuations in your baseline voice. I prefer mornings these days (and VO/narration is my “day job”…) but in the beginning I had to record projects when the house was quiet, so that meant evenings. It was quickly apparent that “morning voice” and “evening voice” didn’t particularly match.
• Learn to use punch-in/punch & roll effectively in your workflow. It often means reworking your booth layout which can feel highly inefficient at first. However, using that technique, you will exit the recording session with a largely correct chunk of audio. That reduces editing after the fact.
• Hiring an outside proofer is the best investment you can make. We are all generally blind to our mistakes and it takes a high degree of focus to listen to our voice and track the manuscript while preventing our brains from “filling in” the mistakes. Our helpful brain will easily gloss over missed words and ignore mic bumps and background noises. It takes a lot of energy to maintain that concentration. I’d much rather invest that concentration in the performance itself.
• Matching corrections is a necessary skill to build. With a minimum of fuss, any working narrator needs to be able to track tone, timing, and intention for their storyteller or any of the characters when re-recording pickups or corrections. It gets better with practice. If you can’t match something you did last week, month, or year, then that’s a skill to address.
• Record once and review. Randomly repeating scenes or lines when in the booth simply creates a mountain of audio to sift through later. Use punch-in/punch & roll if you flub, but otherwise focus on the storytelling and trust your voice. Tell the story in one pass. Then – after you get the corrections back from your proofer – listen back to the performance. If your narration goes off the rails or your character sounds like 8 different people depending upon the chapter, you’ll hear that right away and can go fix it.
• Everyone is a better narrator at the end of project than at the beginning. At a certain point, you will begin to inhabit the pacing and voice of the author effectively. To me, this always feels like a palpable relaxation at some point while I’m narrating. This will often cause me to go back to the first chapter or so and revise them. It can make for a much better final project. However…
• ...resist endless revisions. There are many tales of artists reworking their paintings forever and never finishing a canvas. At a certain point, you have to tie a bow on it and send it out into the world. Thank goodness for deadlines as that helps develop the realization that a project is not perfect, but is done.

Then we fold those lessons and skills into our next project.

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