Tuesday VO Tech Tip: Workflow Maintains Creativity

Workflow refinement often seems to be rattling around my brain. It’s always worth considering whether a new approach might reduce a bottleneck in the studio process. Just eliminating a bit of needless mousing or menu pulling can cut down on excess steps during your recording and editing. For anyone delivering creative work under a deadline, time continues to be a resource that remains in short supply.

It can be difficult to discard what we know. Part of the challenge may be that we tend to use “familiar” and “efficient” interchangeably. The more we repeat something, the less we have to think about it. This familiarity makes any arcane set of steps seem as though they are working well. Stepping back now and again can help us to recognize when a process might contain needless repetition or complexity.

In the past weeks, I’ve been setting up a new studio from scratch. At almost every step, I’ve had the luxury of asking “why that way?” In some cases, pondering that question reinforced a solid and necessary foundational step. In others, it caused a lightbulb moment which provided an opportunity for improvement. I’ve realized that some simple control features in new hardware have enabled elegant solutions.

One of the many unique things about voiceover and narration is that each of us tend to solve workspace challenges in unique ways. Working with VO’s and storytellers, I’ve seen all manner of setups and solutions. Some narrators I work with love to tell stories while seated, while others feel constrained by doing anything other than standing behind a microphone. Rather than locking everything into a specific set of programmed choices that we must adapt to, this flexibility allows an “a la carte” approach. We integrate only those bits which are useful to our creative process.

Exploring a variety of others’ studios has helped me see that while my personal recording space has idiosyncrasies which I prefer, they may not be for everyone. That’s one of the ideas I try to make clear in classes and studio tuneup sessions. I know that my way is not the only way and try to find the best combination of comfortable tools and minimal steps to get quality audio workflow in each individual’s setup.

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