We looked at children's book, and how actors use their voices to create audio recordings. As a children's book is usually very visually stimulating and interesting, we have to use our voices to make it just as exciting to listen to.
For the first book, we chose an excerpt from Mr Bear's New Baby, as it had different voices for us to experiment with. There was a narrator, Mrs Bear, Mr Bear, Small Bear, and a couple of one liners from other character. My characters were Mrs Bear, and Mrs Buzz. In the story, Mrs Bear wants Small Bear to go to bed, so she needs an authoritative voice. Mrs Buzz is a bee, so I wanted to give her a high pitched voice, as that is what I imagine bees to sound like. As this piece was longer than the ones we had done before, we did a couple of read through to make sure we understood what we were saying, and got familiar with the lines. When recording, we used a phone, and placed it on a box while we all stood around it. In a professional setting, we all might have our own mics, to make sure our voices are picked up properly. We had to stop recording a few times, and start again. This was due to things like people messed up their lines etc. In the industry, if this happened, the actors wouldn't have to start again. They would restart the sentence, then it would be edited in later. As we currently don't have the knowledge, time, or equipment to do that, we had to do it in one take. This took a good few times. Because I didn't have many lines, I turned the pages while we were recording. It was difficult, because you had to be quick to make sure everyone could read their lines on the next page without having a long pause, but you had to be really careful so the mic didn't pick up the sounds of the pages turning. In the industry, actors might have a script in front of them instead of the book. Without all the pictures, it means there are more lines on a page, meaning less turning. This is the link for the recording: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QyMmwHYj1FU
I think it went well, but if we were doing a recording of the whole book, we would need some editing software. I think we used our voices well for a children's audience, and make them clear and easy to understand, but without being condescending.
The second book we looked at was Norman the Slug with a Silly Shell. This book was more fun to do because it gave us opportunities to add in sound effects, and use foley. Foley is where you use objects to make the sound of something else. Jess and I did the voices of the snails, so we spoke together to make it seem there were more of them. We read through the book a couple of times to get familiar with it, and then recorded it. Some of the sounds we used were a light bulb noise for an idea, a bouncy noise and loud alarm noises for a shell. Also we used things for foley, such as keys in a pringles tube for Norman falling down the shells, coat arms for the wings of a bird, and a wet paper towel dropping on the floor as Norman falling. This one was more fun to do, because although I personally didn't have a lot of character input, doing the foley was interesting. I had the same problems with turning the pages, so this has shown me for my final pieces I will need to find a way to have my script so I can read it, but also not be worrying about turning the pages. This is the link for the recording: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dpX5lwLhis4&t
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