Excellent Editing Pt. 1
Odds are, unless you happen to have oodles of cash lying about, you will not be working in a real studio for your first little while as a new voice over person. You won’t have a director, a producer, and an editor/mixer at your beckon call. That means you get to become quite familiar with the wonderful world of editing audio! How fun!
As a freelance professional VO artist, I would say that I spend about 35% of my time in front of the mic and the rest of the time in front of my computer. Of that 65% of the time I spend staring blankly at my computer screen, about 45% of that time is editing audio. It’s not the most fun thing in the world, but it can separate and elevate you above the rest of the VO people out there.
So if you’re spending a lot of time editing like me, it ought to sound good when you’re finished. Here’s some tips to help your editing.
1) Make everything the same volume, a.k.a. NORMALIZE!! No one wants to hear the end of a sentence fading off into nothingness. This is not 80’s rock music here, folks, it’s voice over. Make sure the beginning of your phrases are the same volume as the end of your phrases. This is especially important on re-dos: when you say something again (possibly starting in the middle of the sentence).
2) Watch your levels. On the audio scale called decibels, the audio should hover around -6 or so, no more, no less. This will vary in some situations (car ads, meditation tapes, you know what I mean), but as a rule of thumb, after you normalize (from step one) make sure the audio lands at -6.
3) Try not to splice sentences together. Clients, believe it or not, can hear this. It may not be as evident to you, but it’s going to stick out like a sore thumb to whoever is listening. I have a bad habit of doing this. I am breaking it by starting the sentence COMPLETELY OVER AGAIN if I mess something up. This actually will make for a little more time in front of the mic and less time editing.
4) Get rid of mouth noise! No matter how much water you drink sometimes, there is still going to be a little bit of popping and slurping of the mouth. Make sure you find those itsy bitsy little pops and get them out of there, once again, they may not be super obvious to you, but do you ever hear mouth noise on commercials?
5) Keep the mic in the same spot!! This is not so much an editing tip as it is saving you time when you go to edit. In a multi-part project (like in the two audio books I am recording as I speak) I have my microphone stand held to the floor with some stage weights (and the same with my stool and music stand). This way, I can be sure to have the same consistent sound throughout the entirety of both books.
All of these tips will make you sound better and will keep your clients coming back for more of your stuff. Repeat work is awesome. Try to do what you can to make your client so happy, they won’t consider anyone else. Put your client first, and they will put you at the top of their list.
More in part two coming soon!!
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