Voice Over Radio Spot
This is a radio spot which was recorded and edited by me for my Year 1 Semester 1 "Introduction to Sound Design" module's graded exam assignment.
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Firstly, we were given a brief of the assignment, which is to record a 30 second voice over spot to advertise a show called "Smart Pets", followed by designing a sound scape and sound effects to help enhance the voice over and bring the radio spot to life.
The first step was to record my voice over, which had to be carried out in a quiet room in my house, and my parent's room was a good choice as their bed had a thick comforter blanket which was good for absorbing the sound when I record under it, therefore allowing me to record a dry voice over without any natural reverb from the surroundings. This was also my solution to not having any acoustic treatment in the house.
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Since I did not have a microphone, I used my phone instead and I used a sock to act as a pop filter to help reduce plosives.
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The script:
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Our pets delight us…
Surprise us…
And show their smarts in many different ways…
They are funny.
Crafty.
Athletic.
Heroic, even.
And unconditionally loving.
This summer, we search for smart pets across Singapore.
Tune in to Smart Pets as we track their owner’s down.
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As for the vocal direction, it was stated in the brief to be quirky, animated and confident, hence I tried my best to sound energetic and warm when reading the script.
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The app I used to record my voiceover is called "Shureplus Motiv" and it is available on Google Play and The App Store. It allows me to choose the type of mic that I would like to use, and in this case, I used the Shure MV88+ Microphone. In addition, I also set it to the settings that I deemed best fit the recording purpose.
This is what the raw voice over sounds like:
The second step was to import the voice over into a DAW, in this case I was using Adobe Audition, and start planning and sourcing for sound effects to make up my sound scape and sound effects in the radio spot.
The brief stated that the suggested sound effects have a "Whimsical, Peculiar, Wacky, Staccato" vibe to it, hence the entire vibe I wanted to convey through the sound effects would be lighthearted in nature with each sound effect supporting what I said.
When it came to the sound scape in the background, I wanted it to take us through a journey of me walking a dog through a park and narrating the radio spot, followed by entering a pet shop at the end to help emphasize that the radio spot is about smart pets and to also hype the listeners up and encourage them to check the programme out. Hence, I proceeded to breakdown the types of sound effects found in each sound scape and sourced out the relevant sound effects.
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The place where I sourced my sound effects was from the Sony Pictures sound effects library provided to us by our lecturers.
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This is what my session looks like:
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Edit Window:
Mix Window:
To make editing easier, I created busses to help group the sound effects together as well as to help apply a specific digital signal processing effect to them, such as reverb and this helps to increase the efficiency of my workflow.
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At last, once I was happy with the arrangement of the sound effects and the relevant edits and editions of digital signal processing that I've done to enhance them and my voiceover, I have my final product: