When you’re trying to record voice-overs for the film you’re making about an adventure cyclist who hates being put on the spot at the best of times, there are a few things you might try in order to get the results you need:
- Wake the adventure cyclist up at 5:30am
- Throw him in a lake and make him cycle fifteen miles
- Feed him a large cup of coffee and a biscuit
- Coax him into a small, hot, foam-lined sound booth and surreptitiously lock the door
- Ensure that the sound-absorbing properties of the room are sufficient that you could hear a pin drop at a hundred yards
- Position the adventure cyclist in front of a series of intimidatingly-large microphones and a sound engineer
- Ask him to read, in a natural tone, lines from the script you’ve written
- Repeat several times
- Discover that he cannot read, in a natural tone, lines from the script you’ve written
- Ask him to pretend he’s telling a small group of friends and family the story for the first time
- Discover that this doesn’t help at all
- Feed the adventure-cyclist a glass of water and encourage him to take speech coaching lessons
- Ask him questions in a conversational tone, hoping that the resulting answers will contain the lines you need
- Realise that no amount of questions will ever result in the lines you need
- Balance a small furry toy chicken named Fred on top of the microphone
- Ask him to pretend to tell the story to the small furry toy chicken named Fred
- Discover that, strangely, this seems to be working rather well
- Finally, encourage the adventure cyclist to gesticulate flamboyantly during the recordings, reminding him not to knock over the microphone or the sound engineer
- Repeat this process for two days, or until you have all the recordings you need for your film
- Buy the adventure cyclist a massive curry in gratitude
Something to add?