Film Blog: How To Find An Adventure Cyclist’s Inner Storyteller

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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:

  1. Wake the adventure cyclist up at 5:30am
  2. Throw him in a lake and make him cycle fifteen miles
  3. Feed him a large cup of coffee and a biscuit
  4. Coax him into a small, hot, foam-lined sound booth and surreptitiously lock the door
  5. Ensure that the sound-absorbing properties of the room are sufficient that you could hear a pin drop at a hundred yards
  6. Position the adventure cyclist in front of a series of intimidatingly-large microphones and a sound engineer
  7. Ask him to read, in a natural tone, lines from the script you’ve written
  8. Repeat several times
  9. Discover that he cannot read, in a natural tone, lines from the script you’ve written
  10. Ask him to pretend he’s telling a small group of friends and family the story for the first time
  11. Discover that this doesn’t help at all
  12. Feed the adventure-cyclist a glass of water and encourage him to take speech coaching lessons
  13. Ask him questions in a conversational tone, hoping that the resulting answers will contain the lines you need
  14. Realise that no amount of questions will ever result in the lines you need
  15. Balance a small furry toy chicken named Fred on top of the microphone
  16. Ask him to pretend to tell the story to the small furry toy chicken named Fred
  17. Discover that, strangely, this seems to be working rather well
  18. Finally, encourage the adventure cyclist to gesticulate flamboyantly during the recordings, reminding him not to knock over the microphone or the sound engineer
  19. Repeat this process for two days, or until you have all the recordings you need for your film
  20. Buy the adventure cyclist a massive curry in gratitude