Five Things you should know about Advert Recording

A BIG thank you to John Williams for helping me out with my first Five Things

Ok so I have been asked to write about five things to do with my job, for those that dont know what I do, let me explain a bit.

I am a sound engineer, one of those guys that sits behind a mixing desk pushing buttons and hopefully making things sound nice! I work in a post production facility in Dublin and have done for 14 years now. Basically my job is not recording bands and what not, but recording and mixing sound for the media industry, radio and television, multimedia, films and so on, but the core of my work is in Adverts and this is what I decided to write my 5 things about, so lets begin.

1. The amount of times I have ad agencies come down for a session to record a 30 sec advert. I get my first look at the script and can instantly tell its going to be too long. So my first thing is this, when writing a script there is a general rule that normally works, the “3 words a second” rule. Obviously typing this and reading back what I write I can say more then 3 words a second but scripts are written to be spoken, try it some time! write 90 words get a stop watch and read it back out loud it will be pretty close to 30! Emphasis, and intonation when speaking can add a lot of time this is why never read it in your head you MUST read it out loud as you want it to be done when you get to studio.

2. This is a tip if you ever feel you could be a voiceover. Smile when you read, trust me this makes the read so much more inviting to the listener, you look stupid in the studio, but you can hear the smile and the warmth that generates is so much more effective then shouting ala “Harvey Norman” where you know who the ad is for but can you honestly say you remember the promotion he may have been shouting about?

3. A tip for clients of an advertising agency out there, dont be afraid to let the agency do their job, a marketing degree does not make you an ad man or woman, listen to what they say!!! at the end of the day this is what they trained to do, this is why you employ them and this is the job you have given them to promote, and generally they are correct. Also since the majority of sound engineers out in post production land here in Ireland have been doing this for years remember to ask us for advice too, we have a wealth of knowledge in directing the voiceovers and also can help in making your advert shine a bit more, we aint just button pushers.

4. Advertising is not all fun and games, it is a tough business although there are a lot of good sessions, and sessions with drink involved!!! be prepared to work late for no overtime, your life will end up belonging to the industry and it is very hard to get away from once it has its grasp. Not wanting to spook anyone out about it, but seriously its a tough industry!

5. Lastly when directing the voiceover or looking for music to go behind an advert be specific! So many times I have heard direction to the voiceovers like “can you make that a bit more oval” or “Can you just…….. give it a bit more bacon” what the hell does that mean, likewise on the music front come to the studio with a clear brief of what you are looking for, “upbeat” means damn all, give the engineer a genre or better still say “I want something upbeat like Duffy” or “ambient like Sigur Ros”. As you should be able to see, that makes searching through thousands of music cds a lot easier.

So there you have it 5 little things you should know when coming into a recording studio to do an advert.
John
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Some pretty cool info John, thanks a lot for it. The “smile when you read” is a great tip!
Keep an eye on John’s blog also. He has some interesting pictures as well as the famous TTQT which keeps us all enterained on twitter.

[Update: A page dedicated to people that help me with the weekly Five Things is here.]