A-Z of Acting. A is for...

Audiobooks and accents!


So, last week I learned a new skill, and added a credit to my CV in the process. Yes, I am now a voice artist!
I spent most of my week locked up in a small room in Peterborough recording an audiobook for the RNIB.

I auditioned for them last summer, and just before Christmas, I was told that they had a book for me. The book landed on my mat a couple of days later and I began to read it in preparation.

The book came out last year, but was a period novel set in the 1800’s in Dorset. After studying acting in Bournemouth, I was delighted to be able to revisit the Dorset accent again. Some of the characters in the book were upper class so I had the opportunity to flex my vocal muscles and put on my posh voice too!

I finished my initial read of the book about a week before I started the recording, and pushed it to the back of my mind. I had read every word but not really taken it in properly, I wanted to be swept along with the story again as I was recording it, and felt that this was the best way to go about it.

I arrived at the studio at about 8.45 on the Monday morning. I was quite early so I spent a good 25 minutes warming up my voice and face, much to the bewilderment of many an RNIB employee! I signed in and made my way up to the recording studio and began!

I had been quite nervous about doing the job. I was concerned that I would get bored of listening to my own voice and that people would turn it off due to my rubbish reading skills. I was put at ease by the lovely man who was recording me, and off I went.

Time went by so quickly in my little room. I was booked in for the job for 5 days, but by the end of day one, I had already recorded over 140 pages of the 471! I was a machine!

In not taking in the full extent of the book and not thinking it over before recording, I hit my first problem about half way through my first day. There were far more characters in the book than I remembered there being! I also realised that I should have written down notes on what voices I was going to use for each character, as some disappeared from the story for quite a while and then came back unexpectedly, sneaking up on me, and I had forgotten the voice that I had previously used. This meant that quite a few of the characters might have ended up sounding the same! But hopefully no-one will pick up on it too much when they get around to listening to it(!)

I got chatting to a man during my lunch break on my first day who told me about the machines that make the audiobooks, and a little shiver of fear went down my spine when he told me about the volume of CD’s that they produce. My voice could be going out in thousands! Gulp!

Overall, the book took me 3 days and about 90 minutes to record, and it came in at a recording time of 12 hours and 21 minutes. Not bad at all!

I had a really enjoyable time doing it too. Who else in their jobs can get paid for sitting down and reading a book out loud for a few days?!?

Hopefully it will lead to some more audio work, but even if it doesn’t, I had a good week. I might even try to do some of my own! Watch this space...

Nxxx

Twitter: @nataliecastka Facebook: Natalie Castka Actor