Directing voice acting and audio help.

From another thread:

Alcove Audio said:

From a purely technical standpoint the sound needs to be "dry", without any room sound. You want to use a large diaphragm mic, and you want to be very close to get the "proximity effect", the exaggerated low end that is a part of the VO sound. You also want to use a very clean mic and mic-pre. (Anyone remember our discussions on self noise?) The reason is that the "classic" VO sound is also highly compressed, and compression will make all of the noise in your audio chain much, much louder.

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Keep in mind that most actors are self conscious and uncomfortable in a recording studio setting. Do what you can to get her comfy. Make sure that there's plenty of room temperature water (cold water tightens the vocal cords), have some lemon juice handy as a rinse in case she has lots of phlegm (make sure that you water it down!).

Have a copy of the script for the engineer as well as yourself and the talent. The script for the talent should be
in large type.

Make sure that the facility has a solid music stand. It needs to be sturdy enough so she can write notes on the script. Something like this:



NOT like this:



Make sure that you have the timings - be 100% absolutely sure about them. If you've got it wrong you will either have to cut or extend the visuals, or cut or extend the VO to make one or the other fit properly, possibly compromising your project.

Okay, let's talk about working with the talent. Since it's the lead actress I'm going to make the assumption that she is going to be in character. That means you have to let her get into character - not as easy as it sounds. Check the delivery against a couple of production dialog recordings. Once she is back in character just let her go for a while. Ignore your own preconceived ideas about the delivery; it's amazing how often your talent can surprise you. Do a bunch of takes. Keep your comments short and positive (my favorite is "that's good, but you can do better."), be upbeat, use humor when you need to. If after that you still don't hear anything that you like you can begin being specific on the direction you want to go. Use your directorial tools to get the performance you want.

Alcove:

I completely overlooked the large typed script and the water and lemon juice. We're doing the voice over before we shoot the corresponding scenes to avoid forcibly cutting/extending. It's been a concern of mine since choosing to put VO in the script.

Thanks a lot for the help though. Any opinions or good/bad experience with the mic and preamp?

If that's what you've got, that's what you've got. Although I've never used them, it's a decent small budget set-up. The Shure isn't too bad for a low budget LDC, and the Focusrite is a chopped-down two-channel version of the VMP, which I have and like very much. They should not be noisy as long as they are properly connected.