24 HOURS AUDITION WINDOW for quick turn around Narrator Role
Project Overview
Male narrator needed for the final story in our special event celebrating female authors on our weekly sci-fi story podcast, Escape Pod.
This role is unpaid, but it will get you into our narrator pool and we are working on budgeting to pay narrators something in the near future. For this project, your payment is experience, a work credit, and promotion on our website.
Your audio quality does not need to be top quality, but it should be pretty good and it does need to be recorded in quiet surroundings. You also need to be able to edit out your own long silences and re-dos. The remaining requirements are below.
This project will be cast 2/24/15, and I will need your finished file returned to me by noon on 3/2 (sooner if possible). If you cannot handle the short turn-around on this, please do not audition.
STORY LENGTH: about 2,700 words
APPROXIMATE TIME FOR RECORDING AND EDITING: 1-2 hours
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Escape Pod Narrator Guidelines
TECHNICAL SPECS:
We prefer uncompressed mono WAV or AIFF format files, FLAC, or Apple Lossless (m4a).
A sample rate of 44.1 kHz is best.
Your file will be too big to email; we have a web tool you can use to upload it. Just go to https://www.hightail.com/u/EscapeArtists
EDITING:
Please edit the file yourself to remove long pauses and multiple takes. We will do a final screening as part of producing the episode, but it is a great help to us if you can minimize the editing on our side. While we do want you to edit your mistakes, please do not run a noise filter on your file, we'll do that.
We reserve the right not to use recordings we deem unsuitable.
READING TIPS:
Make sure your reading starts with the title and author.
Escape Pod prefers a clean, 'audiobook' style of reading (NO sound effects), but with some energy and personality to it.
Pacing is the most important thing. In particular, don't read too fast -- that's hard on the listener. Wherever there is a break in the text (several empty lines and/or something like ### or * * * *) please leave a silent pause about 3-4 seconds long.
Please avoid extra noise- gesturing, fiddling with pens, etc, - these can thump the mic or make background noise.
Keep your face in front of the mic. Otherwise you will get fades.
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This story is about a guy working alone in space, struggling with his grasp on reality. He's troubled. He knows he was in a catastrophic accident in the past, but he's not entirely sure if he lived through it or if his current existence is a construct created to help his consciousness continue its mission.
It's short and should be approached slow and calm and deliberate with a tinge of madness. Think: Rick in the Walking Dead or maybe Hamlet
"I really need to talk to you, Harry. I mean, really talk to you, the way we used to, you know?" It was the truest thing I could say without actually saying what I needed to say. Do you remember? Do you remember everything we went through, Harry? Are you, you? Am I?
"Okay. I'm listening," he said. And waited. Like standing by for his turn to speak.
"If you knew this was the last time we talked, that we would never ever talk again, what would you say to me?" I asked the face in the monitor.
"What? What are you talking about? Steve. You are not thinking about doing anything stupid, are you?"
Textbook. Textbook answers and half-thought clichés.
The moisture threatened to drown my eyesight. I wiped my eyes before the liquid had a chance to form into the nasty little balls. Now was the time. Please, let me be wrong.
"I know you're dead, Harry." I said it. Dead. Dread. I said it.
Harry's eyes widened a bit, and then the image froze, like last time. A glitch. They hadn't planned for this. There was no response for this.
Had I known already? Maybe deep down I knew, and that's why my tongue slipped. You are not you after all, right, Harry? That leaves only me.
I floated away from the monitor but did not turn it off. Harry's face was still there looking at me, frozen in time.
The tears wouldn't flow.
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