Hi SharShar!Great submission and awesome job at enunciating every word clearly! I felt that your read is a good interpretation on the script; like in a audiobook style. One thing I might add is to maybe notate breaths in the script to help pacing and to keep up with the enunciation and projection.

Best, Brian

Really nice read! I could tell you were working on practicing your articulation and enunciation.

If you speak another language fluently or have a solid natural accent be sure to include that on your website when you have one as this definitely gives you an advantage in voice acting. :)

Try to cut down the extra silence/room tone at the beginning of your read to about 0.5 seconds. Casting directors may have hundreds of auditions to sift through, and they will generally know within the first few seconds whether they want to continue listening or move on to the next one. Having 3-4 seconds of dead air at the beginning may increase the likelihood that the casting director might skip your audition and move on to the next one. 

You sound a little far from the microphone. Generally a good distance from your microphone for recording as a rule of thumb is the space between your pinky and thumb when they are extended apart from each other. If you are using a microphone and/or audio interface that allows you to adjust the gain, try adjusting your gain so that waveform peaks for normal talking, land between -12 and -6 dB and peaks for yelling/loud projection land between -9 dB and -3 dB. 

0:33 When you do happen to misread or have a little stumble (happens to everyone and it’s okay!), bear in mind that it’s highly encouraged to start again at the beginning of the sentence or paragraph or a point that would make it easy to remove and replace the mistake during editing. If you just keep going and don’t return to a solid point that makes it easy to edit out the mistake, you may need to come back later and re-record as a pick-up, and it becomes challenging to make it sound the same as the original recording. So, a good rule of thumb is to record so that it’s easy to edit later. When the mistakes are then edited out, it will sound like you read everything perfectly. 

Keep working with the SOVT exercises to help increase your stamina and breath control.

0:53 Mispronounced “propitiated”. Don’t be afraid to look up how to pronounce words online if you aren’t familiar with them. Some great reference sources include Cambridge Dictionary (https://dictionary.cambridge.org/us/dictionary/), youglish.com, forvo.com and You Tube Videos among other places (there’s a lot of options out there). You can simply type in “How to pronounce [word]” in Google search and it should give you several references. (Try to avoid the ones that sound like a robot read them.)

Don’t forget to include the tongue twisters in your homework going forward. :)

Regarding projection specifically, I feel like you have room to go even further. Practice using your diaphragm to really push the sound out and project like you were in a gymnasium full of people with no microphone - you would need to be able to be heard at the back corner.

I encourage you to continue working on enunciation and articulation and continue strengthening this skill. Really hit the letters of P, T, and D in this exercise no matter where they fall within the word. For example, the word “little” be sure to hit those “t’s” harder when you are practicing articulation exercises. Try over-enunciating and over-articulating like Burger showed in class with the cork trick. Being able to adjust the level of articulation in your read from very precise to normal everyday talking is an excellent tool to have in your voice acting toolbox. Keep practicing this skill as it will be an invaluable asset in voice acting as you continue along your journey.

If you repeat the “P”, “T” and “D” letters this exercise focused on, note the placement of your tongue and mouth as you make them and use this knowledge as you practice articulation in your read. The tongue twisters will also help so keep having fun playing around with those as well. Vocal warmups help loosen the tongue and vocal cords and will make it easier to pronounce the words. Other exercises, such as the  “B”, “G” and “K” sounds in the Bug Blood Bonanza script is another good one for practicing articulation and enunciation. 

Make sure you don’t lose the ends of words when practicing articulation and enunciation. In natural speaking, the ends tend to fall off or not be hit hard, but exercising and strengthening the quality to fully pronounce words is an excellent tool to have in your tool box. Really focus on hitting all of the letters in the words and clearly pronouncing all of them. When practicing articulation and enunciation it’s good to over-do it.

Eventually, when you are ready to take the next step on your voice acting journey, you will want to look into treating your recording space with acoustic foam (we recommend 4” thick) and/or acoustic blankets so that the reverb/reflections and background noise are reduced in your recording. For this class, though, it’s all good since we’re just focusing on the basics of voice acting. Simply adjusting your proximity to your microphone alone will make a big difference. :)

Keep up the great work!