Great read! Good work with projection and nice use of variation and energy in your read.

I did hear a few places with some distortion in your audio as you got louder. Try adjusting your gain so that peaks for normal talking, land between -12 and -6 dB and peaks for yelling/loud projection land between -9 dB and -3 dB. 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. Having your microphone input pointed toward your mouth but offset slightly so you are speaking past it will help to limit any plosives.

0:11 In commercial scripts when you get to the brand name, give it some extra love. This is the client who’s paying you! They want their name to be remembered positively in commercials. :)

0:12 Read “stand” instead of “stands” - be aware of changing words and dropping or adding “s” (typical comment)

0:14 Read “and” instead of “of”

0:17 Read “anyway” instead of “anyways”

0:26 Read “don’t just believe it because” instead of “don’t believe it just because”

0:34 Missed line: “Such a delightfully animated, or dare I say, “re-animated!” fellow, isn’t he?”

0:42 Read “spirit” instead of “spirits”

0:59 I hear “Coffington” instead of “Coffinton”

For actual gigs and auditions, be sure to quality check your work after recording to ensure you correctly performed the script. It is very important to many casting directors to have voice actors accurately read the written copy (script).

I didn’t note any stumbles in the read, but 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. 

For the purpose of this homework to work on articulation and projection, I couldn’t really tell that you were practicing these skills. The read was generally very good overall, but there were places where you could have really worked to hit all of the letters in the words and made sure they were clearly spoken. Slowing down a little may help when practicing articulation and enunciation. Make sure you don’t lose the ends of words when practicing these qualities. 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. When practicing articulation and enunciation it’s good to over-do it.

If you repeat the “B”, “G” and “K” sounds 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 Peter Padderton script is another good one for practicing “P”, “T” and “D” letters. That cork trick Burger showed in class is also very helpful to practice over-articulating to make words easier to say.

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

Keep up the great work!