Great energy in your read! Love the enthusiasm and play you inserted. Having fun with the script is something that will take you far in voice acting. Casting directors love to work with people who can have fun and play with a script. Don’t be afraid to really let loose and go way over the top. Oddly enough, often when we think we’re going really big, it really isn’t as big as we think it is.

0:17 In commercials, when you get to the brand name, slow it down a tad and give it some extra love. This is the client who’s paying you! They want their name to be remembered positively in commercials.

0:19 Read “G” instead of “G’s”. The words that have “s” at the end and “s” at the beginning of the next one can be challenging. A good way to ensure you pronounce the entire word is to slow down a little so you can comfortably leave enough space to say both words naturally.

1:04 Mispronounced “constructing”

1:06 When you misread or have a little stumble (happens to everyone and it’s okay!), 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. 

1:08 When you have repeated words or phrases, try to change up the way you say them and make them different, this adds life and character to your read.

1:24 Mispronounced “innovatively”

Your audio is a little low. Generally a good distance between the microphone and your mouth as you are recording, as a rule of thumb, is the space between your pinky and thumb when they are extended apart from each other. Try to have waveform peaks for yelling/loud projection land between -9 dB and -3 dB. For normal talking, try to have the waveform peaks between -12 and -6 dB. Shoot for -3dB of headroom. You may need to adjust your gain for louder and quieter parts; if so, it helps to know where to turn the gain to in order to achieve optimal levels during recording. Having the microphone input pointed at your mouth but offset to one side maybe 20-30 degrees can help reduce plosives.

Staying well hydrated will help to reduce mouth clicks during recording. A good rule of thumb is to hydrate well a couple of hours before recording and drink water in between as you’re recording to stay hydrated. 

As you progress with voice acting, investing in the RX series mouth declick plug-in is a very useful and worthwhile tool to have at your disposal to help keep the recording as clean as possible. 

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). 

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.

Overall, well done! Keep up the good work!