The bliss of creative freedom

Sometimes I’m given total creative free rein on a project.

Trust me, it doesn’t happen often. In fact, it’s only happened twice in my whole life.

Many’s the time a nervous client will micro-direct EVERY SINGLE SYLLABLE* in a script and I genuinely enjoy the challenge of recording a finished article they end up loving. But when I’m asked to follow my instinct and just play with a script using all my skills and experience I bloody love it.

It might sound desperate (it is) but to a voiceover who usually spends her days recording classic straight-down-the-line announcer stuff, a job with creative freedom feels like skipping through a sunlit meadow wearing nothing but a crown of flowers (but not in a Wicker Man-y way where everybody has to wear animal heads and burn effigies. That’d be terrible and would play havoc with headphones). Truly, for someone who spends her days recording fairly buttoned-up stuff, it’s bliss. Today for instance, I’m recording a bunch of scripts about rhinitis, so you can probably see where I’m coming from.

(For the curious, here’s a bunch of character voices if you fancy nibbling your way through a cornucopia of voiceover audio).

I was asked to voice this series of mini-films for TLC to be beamed across the world on the day of the Royal Wedding.

“They’re quirky. They’re funny. See what you think they need and just go for it,” said my client.

Reader, if he hadn’t been in Kansas I’d have kissed him on the face right there and then.

When a client trusts me enough to deliver something memorable while giving me no direction whatsoever it’s a massive compliment. I’ve been doing this job a long time now (actually since the 1380s) and I daresay I’ve picked up a few tips about how to get my mouth around a script, so it’s refreshing to be able to bring the centuries of know-how to the table.

The scripts were light, fast and needed lots of colour and texture to stop it from getting samey. (Think jazzed-up risotto in audio form).

Anyway – here they are. Top fun to voice. I really hope you enjoy them.

* also sometimes the breathing too.

Want to hear more quirky nonsense? Of course you do. Click here.