Editing Voice Overs For A Radio Play

“How does the ambient sound of the room effect the finished product?”

Firstly, there are two common ways of recording voice overs in a studio.

Live Recording-This is the method used most in recording of a radio play. The live method involves gathering all the actors in the studio at the same time, each with their own microphone. Scenes are then recorded in real time. This usually produces the most natural sounding results because the actors are playing off of each other. The scenes will not necessarily be recorded in order. This is mainly for logistics. It can be hard to get all the actors together at the same time. There is no point in a supporting actor that only has a couple lines coming in for the entire recording session. This is where pre production planning is important.

Solo Recording-This is the method of recording an individuals lines without the other actors present. Sometimes a director will stand in and read the other actors lines to prompt the actor recording.
Often animations such as the Pixar movies will have an all star cast that never meet because there voices are recorded at different times in different studios.

For my current project I use a combination of both recording techniques. Mostly live recording to record the majority of the script. However the narration is sometimes recorded separately and edited together with the live recording later in post production.

Myself and the director will sit down and listen to the recorded material and make decisions on re-records. These re-records are normally to alter or correct a line that was not delivered how the director wanted it. These re-records are then edited back into the compiled scenes.

Editing

When scenes are recorded with the live method, all the relevant microphone tracks are recorded together at the same time. In other words, even when one individual actor is speaking into their microphone all the other actors microphones will be recording, and to some degree pick up the actor speaking and the ambient room sound. For the type of radio play I’m producing this ambient room sound is undesirable.

To remove the ambient sound picked up by other actors microphones, I go through each track and edit down the audio files to just the individual lines. Making sure to leave a small over lap (about 10ms) between different characters lines. If you don’t leave this overlap there is the possibility that you will hear the silence of no audio between lines. Even silence sounds of something. It is important to keep some constant background noise through out the production.

Below is a screenshot example of different characters lines edited down with slight overlaps.