Cutting It

Up at 8 this morning to check my email, shave (a longer process than usual, because for the last ten days I'd let what's left of the hair on my skull grow and removing it took a good half hour - it also made me look 15 years younger), shower and head out to Cut Glass Productions in Kentish Town for a voiceover class. (Before you copy the image, make sure you acknowledge it's theirs...)

I had a good feeling about this course from the moment I booked it, if only because the price, at £38 for three hours, was a bargain. It was a bonus to find that only three of us were taking the class (we were told that there might be as many as 10, which would have considerably reduced our airtime but still been good value). The icing on the cake was Phil, our coach, who provided a wide range of scripts and encouraged each of us to stretch our voices. I ended up reading five scripts, to which were added the music and FX that gave my voice the final touch of professionalism.

First up was the strong Scottish accent to advertise - surprise, surprise - Scotland. It was the same script that I'd read at the dreaded (spit, spit, curse) London Academy last month, but this time I was able to give it a much richer sound. I was so good that when I heard myself give the phone number of the Scottish Tourist Board, I almost picked up the phone to book two weeks' holiday at my mother's Edinburgh bed and breakfast...

Next was a deliberately gobbledy-gook insurance advert which I presented in a bureaucrat's voice. That also went down well, and although I could spot several weak spots and mistakes, these could easily be eradicated in a second recording and I was, as YouthSpeak has it, Well Pleased With What I Done. Third was hard-sell for a Scottish pop band. That was a mistake - my voice was too old for the product - but it made me think that there were some hard sell commercials that I could do. Fourth was the weakest performance - a soft-spoken trailer for Magic Radio; not only was my voice lost behind the music, but it was weak and did not carry the seductive tones I was aiming for. Last came a narrative for a documentary about the candiru in the Amazon -  a fish that I had thought was legendary, but which apparently really does swim up your urethra and eat away at the inside of your genitalia. My fellow-students claimed they were sitting cross-legged and nervous as I described the torture in detail...

We didn't get copies of our recordings - for the sensible reason that they were rushed and did not convey either our or Phil's full talents. But I did walk away in a much more optimistic mood than after the London Academy fiasco, where £300 and two days had done nothing more than convince me that my voice was reedy and I had no talent as a voiceover artiste. The only problem that I still face is the "bubble" that I sometimes sense in my lungs, which can rob my voice of some of its roundness. It comes and goes unpredictably and today, annoyingly, it came. Nevertheless I still gave good voice. (As for the other two students, one had considerably more talent than me and will soon, I am sure, be in high demand; the other tended to be too theatrical but had definite reassuring tones when she toned down her performance.)

Next on my agenda, therefore, is a professional voicereel. I've seen them advertised at under £300, so I'm not keen to pay CGP's £360 (less deduction for the course already taken). I may end up back there, but I'll first spend time researching the studios available and listening to their samples to see what best combines cost and quality. But wherever I end up, I'm truly grateful to Phil for restoring the confidence that I had lost.