I really needed some freelance specific business cards:

Composited on this photo I took earlier the same day:

Pimpin' ain't easy...

The two important things (assuming you already have skills), in voiceover recording are the sonic characteristics of the space you have, and the equipment you are using. Having wallpaper, no holes in the ceiling, clearing up those empty beer cans, sitting on fancy operator chairs, and generally working in a show-off 'looks are important' environment is largely bollocks unless your objective is justifying your inflated fee to people absorbed into a corporate world.

Traditionally we've used various studios for this, most of which were low-to-mid priced places of reasonable, not perfect, construction (i.e. sound proofing and acoustic design). There seems to be a trend in these places of tracking using software microphone modelling, tube emulation and compression and recording digitally with no hardware involved beyond plugging the microphone into the audio interface connector to the computer. But, of course, these places looked good to clients because they were proper studios.

I knew this wasn't ideal, and at the root of it was this silly tendency in the creative industries to pretend to be a really, really big company, as everyone working in a corporate world seems to be scared of losing their job (they won't be able to fund their UK-bank-over-lended mortgage without it!), so they like the comfort and credibility of a big company, because they give the impression that they are less likely to screw the job up, causing criticism and eventually sacking to the corporate employee. This is misguided and ridiculous, people screw up at big firms all day long, and those firms (my opinion, but true) can have lower production values, whilst charging more for their (inferior) services.

Anyway... Software recording things are toys for kids and bedroom producers. I knew we had unused, better (hardware) equipment ourselves, though we were lacking a suitable space to do the recordings.

As a favour, the band Gnod kindly allowed us to use their rehearsal studio space in Islington Mill for recording. This is great as it's in the same building as our studio, and it just-at-a-pinch works in the context of setting up a 2-room (vocal booth and control room) recording system with the vocal booth being properly acoustically isolated (i.e. soundproof). The system needs to record a single microphone, but I also wanted true studio-style talkback so that I can talk to the talent from the control room without this being recorded.

I thought it might be of interest to show the portable setup we're using to record our voiceovers, and an insight into the environment we're doing this stuff in. This is literally how we have been doing voiceover recordings for the past few months. Editing and post production is done in our main studio where we have proper monitors, and some of that schoolyard software stuff that I enjoy so much (<--- sarcasm here).

I believe this to be an efficient and minimal setup that produces high quality, professional results due to using decent equipment, and having an acoustically pretty good (not perfect, but as good as those proper studios we were using) room.

Recording Equipment

This portion of the signal chain governs the final sound/quality of the recording:

• Rode NTK2 Valve Microphone with Stedman Pop Filter and Isolation Screen
• TL Audio VP-5051 Valve Voice Channel
• M-Audio Fast Track Pro Audio Interface
• Antique Samsung Laptop
• Van Damme Cabling with Neutrik Connectors (throughout)

Talkback/Monitoring Equipment

This portion of the setup doesn't affect the actual recording, so using lower cost equipment here is somewhat irrelevant to the final recording - this is mainly to improve efficiency through slicker workflow (i.e. talking to the talent from the control room instead of having to go into the vocal area with them after every take, etc.):

• Samson C02 Microphone
• Soundcraft Notepad 102 Mixer
• Samson S-Amp Headphone Amplifier
• Sennheiser HD-25 Headphones (Control Room)
• AKG K141 Headphones (Talent)

I don't have much more to say about this, but watch out for more photos of things we do being used as a shallow cover for pedalling our controversial-yet-honest views of the interaction between the corporate and creative worlds in the pantomime that they call the UK economy.

Keep up the good work, and keep paying those taxes!

I was trying to achieve a certain look for a personal project, essentially organic movement of fireflies which left light trails.

I saved out the Particular settings as an After Effects preset, which I thought I'd make available, here. All I did to it beyond this is glows and blurs, standard stuff.