If you’ve always loved audio books but never stopped to wonder how they are made, then give yourself a slap and continue reading.
Maggie Ollerenshaw described her world to a modest audience at the Guildford book festival, revealing the production process with some of the anecdotal colouring-in that makes listening to veterans talking about their particular fields so enlightening. With over 50 audiobooks to her name, she cheerily played down quite what hard work this voice-acting really is. Recording at a rate of a 150 pages a day, each page-turn is meticulously planned to fall into an editable pause. Clunky jewellery is to be avoided and the highly sensitive microphones require the actor to sit incredibly still. Although this could seem limiting for an actor, it is actually an increasingly popular job. For one thing, you can control every character, and influence the finished product to a tyrannical extent.
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