Voice Over Commercial Auditions Casting and Information

A Live Internet Reading of “A Christmas Carol”

(Doug Welch reading “A Christmas Carol”)

On Sunday last, New Media Interchange Founder Douglas E. Welch, held his 4th Annual LIVE Reading of Charles Dickens’ “A Christmas Carol” and the audio is now available for your holiday pleasure.

It wasn’t your typical live reading of a play. Not a radio play or a televised reading. It was an internet play distributed through the internet’s U-Stream.TV. I had the opportunity to use my voice to be part of this holiday project. Top Warner Brothers sound engineer, Michael Lawshe and New Media Expert Doug Welch team up several times a year to produce these readings. I asked Doug about the process:

TJP: What is the genesis of this project?

DW: My annual reading of A Christmas Carol grew out of my love for the book AND my experiences with the newly created world of podcasting. I had often talked about sitting down with family and friends to read the book aloud at Christmastime and once we had the ability to “broadcast” our reading, both live and as a podcast, it only made sense to me to share it with the world. Surely there were others who might enjoy it.

TJP: Describe the recording & production process.

DW:  Music and sound effects are mixed in and performed live during the reading.  We use 1 medium-priced condenser microphone for the voices and simply switch readers as we go. This is only a reading, not a dramatization, so we don’t need multiple microphones and complicated mixing. Even then, if you needed multiple speakers, the old radio method of gathering around a single mic would probably work just fine.

In Part 2, Doug continues on about the production process and the evolution of U-Stream.TV and how it could impact the voice over industry.

-Tracy Pattin