REMOTE NARRATOR DIRECTIVES

SINGLE-NARRATION

1. When working with new clients on new projects, please only submit the first chapter before moving on. With new clients, we like to wait for them to approve the first chapters before moving on to avoid major re-recording.

2. Record in MONO (instead of STEREO)

3. Record in a quiet area and make sure to reduce echo with soundproofing.

4. If recording in a small space, be careful of boxy or muddy-sounding audio.

5. Make sure your noise floor is no higher than -60dB before recording.

6. Record 10 seconds of uninterrupted room tone at the start of recording (this helps the denoisers we use). It’s also good practice to have a few seconds of silence at the end as well.

7. All recordings must be delivered cleanly without flubs or retakes. You can do this by punching and rolling as you record, or by going through your entire session and tracking back to edit out any flubs/retakes. For those of you who do not prefer punch and roll, you can always click and roll or audibly say “retake” and roll and then go back to cut those bits out. The cutting of flubs and retakes doesn’t have to be clean, and you do not have to worry about pacing. That job falls on the engineers.

8. When you approach a scene break, usually denoted as “***” (or a gap in the text, or ornamental break, etc, etc) please verbally say “scene break” along with a gap of silence before moving on within the manuscript. This helps let the engineers know they need to place a three-second gap of silence between the scenes.

9. Export your RAW files as WAV or AIF (instead of MP3) with normalization of -1 dB.

10. Please follow the naming scheme listed at the top of the audiobook script. Usually, it’s the acronym of the project, followed by the file number, then the chapter name, ending with “RAW.”

11. If doing pickups in Pozotron or Google Docs, please never select “fixed” or “resolved” in the notes. Leave all notes open for the engineers, directors, and producers to review. Instead, just leave a note stating you have done the pickup.

12. In the event of revision, please schedule a call with producer Antoine Bandele to go over the revision philosophy (if it is your first project or your first in a while). When sending over pickups, only send the pickups themselves, the engineers will do all the final inserts and mastering. If you can, send it as 1 unbroken file (or 1 file per pickup session) and verbally denote the timecode for each pickup in question before speaking the revised line. Record and send your pickups in sequential order of the script from beginning to end. This is best done directly in the GoogleDoc or PDF. Do not address notes from e-mail notifications (as they are often out of order that way).

13. File naming for pickups is as follows ProjectAcronym_00_PickUps_Session01_Raw

14. In the event that a client has asked for proofreading, during your recording simply say “editing note” before making your proofreading suggestion.

15. Never upload directly to Pozotron unless you are engineering.

16. After you’re all done, submit your files via whichever filesharing service you use to the specific project server in Discord (please batch all files in one if you can instead of sending files one by one).

DUAL-NARRATION

1. When working with new clients on new projects, please only submit the first chapter before moving on. With new clients we like to wait for them to approve first chapters before moving on to avoid major re-recording.

2. If you are doing a dual recording with another narrator, please make sure to coordinate to make sure your characters sound similar and that your pronunciations match.

3. Record in MONO (instead of STEREO)

4. Record in a quiet area and make sure to reduce echo with soundproofing.

5. If recording in a small space, be careful of “boxy/muddy” sounding audio.

6. Make sure your noise floor is no higher than -60dB before recording.

7. Record 10 seconds of uninterrupted room tone at the start of recording (this helps the denoisers we use). It’s also good practice to have a few seconds of silence at the end as well.

8. All recordings must be delivered cleanly without flubs/retakes. You can do this by punching and rolling as you record, or by going through your entire session and tracking back to edit out any flubs/retakes. For those of you who do not prefer punch and roll, you can always click and roll or audibly say “retake” and roll and then go back to cut those bits out.

9. When you approach a scene break, usually denoted as “***” (or a gap in the text, or ornamental break, etc, etc) please verbally say “scene break” along with a gap of silence before moving on within the manuscript. This helps let the engineers know they need to place a three-second gap of silence between the scenes.

10. Export your RAW files as WAV or AIF (instead of MP3) with a normalization of -1 dB.

11. Please follow the naming scheme listed at the top of the audiobook script. Usually, it’s the acronym of the project, followed by the file number, then the chapter name, ending with “RAW.”

12. If doing pickups in Pozotron or Google Docs, please never select “fixed” or “resolved” in the notes. Leave all notes open for the engineer to review. Instead, just leave a note stating you have done the pickup.

13. In the event of revision, please schedule a call with producer Antoine Bandele to go over the revision philosophy (if it is your first project or your first in a while). When sending over pickups, only send the pickups themselves, the engineers will do all the final inserts and mastering. If you can, send it as 1 unbroken file (or 1 file per pickup session) and verbally denote the timecode for each pickup in question before speaking the revised line. Record and send your pickups in sequential order of the script from beginning to end. This is best done directly in the GoogleDoc or PDF. Do not address notes from e-mail notifications (as they are often out of order that way).

14. File naming for pickups is as follows ProjectAcronym_00_PickUps_Session01_Raw

15. In the event that a client has asked for proofreading, during your recording simply say “editing note” before making your proofreading suggestion.

16. Never upload directly to Pozotron unless you are engineering.

17. After you’re all done, submit your files via whichever filesharing service you use to the specific project server in Discord (please batch all files in one if you can instead of sending files one by one).

DUET-NARRATION

1. When working with new clients on new projects, please only submit the first chapter before moving on. With new clients we like to wait for them to approve first chapters before moving on to avoid major re-recording.

2. If you are recording a duet recording with another narrator, please make sure that you sync clap by saying “3, 2, 1” then clap. This allows the engineers to have a sync point. Also, be sure to turn down your headphone volume to avoid sound bleed from your narrator partner(s). It’s helpful to the engineers if each narrator starts their recordings at the same time.

3. When performing a duet in sync, please refrain from doing multiple takes unless it’s an egregious flub. Do not give various takes for performances to respect booth time for both narrators.

4. If you are recording a duet without sync, be sure to do your readings as you normally would, but click or clap twice wherever the vocal work of your partner(s) is supposed to be placed.

5. Record in MONO (instead of STEREO)

6. Record in a quiet area and make sure to reduce echo with soundproofing.

7. If recording in a small space, be careful of “boxy/muddy” sounding audio.

8. Make sure your noise floor is no higher than -60dB before recording.

9. Record 10 seconds of uninterrupted room tone at the start of recording (this helps the denoisers we use). It’s also good practice to have a few seconds of silence at the end as well.

10. Unlike single and dual-narration, there is no additional editing of flubs (either through punch-and-roll or click-and-roll). All synced files will be sent over to engineers without any editing whatsoever.

11. When you approach a scene break, usually denoted as “***” (or a gap in the text, or ornamental break, etc, etc) please verbally say “scene break” along with a gap of silence before moving on within the manuscript. This helps let the engineers know they need to place a three-second gap of silence between the scenes.

12. Export your RAW files as WAV or AIF (instead of MP3) with a normalization of -1 dB.

13. Please follow the naming scheme listed at the top of the audiobook script. Usually, it’s the acronym of the project, followed by the file number, then the chapter name, ending with “RAW.”

14. If doing pickups in Pozotron or Google Docs, please never select “fixed” or “resolved” in the notes. Leave all notes open for the engineer to review. Instead, just leave a note stating you have done the pickup.

15. In the event of revision, please schedule a call with producer Antoine Bandele to go over the revision philosophy (if it is your first project or your first in a while). When sending over pickups, only send the pickups themselves, the engineers will do all the final inserts and mastering. If you can, send it as 1 unbroken file (or 1 file per pickup session) and verbally denote the timecode for each pickup in question before speaking the revised line. Record and send your pickups in sequential order of the script from beginning to end. This is best done directly in the GoogleDoc or PDF. Do not address notes from e-mail notifications (as they are often out of order that way).

16. File naming for pickups is as follows ProjectAcronym_00_PickUps_Session01_Raw

17. In the event that a client has asked for proofreading, during your recording simply say “editing note” before making your proofreading suggestion.

18. Never upload directly to Pozotron unless you are engineering.

19. After you’re all done, submit your files via whichever filesharing service you use to the specific project server in Discord (please batch all files in one if you can instead of sending files one by one).