Morgan Freeman has a well recognized and soothing narrator's voice. He
is sought out because of his voice to do commercials, documentaries, and
voice overs.
His timbre, his tone, his fluent English reading, are the reasons he is
chosen to sit in recording sessions.
Our criteria is a bit less exacting.
We're looking for people who can read.
Sometimes we get fluent readers. Often times we don't. Even fluent
readers are not experienced in how to record, so they may read well, but
they touch their face, make lip smacking noises, touch the page, jitter
their fingers, and otherwise pollute the sound recording with extraneous
noise.
The less fluent readers make a lot of mistakes. To adjust for this, I
do a lot of editing, and rely heavily on someone who knows the language,
to tell me 'we need to retake that' when there are pronunciation mistakes.
Since we're recording Scripture here, you can be sure, that mistakes are
bad bad.
That's what recording is. Listening for mistakes, coaching readers out
of being monotone, and trying make the Scripture come alive as best as
possible.
A recordist in PNG, is much more than a technician, he has to be a
linguist too. I may not know the Bola language, but I know when someone
is reading it wrong... if that makes sense. I know vocal patterns, I
detect when someone needs to drink water, or is not inflecting
properly. I read hundreds of words I don't know to make sure none are
being missed.
Yesterday was one of those days I was trying to apply the patience of an
elementary teacher who is teaching children to read for the first time.
It was taking forever to get through a single verse,with so many
mistakes, and hard to pronounce words. I actually stopped for a moment,
closed my eyes and prayed
"God, give me patience!.. please!" It can be very frustrating, but then
you have the reward of knowing at the end, there is something
permanently recorded that generations can listen to!
