Directing an Author Reading His Audio Book
I have in my day both voiced and directed audio books. As a director I have usually worked with trained talent. That is to say, individuals who have some degre of experience perfroming voiceover and/or have had some acting training.
There seems to be a trend these days to have the authors read the books themselves whenever possible. So a few weeks ago I was introduced to Mr. Bill Tancer and his book called Click. Bill Tancer is the general manager of global research at Hitwise and a weekly columnist for Time Magazine.
Here is a link to Bill's blog on ABC and a link to be able to download chapters for free.
http://blogs.abcnews.com/click/
SO here it is in a nutshell. I got the manuscript a little late and didn't have a chance to look it over until the night before the first recording session. All I knew was that Bill was some sort of internet bean counter and the book was about web analytics. Well, I had attended enough mixers of the San Francisco chapter of the American Marketing Association to have an appropriate fear of number crunchers and my expereinces speaking to the anlytics people were a lot like having a tone deaf monk chant the lyrics of "It's Raining Men" in Esperanto.
I silently thought to myself that I was going to reach a personal best in coffee consumption over the 5 days of recording sessions just to keep me awake. Then I thought perhaps the recording will have to have some sort of warning on it to the tune of "Do not drive or attempt to operate heavy machinery while listening to this"
Well, I reluctently printed out the cscript the afternoon before the first session. It was a Sunday at 3pm and at 3am, I reluctantly had to put it down about 2/3 of the way in. It was a brilliant and interesting text and it was written from the first person perspective, making it a perfect candidate for being an audio book.
I met Bill the next day and we hit it off right away. His ability to break down trends and web surfing habits, while at the same time using data to be both a detective and prognosticator makes him quite fascinating and engaging. I learned a lot and actually remembered that I had heard him speak at the Web 2.0 conference in San Francisco and found him quite interestig as he spoke of his 1-9-90 philosophy as it applies to the internet. This is the principal that replaces the 80 - 20 rule (80% of the work is done by 20% of the staff, etc.)
In his book, Bill is part treasure hunter and detective. Why are prom dresses searched for so prevelantly in January? What might cause a relatively obscure band to suddenly become one of the most searched for terms in Google?
Bill helps make sense of web chaos for huge clients and along the way stops to ponder many interesting facts. This is not just a book for ubergeeks, but for anyone who has ever Googled their own name. Click will be a best seller.
By the way, Bill was a pretty darn good voice actor to, although I think he was impressed when I cold read one of his big words that he himself had a little trouble saying, Hippoptomonstrousesquipedalia. That's why I'm the director.
There seems to be a trend these days to have the authors read the books themselves whenever possible. So a few weeks ago I was introduced to Mr. Bill Tancer and his book called Click. Bill Tancer is the general manager of global research at Hitwise and a weekly columnist for Time Magazine.
Here is a link to Bill's blog on ABC and a link to be able to download chapters for free.
http://blogs.abcnews.com/click/
SO here it is in a nutshell. I got the manuscript a little late and didn't have a chance to look it over until the night before the first recording session. All I knew was that Bill was some sort of internet bean counter and the book was about web analytics. Well, I had attended enough mixers of the San Francisco chapter of the American Marketing Association to have an appropriate fear of number crunchers and my expereinces speaking to the anlytics people were a lot like having a tone deaf monk chant the lyrics of "It's Raining Men" in Esperanto.
I silently thought to myself that I was going to reach a personal best in coffee consumption over the 5 days of recording sessions just to keep me awake. Then I thought perhaps the recording will have to have some sort of warning on it to the tune of "Do not drive or attempt to operate heavy machinery while listening to this"
Well, I reluctently printed out the cscript the afternoon before the first session. It was a Sunday at 3pm and at 3am, I reluctantly had to put it down about 2/3 of the way in. It was a brilliant and interesting text and it was written from the first person perspective, making it a perfect candidate for being an audio book.
I met Bill the next day and we hit it off right away. His ability to break down trends and web surfing habits, while at the same time using data to be both a detective and prognosticator makes him quite fascinating and engaging. I learned a lot and actually remembered that I had heard him speak at the Web 2.0 conference in San Francisco and found him quite interestig as he spoke of his 1-9-90 philosophy as it applies to the internet. This is the principal that replaces the 80 - 20 rule (80% of the work is done by 20% of the staff, etc.)
In his book, Bill is part treasure hunter and detective. Why are prom dresses searched for so prevelantly in January? What might cause a relatively obscure band to suddenly become one of the most searched for terms in Google?
Bill helps make sense of web chaos for huge clients and along the way stops to ponder many interesting facts. This is not just a book for ubergeeks, but for anyone who has ever Googled their own name. Click will be a best seller.
By the way, Bill was a pretty darn good voice actor to, although I think he was impressed when I cold read one of his big words that he himself had a little trouble saying, Hippoptomonstrousesquipedalia. That's why I'm the director.
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