Pick-ups or re-records are the re-do's I get from the contract engineer/editor my audio book publisher assigns to fix any mistakes I've made. Sometimes it's a mouth sound. Sometimes a mispronunciation of a word. Sometimes I just read the word completely wrong (yesterday I had 4 pick-ups and all of them were words I said that weren't even on the page, i.e., "Graydie" for "Gray" - stuff like that. Pretty common when staring at pages of typed words all day and reading them aloud - the brain eventually jumps in there and tells the eyes and mouth what it thinks it sees instead of what's actually there.)
Pick-ups since narrating from home have been an interesting journey for me. When I first began I hadn't gotten my professional sound proof recording booth yet and was recording from my closet, surrounded by a tri-fold screen, blankets and lots of studio foam. I live in a neighborhood near lots of new construction and a week after I started narrating on a large contract a crew broke ground right across the street from me. Picked up loads of low level frequency noise (Bobcats quickly became my nemesis - who knew a construction vehicle so small could make so much noise) and there were times when I simply could not compete with it all and couldn't work.
I was assigned a young editor who was in Indiana who (according to his Linked In profile) had just gotten out of college. He was very nice and we communicated well through emails and text messages (pretty standard nowadays) save for a phone call or too when we first got started. We would eventually work on 30+ consecutive books together.
I kind of felt from the start my editor might have been a little green, not just because of his age, but because he always seemed to deliver my files well after midnight. Made me think this work may have been a second job. Unlike my contract where I get paid in three installments over 13 weeks, he got paid per finished book. Don't know why that's important to remember, other than there was a sense getting the pick-ups back to him in a timely fashion was not only beneficial to me, of course, but also to him. Since this was my first time on contract for a publisher to record 18 books in 13 weeks, and first time working directly with an editor long-distance, I almost never questioned the pick-ups he gave me.
The notes came very well organized on a spreadsheet telling me where in my recording I could find the section needing to be replaced and giving me a note as to what needed to be done. Before I got my booth, I would have around 100 pick-ups to do, a lot of them sound related, but also performance based. I never received director's notes like I've gotten when working with directors in person at other audio book publishing studios, telling me to speed something up, or slow it down, or what not, but mostly pronunciation (to which I'd say half the time, if not being pronounced in a foreign dialect were needed and appreciated) and notes telling me a word got swallowed or words were run together to quickly. Most of the time when I'd listen to the recorded bit these notes were on I couldn't ever detect what the editor what telling me in my recording. But, I'd take the notes and do them and sometimes it would take me an entire working day to just do the pick-ups and then I'd work on the weekend to make up the time.
When I got my soundproof Whisper Room recording booth my pick-up notes decreased, though I still frequently got a lot of notes saying my sentences ran together (or words like "into") and that I'd mispronounced a word. Still, my pick-ups were on average around 40-50 per book. Eventually, towards then end of contract two with this editor, his computer crashed and he fell way behind in his work. Ideally, my publisher would have the editor working on the files I have sent from the previous day while I record the next day's files. This editor ended up being 5 books behind me. My publisher was patient for about a week and then let him go and assigned me to a different editor, one who has a company and contracts the work out on his end (he has a server I upload files to instead of using my own paid for FTP site.)
In the interim working with my first editor, I got my first off-site book for a different publisher. It was the fourth book in a series I'd already recorded the first three of on-site with direction at their studio, so I was nervous to match the quality and my performance and energy working solo and anxious to see how many pick-ups I'd have, especially because the book is a British translation of German to English, with pronunciations of northern Germany names and places.
I was in disbelief when I got my pick-up list back from my editor on the German book and there were 9 on the sheet. Nine. I kept scrolling down the spreadsheet thinking maybe something didn't come through or I was missing data. Half of the pick-ups were a correction of a character's name I'd mispronounced, so 5 of the pick-ups were related to booth or mouth noise or a mis-pronunciation of a word.
I asked my friend and engineer who I'd been directed by and engineered one of my past narrations for this same publisher how he thought this could be, with all the pick-ups I'd received to date from my large contract editor averaging around 50 (sometimes substantially more) and only get these few. He told me that they have the ability to correct most mistakes on their own without needing the narrator, and every engineer is different. Okay. Good.
During my second contract I started questioning my editor more on stuff - like "mis-pronunciations" of words I'd pronounced in a foreign dialect. Turned out, when I nicely explained I was using a pronunciation Internet source with pronunciations coming from people who were really from those countries, he went with my notes and began to go to my sources when editing similar material down the line. Also, I mentioned to him when I didn't hear when he was referencing in a note regarding words "running together" but instead heard normal conversation rhythms so I didn't sound choppy and again my editor agreed with me. The last few pick-ups I received from him decreased to somewhere in the 30's.
I have received pick-ups for 9 books from my new large contract editor and the most I've received are 9. The least: 0. He is also editing quickly and keeping the time frame our publisher wants - editing my previous day's files as I record the next day. Now, I'm starting to question whether or not this editor is finding my mistakes! Is he questioning enough (or at all) my pronunciations and catching all mouth noises and inverted (or completely wrong) words I say? Somewhere in between the first editor who seemingly questioned too much and this one who seems to not question enough I wonder where does my performance fall? I have listened to some of the samples I've done with my first editor and there is definitely one book where I am reading to slowly and over enunciating, and I remember making the mistake of narrating for the editor and to not get all his pick-up notes rather than for the listener and performing. I don't do that anymore. I also listen regularly to snippets of other audio books out there on the Internet and keep up my pace in the booth, remembering that I'm reading like I'm reading to my son at night. Telling a story. And like continually learning how to parent, I'm still learning how to narrate.
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