Acting with the Voice: The Art of Recording Books Book

Robert Blumenfeld on recording books: "Knowledge of literature, and a passion for telling stories, are essential." "Recording books is a skill, a craft and an art. You are playing characters, but you can?t project too much. You have to bring it all the way down. It?s a very intimate art form. The microphone picks up every rustle and nuance, not unlike a camera doing a close-up." "You don?t even have to look the part. You will have the pleasure of playing roles for which you may be the wrong physical type, and in which as a consequence you would never be cast in a film or stage adaptation." Acting with the Voice offers hard practical advice on getting started in and pursuing the craft of recording books, and excellent literary samples to nourish the reader?s practice. The "Notes, Comments and Hints" sections in each chapter are filled with historical tidbits that are informative, in context, and aptly illustrate the meaning and perspective behind the excerpts chosen. Acting with the Voice includes this and more: Getting Started in the Book Recording Business (Getting an Agent, The Casting Process, The Recording Session: What a Director Expects, Publishers of Recorded Books in the US, Book Recording in the UK and Canada ) The Voice (Finding Your Voice, Paralinguistics: How to Do Different Voices, Vocal Exercises) Diction and Pronunciation (Phonetics, Positions of Vocal Apparatus, Practice Exercises for Good Diction) Microphone and General Recording Technique Acting Methods and Techniques Reading Techniques (Preparing the Text for Recording, Charles Dickens: His Public Readings, Helen Potter?s Impersonations) Recording Prose Fiction (Understanding Style and Period, Reading Different Kinds of Scenes, The Character?s Voice: Creating a Character Vocally, Using Accents) Recording Plays Recording Poetry Recording Nonfiction: Making the Text Come Alive (Essays and Philosophy, Autobiography and Memoirs, Illustrative Texts: Biography) And excerpted works by these writers and others: Susan B. Anthony, Jane Austen, Honoré de Balzac, Lewis Carroll, Samuel Clemens, Anton Chekhov, Robert Browning, Thomas Hardy, James Weldon Johnson, Michel de Montaigne, Edgar Allan Poe and Mary Wollstonecraft.Read More