January 2020 has been and gone. I may be wrong about this, but I thought it may be slightly interesting to have a revue of the month and let you know what we’ve been up to. I hope you think it is and I’m not just being self-indulgent.
January kicked off with an interesting email for me, “I hope you don’t mind me reaching out,” it stated. “ I work for SmoothFM in Australia. We’ve just been given some time with Robbie Williams at his home in Wiltshire and we need an audio producer to head there and record for us”. And so I did! You’ll have to take my word for it though, as the first thing that I had to do when I got there was sign an NDA promising not to take any photos or repeat any gossip I heard whilst there (not that I heard any). It’s not the type of job that comes along very often, and it involved 6 hours of driving for a half hour recording session.
Meanwhile I left Helen at home working on one of a number of branding and website design projects she has on at the moment. Since launching her branding and website packages in October last year she’s had a good number of enquiries and is involved in about half a dozen projects. Most of her time in January was taken up with juggling the different stages of these. Whereas I’ve had a lot of different things on and the bulk of this article is taken up with my bits, Helen has been hard at work putting in some long hours working on these.
Some of the branding mood boards Helen has been working on
Another thing I was busy with for the duration of the month was audiobook editing. I got an editing job which for once had plenty of lead time, so I’ve been able to edit a chapter or two per day rather than having to work solid on a book which is usually the case. Having such a long deadline made the edit more enjoyable, and for once I was organised enough to actually do a chapter or two at a time rather than rely in having long lead-time and then realising almost too late that the lead-time was now very short!
There has been the usual training work for Gravy For The Brain, but also this month I’ve been able to do some private tuition on production as well. I’ve had a number of sessions teaching VOs how to get the best out of their software and some principles of audio production. It’s always nice to be able to do this for someone as I know what a difference it can make to a VO’s workflow.
Neither of us did much freelance work in January, but we did both do some. I went to Media City and worked on a couple of audiobooks, recorded a couple of corporate voiceovers and a narration for a well-known channel 5 program. Helen went to the city centre and completed worked on projects for Nespresso, Haven Holidays, Barclays Bank and River Island.
I managed to fit in a few visits to local VO’s studios over the month to advise on different acoustic/hardware issues. I really like this part of my job as I get to meet lots of dogs (and a few cats). I find it very interesting the different ways people overcome the problems of fitting a recording studio into their homes. I’ve visited hundreds of studios and never seen the same thing twice!
As the month ends I find myself half way through making a showreel, and putting quotes together for a few editing jobs I’m undertaking for VOs. Plus starting to plan for my Tickling Tour which is in 3 weeks time. Helen has a couple of her projects near completion and should be able to launch them this month.
So that was January, but as no 2 months are ever the same February will no doubt be a totally different kettle of fish.