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117 Rosie Jones | Audiobook Narrator, Voice Actor and Director
405 Plays2 years ago
Audiobook narrator, voice-actor and director, Rosie Jones is on the podcast talking all about narrating for audiobooks, voice-work for video games and how it all works.
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Transcript
Introduction: The Secret to Getting Published
00:00:00
Speaker
So our podcast is called Right and Wrong.
00:00:02
Speaker
Are these your notes?
00:00:03
Speaker
These are your notes about what we're going to say.
00:00:06
Speaker
Anything is a short answer.
00:00:08
Speaker
So how many novels did you not finish?
00:00:10
Speaker
Oh my God, so many.
00:00:13
Speaker
It was perfect.
00:00:14
Speaker
What's she talking about?
00:00:16
Speaker
This is not a spicy question.
00:00:19
Speaker
I love it.
00:00:20
Speaker
This is it guys.
00:00:21
Speaker
The big secret to getting published is you have to write a good book.
00:00:25
Speaker
I'm going to hear first.
Introducing Rosie Jones: A Multifaceted Career
00:00:29
Speaker
Hello and welcome back to the Right and Wrong podcast.
00:00:33
Speaker
Today it's something a little bit different.
00:00:36
Speaker
I'm very excited to get into it.
00:00:38
Speaker
Joining me on this episode is actor, voice actor, director, voice acting director, audiobook narrator, all of these things.
00:00:47
Speaker
It's Rosie Jones.
00:00:48
Speaker
Hello.
00:00:50
Speaker
Thank you for that sterling introduction.
00:00:52
Speaker
Well, the thing is you do so many things.
00:00:54
Speaker
So I was like, I don't know how to, there's no succinct word to describe all of the many disciplines that you do.
00:01:02
Speaker
It's true.
00:01:02
Speaker
It's true.
00:01:03
Speaker
I'm a multifaceted, busy person.
00:01:07
Speaker
You are.
00:01:07
Speaker
Jack of all trades, master of none, I guess.
00:01:10
Speaker
Well, I always, this is such a random aside to begin the podcast with, that Jack of all trades thing.
00:01:16
Speaker
I've heard so many people say it as like a bad thing where it's like Jack of all trades, master of none.
00:01:23
Speaker
I believe the quote goes on to say that it's better to be a Jack of all trades.
00:01:29
Speaker
I mean, I can't argue with that.
00:01:31
Speaker
I absolutely love it.
00:01:32
Speaker
I love the variety and the excitement that it brings.
00:01:36
Speaker
So it's certainly, for me, it's definitely a choice and one that I feel very privileged to be able to kind of do.
00:01:45
Speaker
So yeah, let's go with it.
00:01:48
Speaker
Let's go with it as a positive.
00:01:49
Speaker
Yeah, that's amazing.
00:01:51
Speaker
You do so many exciting things that I would love to chat about.
00:01:54
Speaker
And we talked a bit about it before we started recording.
00:01:57
Speaker
But since this is a
Audiobook Narration: Passion and Process
00:01:58
Speaker
publishing podcast, it's probably best that we start with the publishing side of what you do, which is you have narrated a lot of audiobooks.
00:02:09
Speaker
I have.
00:02:10
Speaker
Yeah.
00:02:12
Speaker
It's been part of my working life for a long time now.
00:02:16
Speaker
I think I recorded my first book back in 2012, so about 10 years.
00:02:23
Speaker
And I absolutely love narrating books.
00:02:27
Speaker
So I've done, I think, I don't know, certainly over a hundred.
00:02:30
Speaker
And it's a real, it's again, a real privilege to get to record and speak out loud and share so many different stories.
00:02:42
Speaker
And in lots of different genres, although I do tend to do specific genres, but yeah, it's a great job.
00:02:50
Speaker
Which genres do you do specifically?
00:02:53
Speaker
I tend to do a lot of YA, a lot of young adult teen lit.
00:02:58
Speaker
I tend to do quite a lot of kids books as well.
00:03:00
Speaker
And then I also do a lot of World War II sort of time period.
00:03:07
Speaker
Quite a lot of...
00:03:09
Speaker
romance or strong women in tricky situations, you know, fighting the good fight.
00:03:15
Speaker
So those are the kind of things I tend to do most of.
00:03:20
Speaker
I do a lot of fantasy fiction as well and have done a few thrillers that have kind of got young, young protagonists as well, which have been really interesting.
00:03:30
Speaker
Okay.
00:03:31
Speaker
Is it you that's sort of choosing where, you know, which kinds of books you're doing or is it more between like your agent and whoever and the publisher or something?
00:03:41
Speaker
Yeah.
00:03:41
Speaker
So historically, certainly it was, it was kind of what other people sent my way.
00:03:49
Speaker
Now more so I can choose what I, the kind of work that I want to do, but it's been a mixture of both.
00:03:56
Speaker
I mean, look, it's a,
00:03:58
Speaker
you really as you know that the the the voices um of these stories is really important in terms of making sure that you fulfill what what the story requires and there are definitely books out there that i'm you know my voice isn't isn't right for and i i love doing young voices i love exploring that part of my vocal range so i do tend to like doing that so it kind of it fits well and you know i'm i'm
00:04:25
Speaker
I haven't, for example, done very much nonfiction.
00:04:28
Speaker
I haven't done many kind of textbooks or manuals or things like that.
00:04:33
Speaker
And I kind of, a lot of me, part of me would love to do, I'd love to do more like history books.
00:04:39
Speaker
I'd love to, because I'd like to learn about, I don't get an opportunity to learn about much sort of real history through the work that I do.
00:04:47
Speaker
So I'd love to do that, but I don't think I'm the right voice, you know?
00:04:50
Speaker
So I've just got to accept that that's not maybe my USP.
00:04:55
Speaker
Okay.
00:04:56
Speaker
That's fair enough.
00:04:57
Speaker
It's good that you've, uh, you've accepted it and moving on.
00:05:00
Speaker
Um, when it comes to, to, to doing this kind of thing, you're, you are also an actor and you direct and you, this is on stage and on film.
00:05:11
Speaker
Is it very different doing a recording, like an audio book as, as opposed to sort of preparing for a role?
00:05:17
Speaker
Yes and no.
00:05:18
Speaker
It is because it's a completely
Studio Recording: Setup and Efficiency
00:05:20
Speaker
different medium.
00:05:20
Speaker
You are telling the whole story from beginning to end.
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Speaker
And more often than not, as a narrator, you're also sort of self-directing.
00:05:29
Speaker
Sometimes you... It does vary.
00:05:30
Speaker
Sometimes you get a director on the line with you, which is great.
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Speaker
And you can kind of have a chat and a bit of back and forth.
00:05:36
Speaker
But in the main, because of the size of the recording, you know, it takes a long time.
00:05:45
Speaker
You're kind of making all of those choices yourself.
00:05:48
Speaker
So it's much more of an independent journey, I think, than, you know, going into a rehearsal room with a cast for a play, for example.
00:05:57
Speaker
And you're creating all of the characters and all of the characters.
00:06:00
Speaker
all of the voices and sort of setting the tone.
00:06:03
Speaker
And sometimes, you know, you can get, you do get steered by authors or by directors, but more often than not, I have to say you don't.
00:06:10
Speaker
So there's a kind of a big responsibility there to, to, to make those choices.
00:06:16
Speaker
And so the prep is, I mean, my prep now is, is really just reading the book online.
00:06:21
Speaker
Working out the character voices, making notes on where they're from, who they are, what they're like, and then sort of marking up my script in the way that I've developed over the years that suits me.
00:06:33
Speaker
But I think everyone probably has their own kind of funny formula for what works and what gives them enough clues early on, early enough information.
00:06:44
Speaker
in the sentence to kind of get the right tone for the next bit.
00:06:50
Speaker
So yeah, the process is much more individual, I suppose.
00:06:53
Speaker
And you can do it on your own in a way that you can't with other things, I think.
00:06:59
Speaker
Yes.
00:07:00
Speaker
Is it usually sort of in a, do you go to a studio and you'll have that studio for a certain amount of time and it'll just be kind of you in the room with presumably a sound engineer?
00:07:11
Speaker
Exactly so.
00:07:12
Speaker
Yeah.
00:07:12
Speaker
I mean, that changed a lot over the last couple of years because people couldn't go into studios.
00:07:19
Speaker
So a lot of people started putting together home studios.
00:07:22
Speaker
And as we're doing now, there's now a lot of people that you can, you know, you can record from anywhere and people can jump on the line and
00:07:30
Speaker
Everyone can be in their isolated little rooms, which is great.
00:07:35
Speaker
It opens up the industry in a brilliant way, but it's much less interactive and you don't get to meet people and being stuck in a black box all day long is hard enough.
00:07:52
Speaker
So it's nice to be able to, I love, I much prefer going into studio.
00:07:56
Speaker
And yeah, it sort of takes as long as it takes really.
00:08:00
Speaker
Okay.
00:08:01
Speaker
How long, um, you said it takes as long as it takes, but how, how long, obviously depending on the length of the book, but is it sort of, are you looking at like a week of, of sort of recording every day to do a book or is it more than that?
00:08:15
Speaker
Yeah, I think there are real, I think there are probably pretty fixed averages.
00:08:20
Speaker
Certainly publishers tend to know roughly that it's going to take three days to record a 300 page book, for example.
00:08:28
Speaker
So I think there are,
00:08:30
Speaker
In my experience, it varies, but if the book's going to end up at 10 hours long, then probably it takes 20 hours on average to record.
00:08:41
Speaker
If you're fast, it might take 15.
00:08:44
Speaker
It does vary.
00:08:48
Speaker
I tend to average, I think most people tend to average about 100 pages a day.
00:08:52
Speaker
So that's kind of a good ballpark for how long it's going to take to record.
00:08:58
Speaker
Okay.
00:08:59
Speaker
And do you do, do you, are there lots of takes involved?
00:09:03
Speaker
Like, do you do, you'll read like a page or a chapter and then think, oh, actually I want to try a different way of doing it.
00:09:09
Speaker
And you'll just rerecord that same one.
00:09:11
Speaker
Um, no, I've never re I've never rerecorded a chapter ever.
00:09:16
Speaker
Okay.
00:09:17
Speaker
So, but there are two, there are a couple of ways of recording.
00:09:20
Speaker
So, um, there's like a roll record where you just, as the, as the narrator, you'll just, um, record.
00:09:28
Speaker
And if you make a mistake, you'll just stop and,
00:09:30
Speaker
Pick yourself up and start again.
00:09:32
Speaker
And then everything is edited in post.
00:09:35
Speaker
So then that whole, all those files just get sent off and then they'll take out all the mistakes.
00:09:40
Speaker
So you wouldn't go back and start again a chapter unless you, you know, the beginning of the chapter, but you can sort of.
00:09:47
Speaker
do a line as many times as you want and you can kind of go actually I didn't like that paragraph I'm going to start again and of course if you made a massive mistake like I don't know the characters from Ireland and they speak with an Irish accent and you haven't honoured that or you haven't had that conversation with the publisher because I don't know it's been missed somehow then maybe you might have to go and talk to the publisher or the writer and work out what you're going to do about it but
00:10:14
Speaker
in the main, if everyone's kind of on the same page with what needs to happen, that doesn't tend to happen.
00:10:20
Speaker
So sorry, I'm rambling.
00:10:22
Speaker
So that's one way of recording.
00:10:24
Speaker
And then the other way of recording is like punch and repeat.
00:10:26
Speaker
So that's when you've got an engineer there as well and you...
00:10:30
Speaker
if you fluff something, they will drop you in.
00:10:33
Speaker
So they'll reset the Pro Tools session to, I don't know, three seconds before you finish recording.
00:10:39
Speaker
And they'll play in the last bit of the sentence and then you pick it up and you carry on.
00:10:43
Speaker
So that saves a lot of editing time in post.
00:10:46
Speaker
It's a more efficient way to record in some ways, but it gives you slightly less power as the narrator in terms of like,
00:10:55
Speaker
starting and stopping.
00:10:55
Speaker
Of course you can say, actually, I didn't like that.
00:10:57
Speaker
Can I start again?
00:10:58
Speaker
But you have to get into a rhythm for that to work well, that system.
00:11:02
Speaker
So you kind of are sort of on the train, if you know what I mean.
00:11:05
Speaker
Okay.
00:11:06
Speaker
And I imagine when you start out with perhaps a new editor or sound engineer, there'll be like a little bit of teething where you two kind of eventually have to get in line, you kind of match up and get in harmony.
00:11:19
Speaker
Exactly so.
00:11:20
Speaker
Yeah, exactly.
00:11:21
Speaker
And you narrated my friend, Naomi Gibson's first book, Every Line of You.
00:11:28
Speaker
I did.
00:11:29
Speaker
Yeah, it was brilliant.
00:11:30
Speaker
It was such a great book.
00:11:32
Speaker
It is good.
00:11:32
Speaker
And her new one's out soon.
00:11:33
Speaker
Here's a random plug for you, Naomi.
00:11:34
Speaker
Game of a Girl.
00:11:35
Speaker
Not out soon, it's out now.
00:11:36
Speaker
Game of a Girl.
00:11:37
Speaker
Go buy it.
00:11:38
Speaker
Did the two
Collaborations in Audiobook Recordings
00:11:39
Speaker
of you have any interaction during that process?
00:11:43
Speaker
For that book, we did, but not really directly through the publisher.
00:11:49
Speaker
So we actually reached out to each other on Twitter, which was really nice.
00:11:54
Speaker
I think I sent a sample for that book.
00:11:56
Speaker
So sometimes you audition for books, sometimes you don't.
00:11:58
Speaker
It really depends on who the publisher is, who the author is, whether the publisher knows you and trusts you, whether it's a direct offer or not.
00:12:06
Speaker
For that book, I did a sample.
00:12:07
Speaker
So I think I sent a three-page read and the feedback was that my choices were what Naomi wanted.
00:12:16
Speaker
And so I was kind of good to go.
00:12:19
Speaker
So on that book, I then just cracked on and did it.
00:12:23
Speaker
And I didn't have any sort of direct work interaction.
00:12:28
Speaker
But usually the publisher will work directly with the author.
00:12:32
Speaker
And if there's any kind of
00:12:34
Speaker
specific names they want pronounced in a particular way or particular things that they want the narrator to know, that will get fed back.
00:12:42
Speaker
But I don't think there was a great deal of that for that particular book.
00:12:47
Speaker
No, I imagine the names pronunciation probably a much bigger thing for fantasy.
00:12:53
Speaker
Yes, exactly.
00:12:54
Speaker
And historical stuff.
00:12:55
Speaker
Um, yeah, those two genres are more, yeah, more, um, uh, there's more difficult things to pronounce, I guess.
00:13:02
Speaker
There's more unusual spelling.
00:13:04
Speaker
Exactly.
00:13:05
Speaker
Yeah.
00:13:05
Speaker
So, so it's quite rare that you, you would ever meet the, the author and like chat to them while you're doing the recordings.
00:13:11
Speaker
Yes, it's happened to me a couple of times where I've been able to have a proper conversation with the author before I recorded.
00:13:21
Speaker
There are some publishers that seem more open to it or seem to encourage it more than others.
00:13:27
Speaker
There are a couple of times when I've requested it and it's not, it's not happened.
00:13:31
Speaker
And you never quite know whether that's because the author doesn't want to, or whether there's, um, they haven't got time or whether it's actually that the publisher doesn't, doesn't want you to, to be chatting with them directly.
00:13:44
Speaker
So it's, and sometimes, I mean, something could just, I don't know, could just be because some, an agent has forgotten to ask or whatever.
00:13:50
Speaker
You never, you never kind of really know, but I recorded a book called poisoned.
00:13:54
Speaker
Um, and I, um,
00:13:56
Speaker
I had a proper hour and a half chatting with both Scholastic and Jennifer who wrote it.
00:14:03
Speaker
It was brilliant because it was just so nice to go, well, this is what I was thinking about these characters.
00:14:09
Speaker
What do you think?
00:14:10
Speaker
She was like, well, I love that.
00:14:12
Speaker
Oh, I hadn't thought of that.
00:14:13
Speaker
I'm not sure that that will work.
00:14:14
Speaker
What about this?
00:14:15
Speaker
This is what I had in my head.
00:14:16
Speaker
I'm like, oh yeah, great.
00:14:18
Speaker
And there's a, it's really nice to have that back and forth, but that's a rare occurrence.
00:14:22
Speaker
And over the, you know, a hundred or so books I've done, I think I've chatted to the author.
00:14:28
Speaker
Um, it's probably happened three, three, three times, maybe Joanne Harris was another one that it worked with where she actually came into studio and we had a couple and chatted through and that was quite a hard book because there were lots of Norse words in it.
00:14:43
Speaker
And, um,
00:14:44
Speaker
So yeah, so it does happen, but it's less common and I wish it happened more just because I think it gives me a bigger investment in a way because I get to hear where those stories have come from and what the writers heard in their head, which gives you just an extra bit of spark, I suppose, an extra kind of...
00:15:09
Speaker
insight into why this person wrote this story.
00:15:14
Speaker
That's really nice.
00:15:14
Speaker
I mean, exactly.
00:15:15
Speaker
It's just more data points for you to work with, isn't it?
00:15:18
Speaker
To put into
Industry Growth and Its Impact
00:15:19
Speaker
your performance.
00:15:20
Speaker
Yeah, exactly.
00:15:21
Speaker
And you mentioned that it can be quite a sort of individual thing, especially if you're working from home in a little black box.
00:15:31
Speaker
Have you ever done, they're less common, but have you ever done an audiobook with multiple narrators?
00:15:37
Speaker
I have.
00:15:38
Speaker
Not a lot, but I've done a couple.
00:15:41
Speaker
I think both of them were with only one other narrator.
00:15:47
Speaker
Oh no, I've done three actually, with one other narrator.
00:15:51
Speaker
Uh-huh.
00:15:53
Speaker
but they weren't multicast in the sense that we weren't in scenes together responding to each other.
00:16:01
Speaker
They were sort of isolated records, either whole chapters or bits of chapters, depending on how the book was structured.
00:16:10
Speaker
Is that more common with a dual POV, like point of view?
00:16:15
Speaker
Exactly, yeah.
00:16:17
Speaker
I think all three of those were exactly that.
00:16:19
Speaker
They were all first person characters.
00:16:22
Speaker
Oh, actually, no, I think, sorry, I'm so boring.
00:16:25
Speaker
I think one of them wasn't.
00:16:27
Speaker
I think one of them was still third person, but we kind of alternated the chapter.
00:16:34
Speaker
It followed two different threads that they met at the end.
00:16:37
Speaker
But it was third person, but still, it was kind of, yeah, really from two POVs.
00:16:44
Speaker
Okay.
00:16:45
Speaker
And when you, when there are multiple narrators, is it, would you normally sort of meet each other just to get a kind of feel for the way that, or at least hear how the other person is performing a certain character?
00:16:57
Speaker
Yeah, again, it varies.
00:17:00
Speaker
So with When We Were Young and Brave, I had a good old email exchange with Imogen, who was the other narrator.
00:17:09
Speaker
And we both sort of said what we were thinking about, what we were doing.
00:17:14
Speaker
And thankfully, they aligned, which...
00:17:17
Speaker
credit to Hazel for writing really clear characters where you can go, yeah, okay, I think this is this person.
00:17:23
Speaker
And I asked her to record, send me a little sample of what she was doing for the teacher so that I had a sense of
00:17:32
Speaker
sense of that.
00:17:33
Speaker
So that was great.
00:17:34
Speaker
They kind of hope that those two journeys aligned.
00:17:39
Speaker
With another book, we were recording in the same studio, so that was helpful.
00:17:44
Speaker
So we had the same engineer.
00:17:45
Speaker
So although we didn't connect, actually, as actors, we did have someone that was a kind of pivot point who had both.
00:17:53
Speaker
And then the third one, I didn't have any contact at all.
00:17:59
Speaker
I didn't know what they were doing.
00:18:02
Speaker
And so that was sort of just, okay, stab in the dark and see what happens.
00:18:07
Speaker
So it really varies and it does depend on kind of what studio or what publisher you're working with and what value they place on it, I think, probably.
00:18:19
Speaker
Yeah.
00:18:20
Speaker
how much time or money there is for, for, for the audio version.
00:18:24
Speaker
I wonder if you've, um, you say it was 2012, you did your first audio book.
00:18:29
Speaker
Yes.
00:18:30
Speaker
And audio books have really exploded over the last, um, few years.
00:18:35
Speaker
Um, they're just wildly more popular than they've ever been.
00:18:39
Speaker
Have you noticed that in terms of like, um, doing recordings and how much sort of more focus the publishers are putting on them?
00:18:47
Speaker
That's a really good question.
00:18:50
Speaker
If I'm honest, I haven't really noticed that.
00:18:54
Speaker
It really, it hasn't shifted markedly in that way.
00:19:00
Speaker
I think it really depends on, I don't know, I think it depends on really who you've got and how passionate they are.
00:19:09
Speaker
And there are a couple of clients that, publishers that I've worked with that are just, they just want it to be the best that it can be and they'll do everything to try and make that happen and
00:19:19
Speaker
And then there are others where I think probably they, um, they kind of outsource the project to a studio and expect the studio to do that work for them.
00:19:29
Speaker
Um, or it just varies yet.
00:19:32
Speaker
I haven't, I haven't really noticed that.
00:19:34
Speaker
Okay.
00:19:36
Speaker
The workflow has kind of stayed the same despite the popularity rise.
00:19:40
Speaker
Yeah, it has really.
00:19:41
Speaker
Um, yeah.
00:19:42
Speaker
Yeah.
00:19:43
Speaker
Okay.
00:19:44
Speaker
Well,
Voice Work: Audiobooks vs. Video Games
00:19:45
Speaker
outside of audiobooks, you also, on a similar trend, do lots of voice work for a number of video games.
00:19:55
Speaker
Is that, I would imagine, a similar process to doing audiobooks?
00:20:02
Speaker
Um, no, I mean, it is in terms of what you do, you go into a studio and you record noises.
00:20:11
Speaker
Uh, so yes, in that sense, but no, in, in terms of like creatively and what you, what you need to do, the work that you do as an actor, um, it's very different.
00:20:21
Speaker
You, with video games, you very, very rarely get full script.
00:20:25
Speaker
Um,
00:20:26
Speaker
to start with.
00:20:27
Speaker
You might, on the odd occasion, you'll get a screenplay if it's a very narrative game.
00:20:34
Speaker
It depends on the size of the game as well because if it's a sprawling narrative RPG, you're never going to get all the lines.
00:20:40
Speaker
You're only ever going to get your own lines or the lines that you...
00:20:45
Speaker
So it's a completely different process.
00:20:50
Speaker
You're also focusing purely on your character.
00:20:53
Speaker
You don't have to worry about what anyone else is doing.
00:20:56
Speaker
So you're able to hone in more clearly on just the one voice.
00:21:01
Speaker
unless you're doing multiple characters, which I tend to do quite a lot of, which I also love doing.
00:21:09
Speaker
It's great when you have to play.
00:21:11
Speaker
I mean, it's happened to me, which I wouldn't, I don't advise it, but it's happened to me a couple of times where I've played.
00:21:16
Speaker
I've spoken to myself in scenes as a completely different character.
00:21:21
Speaker
Yeah.
00:21:22
Speaker
Yeah.
00:21:23
Speaker
I mean, one of them were, in one game it was Australian, twin Australian boys.
00:21:30
Speaker
So I kind of got away with it because they were, you know, supposed to sound similar.
00:21:33
Speaker
But on another one, it was, I think, slightly accidental.
00:21:38
Speaker
You never know, they might have re-recorded.
00:21:41
Speaker
But yeah, it's a different process.
00:21:43
Speaker
And there's the opposite to books in terms of how many people want to be present and how many people want to have a say and have an opinion because you'll have...
00:21:52
Speaker
The developers, the writers, you'll have all the clients on the line.
00:21:56
Speaker
Then you'll have the studio that's recording it.
00:21:58
Speaker
You'll have a voice director.
00:21:59
Speaker
You'll have an engineer.
00:22:01
Speaker
You'll often have someone from the studio there, kind of a producer to make sure that everything goes well.
00:22:08
Speaker
So you can have as many, it's like 10 or 12 people on the line, which is very opposite from audiobooks.
00:22:18
Speaker
Yes, it sounds it.
00:22:19
Speaker
And I had a little look over your IMDB page and saw that.
00:22:24
Speaker
And this is very exciting.
00:22:26
Speaker
And fans of the podcast, you're about to see the gamer side of Jamie, is that you're doing a lot of the voice work for the new, and I know you can't talk about it, but the new Baldur's Gate game.
00:22:36
Speaker
As a D&D fan, as a big fan of Larry and She Doors, that made me so excited.
00:22:41
Speaker
But my question was, and I think you kind of just answered it by saying lots of people on the call.
00:22:46
Speaker
The studio is based in Belgium, if I'm right.
00:22:50
Speaker
Yeah.
00:22:50
Speaker
So I'm guessing you don't fly over to Belgium to do all the recordings.
00:22:55
Speaker
No.
00:22:56
Speaker
I mean, they actually, I think they've got, are they Belgium or Ireland?
00:23:00
Speaker
Or maybe they have both because they also have a studio in Guildford.
00:23:02
Speaker
They have a hub in Guildford as well.
00:23:04
Speaker
Oh, do they?
00:23:05
Speaker
So I think Larian are quite, obviously they're massive.
00:23:09
Speaker
So they've got a lot of different hubs.
00:23:11
Speaker
And did you meet any of the other actors or was it just you were in there with your lines and that was it?
00:23:18
Speaker
A lot of that was recorded in isolation.
00:23:21
Speaker
So I don't know whether they, again, I can only speak for my own experience.
00:23:27
Speaker
I don't know whether any of it was multi-record.
00:23:33
Speaker
It doesn't happen very often in games.
00:23:34
Speaker
I should flag that you actually get a chance to record.
00:23:39
Speaker
be in scenes.
00:23:40
Speaker
It does happen for sure.
00:23:43
Speaker
The big ones, the God of Wars, the Last of Us.
00:23:45
Speaker
Exactly.
00:23:47
Speaker
They've all been in a volume together.
00:23:51
Speaker
There are some games where you do get to record with other actors that usually are full performance captures, so you might get into a volume together.
00:24:01
Speaker
Most VO in my experience is recorded individually.
00:24:05
Speaker
But there are some games that you work on and Baldur's Gate is an example of that where you know quite a lot of the actors for various reasons, maybe because you've worked with them on another game or because you've done a theatre job with them.
00:24:20
Speaker
So
Voiceover Directing: Rosie's Approach
00:24:21
Speaker
on that job, it was really nice because I'd go into studio and somebody else would be coming out and we'd have a nice catch up and talk about life.
00:24:30
Speaker
So it was quite sociable, that one.
00:24:32
Speaker
Oh, well, that's great.
00:24:33
Speaker
That's really nice.
00:24:34
Speaker
And whilst we're on video games, you have done, I know for Gloomhaven, the video game adaptation of the board game, am I right in thinking you were the voiceover director?
00:24:49
Speaker
Yeah, that's right.
00:24:50
Speaker
I was.
00:24:51
Speaker
I worked with a brilliant, wonderful actor called Alec Newman, who is an absolute gem.
00:24:56
Speaker
So talented.
00:24:57
Speaker
He's such a great performer and a really lovely man.
00:25:01
Speaker
And because it was just him, it was really wonderful.
00:25:05
Speaker
We just spent a week together working through the material.
00:25:09
Speaker
It was very dense and
00:25:12
Speaker
we worked at a very um alex a very busy uh understandably busy actor and so we we condensed it all into a week and it was it was pretty intense so um uh but it was great fun and yeah really interesting because it's again it's funny you should pick that that game because it's the most like game like an audiobook that i've ever experienced because it's all narration really um and though there are there are definitely characters in there the
00:25:41
Speaker
The developers were keen to not try and create loads of different character voices as he was going through that narrative, that journey.
00:25:50
Speaker
So we found touches.
00:25:52
Speaker
We had to kind of work quite closely to find touches of character, but whilst maintaining the narrator, if you see what I mean.
00:26:00
Speaker
So it was really one voice, but with a flavor.
00:26:04
Speaker
So it was quite like doing an audiobook, if I'm honest, that particular game.
00:26:08
Speaker
And have you been a voiceover director on other projects as well?
00:26:13
Speaker
I have, yeah.
00:26:15
Speaker
Certainly over the last few years, it's something I've been doing a lot of.
00:26:19
Speaker
And I have to say, again, I absolutely love it.
00:26:23
Speaker
Video games is such an amazing medium because the stories you can tell are so...
00:26:29
Speaker
so vast and they're unlimited you know they're not limited by by anything um yeah the style or this it's just it's an extraordinary world yeah it's great i love i love working with actors i come at it and from an you know entirely from an acting point of view um and lots of actors respond really well to that and um
00:26:50
Speaker
Some don't, but all actors are unique and it's a wonderful job to see what you can do to pull out particular performances from particular actors and what they need.
00:27:06
Speaker
It's a playful relationship and it's really wonderful to do.
00:27:13
Speaker
So yeah, it's something that I have been doing a lot of recently.
00:27:15
Speaker
I can't talk about much of it, of course.
00:27:18
Speaker
That's right.
00:27:20
Speaker
You sign lots of NDAs for video games.
00:27:23
Speaker
But yeah, I've worked on some incredible projects and yeah, I am really excited by some of the upcoming stuff that's going on.
00:27:31
Speaker
Awesome.
Creative Expansion: From Voice to Writing
00:27:33
Speaker
Well, I'm excited to see what comes out soon with your name on it.
00:27:38
Speaker
Oh, thank you.
00:27:39
Speaker
And before we get into the, we're in the twilight of the episode now, before we get to the end, I have to ask because it's part of the podcast, really.
00:27:48
Speaker
You narrating, voice work, acting, directing, you are flexing a lot of creative muscles.
00:27:55
Speaker
Do you have any plans or have you thought about maybe adding writing to the list in whatever capacity, whether that's screenplays or novels or what have you?
00:28:06
Speaker
It's a very interesting question.
00:28:08
Speaker
I've never thought of myself as a writer, but I am very much a creator.
00:28:14
Speaker
And actually over the last couple of years, I have.
00:28:19
Speaker
I was commissioned by the RSC to create a family show.
00:28:24
Speaker
That was a few years ago and I wrote a couple of very short sort of seven, ten minute mini plays.
00:28:34
Speaker
I wrote three of those, which I really enjoyed.
00:28:39
Speaker
And I've also started doing some adaptation for video game, not in a big capacity, but where there's an existing kind of
00:28:51
Speaker
localization or translation into English that then needs a bit more detail or some more character work pulling out.
00:29:00
Speaker
I've started to do a bit of that.
00:29:03
Speaker
And yeah, I've always written down ideas.
00:29:07
Speaker
And I also worked on the Gunpowder Plot as a
00:29:10
Speaker
as one of the story originators.
00:29:11
Speaker
So that was really cool.
00:29:13
Speaker
So in answer to your question, yes, though I've never ever thought of myself as a writer.
00:29:17
Speaker
I have written and I do write things down.
00:29:23
Speaker
So let's see, watch this space.
00:29:26
Speaker
Yes, you're on a trajectory.
00:29:28
Speaker
Perhaps we'll see some great works of literature from you at some point.
00:29:32
Speaker
Maybe.
00:29:32
Speaker
I think certainly in collaboration with others, for sure.
00:29:36
Speaker
Yes.
00:29:37
Speaker
And I mean, if you're going to stick in video games, it's such a collaborative genre.
00:29:41
Speaker
You know, every kind of aspect of that is a collaboration between multiple people.
00:29:45
Speaker
Yeah,
Advice for Aspiring Voiceover Artists
00:29:46
Speaker
most definitely.
00:29:47
Speaker
Oh yeah.
00:29:47
Speaker
It's an amazing environment for that.
00:29:51
Speaker
Everyone is so detailed in what they do and working in their area, but of course, yeah, in collaboration with everyone else.
00:29:58
Speaker
Yes.
00:29:59
Speaker
And before we get to the final question, I did want to ask, what advice would you give to somebody who is perhaps interested in getting into voiceover work or audiobook narration?
00:30:16
Speaker
I mean, do it like it's we're in an amazing time where it's it's really so much more accessible now than certainly when I started.
00:30:27
Speaker
And it doesn't cost a huge amount of money either to, you know, you can you can record.
00:30:32
Speaker
There are phones now with really amazing mics and you can you can record at home as well.
00:30:39
Speaker
the advice I would give is to do it.
00:30:41
Speaker
I was incredibly lucky.
00:30:42
Speaker
I just wrote to a brilliant publisher, Jo Foreshaw.
00:30:46
Speaker
I wrote to her when I was just early in my career and said, look, I've always loved listening to audiobooks.
00:30:52
Speaker
I used to listen to them with my great-grandmother who was blind and
00:30:57
Speaker
It was how she accessed all of her kind of story and all her content.
00:31:01
Speaker
And I always wanted to kind of record them.
00:31:05
Speaker
She loved Catherine Cookson.
00:31:07
Speaker
And I just thought I'd love to be able to do that.
00:31:09
Speaker
And I'd always been a very fluent reader and loved reading, loved books.
00:31:14
Speaker
And I wrote to her and she just took a chance on me.
00:31:17
Speaker
and gave me a book sent it to me in the post ipads i think were were a thing but like not really a thing and so you know i just that's i was really lucky she gave me a she gave me a chance and so just you just have to do that you just have to reach out to people find people that have done it twitter's a great resource go you know i want to do some this thing how do i do this send me a sample and
00:31:41
Speaker
all of those things you have to be proactive of course it's all very well just saying i'd like to do this but you have to have something to kind of show that you can do it and want to do it but yeah just go for it um practice yeah keep practicing just just do it put yourself out there that's great
00:31:58
Speaker
Great advice.
00:31:58
Speaker
And ACX, like you can you can apply for your ACX is a cool tool as well, where you can literally search for writers that are looking for narrators and go direct rather than having to go through a kind of middle middle person.
00:32:12
Speaker
So that's a really good place to just try and find find work as well.
00:32:18
Speaker
Okay.
00:32:18
Speaker
Yeah.
00:32:19
Speaker
Well, it's really nice to hear that you having done, you know, a hundred or so audio books started out just by emailing a publisher and they, and they got back to you.
00:32:28
Speaker
So I guess that's probably motivating in of itself.
00:32:31
Speaker
Yeah, I hope so.
00:32:32
Speaker
I mean, there are those people out there.
00:32:34
Speaker
There are brilliant people out there that will help you and will take a chance on you.
00:32:39
Speaker
So yeah, try and find them.
00:32:42
Speaker
Yeah, you've got to keep trying until you find someone like that.
00:32:45
Speaker
And then
Rosie's Desert Island Book and Conclusion
00:32:46
Speaker
you're off to the races.
00:32:47
Speaker
Amazing.
00:32:48
Speaker
Well, that brings us to what is always the final question of every episode, which is, Rosie, if you were stranded on a desert island with a single book, which book would you take?
00:32:59
Speaker
Well, I'm going to cheat and I'm also going to be very boring and theatrical.
00:33:04
Speaker
And I'm sure that I will not, I'm sure loads of people have said this, but I would take the complete works of Shakespeare because you get all 37 and, you know, it offers something for every day, every mood, every situation you need to be in, you can find...
00:33:20
Speaker
find somebody that's going through something that relates to you.
00:33:27
Speaker
And of course, you know, if I got really stuck, I could rip out the bits that I knew off by heart and like use them to start a fire or something.
00:33:34
Speaker
So, you know, there's material there.
00:33:36
Speaker
The bits that don't make much sense to us anymore.
00:33:39
Speaker
Just kind of, you know, there's practical use there as well.
00:33:43
Speaker
Yes.
00:33:44
Speaker
An endless wordplay with Shakespeare that you can look over and go over and think backwards and upside down and stuff.
00:33:50
Speaker
I mean, it's a great choice.
00:33:51
Speaker
And for someone tied to the theatre and things like that, obviously it's got a great connection to you as well.
00:33:58
Speaker
Yeah.
00:33:59
Speaker
So I'm sorry not to be more original in my choice.
00:34:02
Speaker
No, that's great.
00:34:04
Speaker
It's a great choice.
00:34:04
Speaker
And I think less people have taken that than you would think.
00:34:07
Speaker
Yeah.
00:34:07
Speaker
Yes.
00:34:08
Speaker
Well, I think only a couple.
00:34:11
Speaker
Yeah.
00:34:11
Speaker
More people have taken Jane Austen than Shakespeare.
00:34:14
Speaker
Yeah.
00:34:15
Speaker
I'm on board with that as well.
00:34:17
Speaker
I'm definitely on board with that.
00:34:19
Speaker
I think it's, I think it's wherever you can get more for your money, really.
00:34:23
Speaker
Give me a complete works of the Brontes or Austin.
00:34:28
Speaker
Well, recently someone managed to find online a copy of The Lord of the Rings as one book.
00:34:34
Speaker
So I thought that's clever.
00:34:36
Speaker
You've done well.
00:34:37
Speaker
Perfect.
00:34:37
Speaker
Another savvy, another savvy desert islander.
00:34:42
Speaker
That's it.
00:34:42
Speaker
Exactly.
00:34:43
Speaker
Well, thanks so much, Rosie, for coming on the podcast and telling us all about your work in narrating and voiceovers and audiobooks.
00:34:50
Speaker
It's been really interesting chatting with you.
00:34:52
Speaker
Oh, thank you very much.
00:34:53
Speaker
Thanks for your time.
00:34:55
Speaker
And for everyone listening, if you want to keep up with what Rosie is doing, you can follow her on Twitter at Rosie Jones Actor.
00:35:02
Speaker
And to make sure you don't miss an episode of this podcast, follow us on Twitter, Instagram, TikTok and Facebook.
00:35:08
Speaker
We also have a Patreon now for exclusive access and content.
00:35:11
Speaker
And for more bookish chat, check out my other podcast, The Chosen Ones and Other Tropes.
00:35:16
Speaker
Thanks again to Rosie and thanks to everyone listening.
00:35:18
Speaker
We'll catch you on the next episode.