Lesson 6 - Posted on 2017-04-14 by Lucas King

1) Date of Session: 3/8/17
2) Time in: 7:30 p.m.
3) Time out: 12:30 a.m.
4) Lesson #: 6

Commercial recording, this lesson was one of the most difficult for me so far. I read through the commercials and it was hard to make them come to life. Gary and I were working in the edit bay for this one, basically saying the same thing over and over trying to get it right. I have a newfound respect for people who do this for a living and actually make the commercials sound interesting. I spent a lot of time before working on this lesson in the station listening to commercials. It's interesting to hear the difference between how on-air personalities read commercials and how voice actors read them. Most of the on-air personalities just read the commercials but they are very animated when they do it. The voice actors sound like they're acting, almost taking on a character. 

The most challenging part for me was feeling silly. Reading commercials feels unnatural to me. I'm almost taking on a character or trying to act. Since I'm not necessarily an actor this exercise pushed me. It seemed like no matter how many times I read the copy, or how many different ways I read the copy it seemed wrong. Eventually I was able to read the commercial in a way that was satisfactory, but I had to get over my fear of feeling silly. After I got over that the commercials sounded much better.