News from the Booth - May 2019

One Voice Awards 2019 . . . 

On Saturday 11 May 2019 - I attended the One Voice Awards in London. This is a major annual event in the world of audio and voice overs in the UK, part of the One Voice Conference run by the inestimable Gravy for The Brain.  Awards are given for excellence across all genres of voice work and the judging process is acknowledged as being exceptionally thorough, totally independent and incorruptable! There are only two Audiobook related awards, one for non-fiction one for fiction - and this year I was shortlisted in both categories. To my delight and surprise, I won the One Voice Award for the Best Fiction Audiobook Performance. My acceptance speech was less than impressive - so here, with hindsight, is the speech I wish I had made! 

The Acceptance Speech I wish I'd made 

 "Thank you so much for this wonderful award - it seems that after a career spanning fifty years during which time I have undergone several re-incarnations - actor to TV continuity announcer to TV researcher to TV programme producer, to voiceover, to video director, to tutor, to director, to theatre producer,  and then full circle back to acting and voiceover - and finally I've found my way into audiobooks.  At last I've found my niche - Thank goodness! 

Being nominated for an award for something you love is amazing. Winning an award really is the icing on the cake! 

What makes this award particularly sweet for me, is that the audiobook submitted for consideration was one that I self-directed and recorded remotely from my personal studio, delivering chapters as clean audio to the publisher for final editing and mastering.  This is not the way audiobooks in the UK are generally produced as many of you will know. The vast majority of UK publications are recorded in a mainstream recording studio with a producer or engineer sitting on the other side of the glass. But for this book, I was flying solo!  This means that the tech stuff and the sound quality was down to me. My personal studio and I rose to the challenge successfully and though I had obviously discussed the overall feel of the book, the characters of the people within it with the author and publisher,  essentially, the choices I made about the overall tone of the read, the narrative voice, the ambiance, the pacing, the characters, their accents and their relationships and reactions, were my decisions.

I know that remote recording is a somewhat contentious issue, with some voicing concerns that it's impossible to achieve high quality audiobooks when narrators self-record.   Of course, not all 'home studios' are equal, but superb audiobooks with the highest possible production values can be, and are, regularly narrated by performers who are flying solo.   I, and many other UK based narrators work regularly and successfully with major publishers in the US (Brilliance, Blackstone, Harper, Tantor, Audible, Macmillan, Disney Audio and many more) as well as with a few pioneering publishers in the UK and these productions regularly get fantastic reviews in Audiofile Magazine and elsewhere, are awarded Earphone Awards and Audies - and now a One Voice Award - so are being acknowledged for their technical and creative quality.

I am not knocking mainstream studios. Many extraordinary audiobooks are created in the traditional way, and  it is a real treat when I am cast to record in a mainstream studio  - but working from home gives a flexibility which makes the whole process more relaxed - but believe me - I am much tougher on myself than any director or producer I have ever worked with. 

 I'd like to congratulate all the nominees and winners this evening, particularly all my audiobook colleagues. I know the quality of your work and how tough the competition for this award has been. I'd like to thank the One Voice Awards and Gravy for the Brain and their teams for pulling all this together, and to Penelope Rawlins for presenting this beautiful thing to me ... it will be in pride of place. I'd like to thank Equity - particularly the Audio Committee for the support they give to everyone working in this industry. And thank you to the publishers and producers of audiobooks who keep raising the bar; to the listeners who keep on listening; and to the authors who create the words and people - before bravely hand over their babies. And finally, I'd like to thank my long suffering husband. It can't be easy living with a woman who spends much of her life shut up in a small padded room talking to herself."

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PS - and I was so flumoxed, I didn't have my celebratory photo taken at the end of the evening!