Session Planner

Booking a Session

Here’s the scoop on booking a session at Babble-On Recording Studios:
Call Babble-On Recording Studios at 612.375.0533 to hold time or book firm a session with our engineer. If you don’t want to immediately book the time (to give you time to organize voice talent, client and agency schedules) you may hold the time for your session up until the day before without officially booking it. When you book firm a session, you are responsible for paying for the studio time. If a particular engineer that you request already has a hold on his or her time, you may request a second hold on that time. We’ll keep you informed on the status of the client that is in the first hold position. If that time slot becomes available, we’ll contact you as soon as possible to book firm your session.You may challenge the first hold client for the engineer’s time, if you’re able to book firm your session when you call initially. The first hold client has a first right of refusal on the engineer’s time. If the first hold client cannot book firm the session time that they’re holding, you win the challenge, and you may book your session with our engineer. In this instance, you have booked firm your time, and you’re responsible for paying for the session time for which you challenged. In the event of unforeseen circumstances that force you to cancel a booked firm session, we will do our best to re-sell that session time. If we’re able to do so, we’ll work with you to waive some of the session fees associated with your booking. If we’re unable to re-sell the time, you’ll be charged for the session time that you’ve booked.
To hold or to book a session at Babble-On, we’ll need to know:

• How much time you need
• Your agency’s name
• Your client’s name
• The project or product name
• The producer’s name and direct phone number
• The writer’s name
• The nature of the project (a radio or TV commercial, audio for the Web, an industrial voiceover, etc.)
• How many spots you are producing
• Who will be attending the session
• The names of voice-over talent you’ve hired
• Whether or not you require a digital patch or phone patch to record voice-over talent at another studio, and, if so, how much time you will need for the patch
• Whether or not you need a pad for your session or your patch or possibly for both

A pad is a half-hour time block that is used as a cushion on the end of a session or a patch. You’ll be billed for the pad only if you use it. Studios typically don’t allow pads longer than a half hour.

Music

Consider what style of music you might want to use for your project and be sure to communicate your music direction to your engineer ahead of time. You may want to send us a sample of the style of music that you’d like to use or mimic.

Although we have plenty of stock music at Babble-On, some styles may be difficult to match exactly. But, with our long list of vendors and our affiliation with facilities that specialize in creating original compositions, we can usually get just about anything you might need expediently. However, having ample lead time is always a big help in obtaining the best results.

We can help you budget for a music search and music licensing fees for your project. In order to help you estimate costs for music, we’d need to know:

• how the music will be used (in broadcast commercials, a corporate project, something for sale or promotion, etc.)
• the media buy (local, regional or national for a broadcast commercial)
• how many copies will be made or distributed (for corporate, sales or promotional audio or video presentation)
• what time-frame the music license needs to cover (one-time usage, 13-week or annual run, or, in-perpetuity usage)

If you decide to do a music search in advance of your session, our rule of thumb is to budget an hour two per genre of music. For example, if you intend to produce three radio spots, and you need country music in one, techno music in another, and salsa music in the third (we’d be extremely interested in knowing what kind of campaign you’re working on!) but that aside, we’d recommend budgeting three to six hours of search time.

Accurate music search budgets allow us to really comb through our extensive music libraries to find numerous, good options for each style of music that you need. See our rate sheet for details.

Have you considered the benefits of original music versus stock music?

One of the benefits of original music is that you own that piece of music; so, you won’t ever hear it on other advertisers’ spots. You can’t guarantee this kind of exclusivity with stock music.

Typically, original music is more expensive than using and licensing a piece of stock music from an existing music library. However, that’s not always the case. You may wish to check out a company that specializes in custom scoring for TV, radio, video and film.

If you want to explore the option of original music for your project, the staff at Babble-On Recording Studios can help you find a custom music facility that will be a good fit for your project.

For more information, e-mail us or call us at 612.375.0533.

Talents

Once you’ve booked your voice-over talent, be sure that you have talent contracts to bring with you to the session (if you’re using union voice talent).

Pass along to your voice actors a map or directions to Babble-On.

If you conducted talent auditions for your script(s), it’s often helpful to e-mail, or post those auditions ahead of time for Babble-On. We’ve found that writers and producers will frequently reference talent auditions either when directing the talent or for clueing in the engineer on the direction of an ad. It’s much more efficient to do this, if you’ve sent the talent auditions to our studio ahead of time. Our engineers can then re-play them when necessary.

Materials & Accessories

Think about what materials you will need to walk away with at the end of your session (an audio CD, a data CD or CD-ROM of the audio files, a DVD, electronic deliveries of MP3 files, or maybe .WAV/.AIF files posted). Your answer to this question will help us determine what types of gear or accessories we’ll need to have set up for you. Please let us know what you need before your session, and we’ll be sure to have everything ready to go for you.

If your session is for a TV commercial, or it requires us to lock-to-picture, please provide Babble-On with a picture ahead of time. We encourage you to upload the picture as a QuickTime movie (dimensions: 1280 x 720, compression: H.264). It’s also always best for us to have an OMF file of the audio.