Jen Edwards-Hughes, Ronni Saxon, Shirley Venard and Isabelle Monk in Recording Studio A at Babble-On
This month is Breast Cancer Awareness Month and our friends from SHOUT! Radio Productions were in Recording Studio A at Babble-On to record a stylish radio ad promoting a concert for Target Pink – an exclusive line of pink-themed products created to benefit the Breast Cancer Research Foundation. The show, a concert with P!ink, Butch Walker & DJ Laurent Vacher hit the stage on Friday, September 30th, at the South Street Seaport in Lower Manhattan.
Mark Benninghofen and Joe Weismann, the writers (see’em here – middle of the page), wanted to create a spot that would get across a lot of info about the event while keeping Target’s cool, funky brand style in tact. The hitch in all this was that the production had to have a slick concert vibe and come in at 30 seconds. With TV spots this is easy – concert footage, fast cutting graphics and supers pull the load.
When all you’ve got is audio, you need to be nuclear efficient and smart.
Mark and Joe sensed a sophisticated layering of voices, a tune from P!nk and stylized audio production would do the trick. They were right. Even so, paramount to getting the radio spot off on the right footing was getting killer voice-over talent – something SHOUT! does infallibly well. Les Femmes Fantastiques for this gig were Minneapolis voice-over talent Jennifer Edwards Hughes, Ronnie Saxon, Shirley Venard and Isabelle Monk.
For fun we piled all the girls into the recording studio booth so they could feed off each others energy, rhythm and pitch. This might seem like a “no-brainer” but more often than not larger groups of voice-over talent are recorded separately to allow for more flexibility in the mix.
Personally, I gotta admit – it’s nice to break the rules. This session called for it.
The ability of this troupe to offer space in their performance while carefully blending where they needed to is a testament to their acting skills and voice-over prowess. The audio post production was fun too since it involved a lot of stereo voice effects, reverse cymbal crashes, automated EQ’s, carefully timed reverb and music loops.
Here’s a slightly different agency version of the mix, “P!ink”. You’ll hear even more of the neatly timed interaction and vocal blends here…
Jennifer Edwards-Hughes, Ronni Saxon and Isabelle Monk can be booked through their Twin Cities agent Wehmann Models and Talent, inc. Shirley Venard can be hired through her Minneapolis agent, Lipservice Talent Guild.