Author: Eneasz

One thing you don’t think of first before you start an audio book is how different speech sounds from the way it’s written. Take “she’d tried harder” from this week’s episode. No problem, right? Except the ‘d’ at the end of she’d rests right against the ‘t’ from tried. When spoken, it sounds exactly like “she tried harder”. What happened to the ‘d’? Trying to pronounce both of them inserts a very conspicuous break between “she’d” and “tried” which not only sounds awkward, but is also not like anyone actually talks. I don’t actually know what to do about this, but I have gotten into the habit of over-enunciating my words so I can be understood clearly.

Relevant: this SMBC comic about glottal stops in conversational American English. I don’t think Batman is a great example, as it’s easy and not uncommon to pronounce both the ‘t’ and the ‘m’, but it’s an astute observation that applies often, and Batman makes for a better punchline.

These episodes with extreme emotion are rather difficult to do, primarily because I’m really not a voice actor. I have to really psych myself up, and do several takes. The only reason I can do them at all is because I feel what Harry is feeling, which is entirely due to Eliezer’s skills as a storyteller. When I first read the Azkaban arc I couldn’t breathe through most of it. “Acting” is much easier when it isn’t actually acting, it’s just expressing & recording what you are already feeling inside. It kinda feels like cheating. I hope it came out alright.

There’s also the technical problem of such drastic changes in volume blowing out the microphone, it seems I should have adjusted even more for that, but it’s not awful.

The phoenix call I used was primarily the red-tailed hawk cry. People often assume this is the bald eagle cry, because it is used in TV and Hollywood in place of the real bald eagle cry, which is a fair bit less impressive. Obviously one’s national bird should have the coolest cry – and if it doesn’t, we can fix that in post!