What's coverage?
In voiceover circles, coverage is when you record certain things that could be pronounced different ways. Over the years, I've noticed that this can be a good tool to ensure that after the recording session you don't have to go back and rerecord stuff.
"Most people would rather live with dull despair than experience one moment of genuine pain to escape it." - Tom
Stuff like what?
Coverage includes a few things...
Often there is a mistake in the script that was overlooked. This happens all the time because the client has been writing and rewriting a script for weeks or months. Often they don't notice mistakes that are immediately noticed by someone who has never looked at the copy before. If you see what is an obvious typo, record it correctly.
Often there are grammatical errors because English isn't the native language of the copywriter. This comes up for me a lot because I have many regular international clients. I'm at the point with many of them that they just tell me to correct the script as I record it to make it proper English. This means they trust me so I honor that by doing the best I can to make it grammatically correct. If it's a new client, though, I record the way it's written then the way it should be written and send them both takes. I explain why and almost every time they accept & appreciate the changes I've made.
Often there is more than one way to pronounce something correctly. If that happens then ideally you should ask the client before you record it. Sometimes you can't. At many of the recording studios I regularly work at here in NYC, I don't get the script in advance so I have no idea what I'm saying next. I also record projects from home and the turnaround is pretty quick so I don't have time to ask for their pronunciation preference and wait for an answer.
Tip Of the Week
Here are some examples of ways to help your client with coverage. FYI some of these are what I do and others are from fellow voice actors who were kind enough to share their coverages. Thanks, fellow voicers!
The year 2022 as 20-22 and 2,022
Either as ee-ther and eye-ther
Data as day-ta and dah-ta
Finance as FIE-nance and fuh-NANCE
Our as ow-er and are (my international clients tend to prefer the latter)
UK to US terms i.e. changing the word 'lift' to 'elevator'
Record three versions of the last line
Record an acronym as if it's an actual word
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Tom Dheere is the VO Strategist, a voice over business & marketing coach and demo producer since 2011. He is also a voice actor with over 25 years of experience who has narrated just about every type of voiceover you can think of. When not voicing or talking about voicing, he produces the sci-fi comic book Agent 1.22.
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