Granny Smiths, Quiet Shirts, and a Tiny Little Boop

This morning I sorted through my shirts and chose a quiet one (one that doesn’t make noise when my body moves). At my regular coffee shop, they know I like a “grande latte, extra hot” but I needed it without any milk — an Americano extra hot instead. Then I drove into Seattle (to “Clatter & Din,” the recording studio we use), excited to record the voice track of our Iran TV special.

It was a great day. By the end, my head is exhausted. If you asked my brain what’s the most demanding thing I do in my work, it would be standing in a recording studio to tape the voice track of one of my TV shows.

Of course “tape” is a relic of an analog day back in the last century. Today it’s digitalized, and the engineer can edit the sounds I make as easily as I can edit this Word document. I’ve learned to stop mid-sentence, take a breath, survey the script landscape, and carry on in a way that can be edited together seamlessly.

Simon Griffith (my TV director/producer) is a master who wears a million hats in our production. My passion (the words) coincides with his least skillful area (transcribing the fine edits we make in our last loving “script scrub” with managing editor Risa Laib into the final version of the script). So I bring my penciled-up last copy as a backup for his “ready to record” printout of our script. Every word matters.

Eric, the sound engineer, is excited about a new “rock ‘n roll” mic (a U-250 or something). He loves the way it “picks up the complexity of the mid-range and makes the bass rich yet not tubby.”

I’m excited about this last step in the production of our Iran show. As it’s an hour long (compared to our regular half-hour Europe travel shows), we’ll be working the entire day to record the 14-page script. While my legs get tired, I stand up and even clip the script to the top of the fully extended music rack to open up my body and get the most energized sound. Granny Smith apples — which the Clatter & Din people know I like to keep my voice crisp — are lovingly sectioned in a dish in the booth. I’m confident my voice will make it through the day (yet always a little nervous, because when it goes, it’s gone).

Simon and Eric analyze and time my work as slowly, one paragraph at a time, we work our way through the script. Simon (who’s timed everything to the finished video editing) will say, “I need it half a second faster.” I do it again a bit too fast and he’ll say, “Give me a Goldilocks.” We all know that how each word is hit is critical in making the meanings clear. Saying something worded harshly with a smile can make the point clear without being off-putting.

The mic really is good. It sounds great in my headphones. During one read, I passed a little gas daintily yet audibly. We listened again, and sure enough, it was there. (We left it in — like a builder leaves some fun graffiti under the drywall on the frame of a house he’s building.)

Many pronunciations are debatable. We need to live with whatever pronunciation we choose. Consistency trumps correctness. Mooz-lim, Muzz-lim; ahm-bee-ahnz, am (like yam)-bee-ahnz.

The work drags on. It seems I can always do a paragraph a little better. I’m driven to communicate not words…but ideas. While it’s a nice to be done early enough to beat the miserable Seattle traffic, we didn’t make it. And driving stop-and-go home, I was very excited about having perhaps our best production yet in the can.