I’ve worked with Ree Collins at Creative Factory, a youth theatre group in Stockton, for three years now. She’s always letting us know about lots of new and exciting opportunities in the area so I was very excited when I received a text from her back in June asking me if I would like to do a voiceover for an upcoming project. She said that it was a short film that was being made by Tees Valley Arts, who she also works for, about the importance of recycling and to provide information on how local people in Middlesbrough can recycle…
I absolutely love getting involved with anything to do with drama and acting so my immediate response was YES! I was so excited to be working on a real project with people who are professionals in the arts and I thought this would be a great opportunity to get a taste for what working in the arts is really like. Ree sent the scripts over to me straight away and I got busy practising the lines!
I came along to the TVA office one Saturday morning in June, ready and raring to go. First, I met Neil Grainger, he’s a professional actor who loves Middlesbrough and has made videos about the town, but has been in TV series like ‘Hebburn‘ too. I had a chat with Neil about the script and after a quick read through we got set up in the recording studio along with Michael Sreenan, the sound engineer. We had a soundcheck and after we’d finished having a laugh at some of the lines Neil had to say we got straight on with it!
Neil’s character was somebody who didn’t know anything about recycling at all and I played a character who knew all about recycling and told Neil all the hints and tips for how to do it properly. The room had to be completely silent to the extent that we couldn’t even turn the pages of the script whilst speaking into the microphones… One section of the script required us to shout, as if we were trying to be heard over a loud machine, which felt a bit weird as the rest of the TVA office were trying to be so quiet during the recording! We recorded two slightly different scripts and after a few takes of each we were all done. It was time for a celebratory cup of tea and some well-deserved lunch!
The animator, Mark Jobe, created an awesome animation to go alongside the voiceover, which showed the recycling process from beginning to end. Our voice recordings were edited and placed over the top and along with some funky music, and a few months later the recycling animations are complete and looking and sounding really cool, almost ready to be shown to the people of Middlesbrough.
I really enjoyed doing the voiceover and working with a real arts organisation to be part of a project. In fact, I enjoyed working at TVA so much that I’ve come back for more, doing work experience until Christmas!