Technology has played a big part, both positive and in some cases, negative, in the changing landscape of educational publishing. Even through constant staff and budget cuts for many of these companies, content in all areas is still being written in nearly the same volume as past years, but for some publisher’s the content exists only on-line. This has of course created a hardship for the text book printing industry and other vendors. That said there are always opportunities as things change and shift.
We’ve seen a huge increase in educational audio production for several publishers. These forward thinking companies saw the writing on the wall earlier than others and created platforms for distributing the content. Each of these books needs audio recorded, edited and mastered so it can be served on-line for use by the vision impaired. The platforms integrate audio & video clips, graphics and book text to create an interactive experience for the student that doesn’t exist with a traditional textbook. The student can view the book on their laptop, tablet or even their smart phone and get the benefit of the content.
Our approach to this type of audio production was to build a team, by interviewing, auditioning and vetting a roster of talented voiceover artist’s who could efficiently record each book and deliver it on deadline. What we discovered is that you need to be flexible in your selection of voiceover artists. Through trial and error, we built a core group of female and male voiceover artists with home studios and experience editing long-form audio. These VO people need more than a good voice. They need the ability to edit the book into a large number of discreet files with a strict pre-determined file naming structure.
Coordinating and Managing this growing team of VO professionals is another important part of the equation. We believe in scheduling pre-production launch calls with both the client and voiceover person to go over each book’s particular specifications. Then we manage the production schedule and do status checks regularly so that we always stay on schedule. We’re in constant contact with the VO person as questions are asked and then answered by the Media Editor.
For us at DEG, if you deliver on time and on budget you get more work, sometimes a lot more work. It’s really that simple. So much of the educational media production landscape is changing. Very often it’s not changing for the better. But in the case of educational audio production, opportunities exist. The team approach we’ve taken has worked well for our clients and our business. We’ve built a deep bench that allows us to scale up when needed and hit ever challenging publishing deadlines with great accuracy.
Written by: John Briccetti,
Owner of DEG Productions, Inc., DEG Direct Response and Deerfield Education Group & Partner of Future of Fishing, Inc., degproductions.tv, www.buymightybite.com
Contact John @ john@degproductions.tv