What Do You Do About The Sound Of Page Turning When Narrating Audiobooks?

hey there it’s David H Lawrence the 17th
and every so often I’ll get a question
from somebody who’s new to the
performing arts new – voiceover and new
to on-camera a question that I kind of
categorize in the in the area of yeah
you’d think that’s how it works but
that’s not really how it works you know
we work in a world that is filled with
illusion and so I got a question that
kind of falls in that category
you know those questions don’t usually
have the answer that civilians expect or
people just getting started they just
don’t know yet so here’s one of those
questions and the question has to do
with what do you do about page-turning
noise when you’re narrating an audio
book so clearly the person that asked
the question is under the impression
that when a narrator narrates an audio
book they’re narrating from the actual
book itself and they have to turn the
pages and I think in my entire career
I’ve done that once but it wasn’t from
the actual book it was from a printout
of what are called the galleys the
galleys is the the the printable page
with all the crop marks that they use at
the publisher before it actually goes to
print they’ll print out the galleys with
all the extra area around the page and I
think at one point in one of the books I
did they were up against a deadline and
they didn’t have a eve they didn’t have
a PDF made of the the stuff but usually
when I do a book that is a physical book
only and I’ve had to do that a few times
in my career I usually ask for a book
that I can destroy because what I end up
doing is putting that physical book into
the condition that nearly 100% of the
time narrators are working from to begin
with and that position is from a PDF so
you don’t narrate a book
from the book itself right you narrate a
book from a PDF sort of an ebook version
of the book I put mine on my my iPad and
I used my app rehearsal Pro to mark it
up and to do what I need to do with it
it’s one of the other uses of rehearsal
Pro which I love I didn’t even intend
for that to be the case but I I found
it’s pretty useful and so I’ll go into
the studio and I will use my iPad if I’m
going to a publisher or to an external
studio to do it if I’m here in my studio
I teach in the classes for vo heroes I
teach you how to put it in the in the
app called preview on Mac or Adobe
Reader on PCs behind your recording
window on the screen so you’re actually
looking at the screen as you’re
narrating into your mic so it’s always
from an electronic version even those
rare times when I was presented with the
only option being a physical book I did
a narration of a book I think it’s
called the last days at Arlington
awesome book but unfortunately it was
printed last in 1976 74 something in
there there wasn’t such a thing as a PDF
back then and there was no PDF copy
available for me to run to so I said
okay may I keep this book and like do I
have to return it and they said no
it’sit’s actually they picked up they
actually bought the book from a library
because it had the Dewey Decimal System
a little sticker on it from the library
wherever they bought it so they sent me
the book and I actually took a razor
blade to the book and I I burst it it’s
called bursting I sliced through the
spine of the book all the way through
all of the folios the bound folios of
all the pages and separated everything
into pages so I basically had a stack of
pages of all the book without the cover
without the I think I took off the blank
pages and so on and then I did something
that is just joyous you can either go to
a FedEx office or a copy shop near you
and have them
kananen they’ll probably if you go to
FedEx office they’ll give you grief
about it being copyrighted material and
you have to talk them into doing it and
you say look I have the not only the
right to do it but the authorization to
do it please scan this for me they may
say no like here in a Los Angeles FedEx
office often won’t even copy headshots
for people because their copy it’s
copyrighted material but what I did was
I bought a scansnap ix500 scanner from
Fujitsu maybe I don’t know 10 years ago
is when I got it the newer model which
you see on the screen is awesome and
it’s cheaper then when I paid for it I
think when I paid for it it was $4.99
and now it’s for 19 on Amazon I have a
link below the video if you want to get
it this is the fastest scanner I’ve ever
used at home it like flies I use it for
my my accounting work as well when I
send receipts off to my bookkeeper or
when I get a notice and I have to send
it to my attorney or I have to send it
to my CPA you know this this it’s
sitting right behind my computer at it’s
beautiful I and you know you use it once
in a blue moon but when you do it’s
really fast so instead of putting a page
at a time on a flatbed scanner you load
in about 50 or 60 pages and then they
just go literally that fast and they
scan both sides of the page so you don’t
even have to turn the pages over like
you would on a flatbed scanner and I
think I scanned that whole book in in
like two minutes because it just was
going going going going and when you’re
done you know the pages aren’t perfectly
aligned because they’re actually pages
that you’ve cut out of a book but then
you have the same effect as you would
have today from a PDF copy of a book
that you would get from a rights holder
or from a publisher and when you do the
narration all you’re doing is gently
scrolling through the book and having
the page go up as you read that’s how
you avoid a page turning noise now on
that one occasion where I did have that
stack of I think 300 pages that I had
put on a music stand instead of putting
my iPad on the music stand and scanning
through it and this was a penguin Random
House out in Woodland Hills here in
California in Los Angeles I had to be
careful about sliding the pages off the
stack before or after the sentence that
carried over from one page to another
what you can’t do is pull that page off
the stack while you’re talking because
that sound would not be removable from
your recording so you have to realize
that in that rare occasion when you
actually have to work with physical
pages and again for the person that
asked the question if you’ve never
narrated an audio book before loveliness
is that when you start on at narrating
audio books you’re never gonna have to
encounter this most likely but if you do
you have to know that when you get down
to the bottom of the page and you’re
about to go to the next page you have to
you know make sure that that page
movement noise whatever it is is in
between a sentence and then the engineer
will then put everything together and
line it up perfectly but that’s how you
do it you never make that noise under
what you’re narrating and I think that
may have been the impetus for the
question how do you get rid of that if
you’re saying and then she went to the
dog store and you know yeah I get it
right so that’s how that happens I hope
that answers your question I did say in
the comments below that particular
lesson I will answer it in a week or so
following because I had some stacked up
questions for the last couple of days so
I hope that answers your question if you
have any other questions about audio
book narration or about the physical
nature of audio book narration if you
want to look at the model of scanner
that I use the scansnap ix500 go ahead
and click on the link below this and
it’ll take you right to Amazon and I
think last time I checked it was four
hundred and nineteen dollars and if you
have any comments about voiceover about
you know learning voiceover becoming a
voice-over artist this of course is the
week that we are registering people at a
greatly reduced price with all kinds of
bonuses for the brand-new vo heroes
Pro membership and I’d love to be your
coach and your mentor you can check that
out there’s a link for that below on the
video below the video as well I’m David
H Lawrence 217th I thank you so much for
listening and for watching and I will
talk to you tomorrow.