Recording our monologue

On Sunday 8th December Molly Jenkins, Lauren O'mahony and myself went to Spiral studios, located in Guildford to record our monologue. The staff at the studio set up the studio ready for us to start recording our monologue. We chose Lauren (who will also play our main character in our film opening) to read our monologue as she did GCSE drama at Therfield and is studying Theatre studies and Drama at Godalming. Therefore as she is familiar with monologues we knew she would be perfect for this role. When Lauren had read the monologue through the first time she was ready to have a practise recording. While Lauren was in the booth reading our monologue we waited outside and could hear her clearly. For the first time ever reading it she did it almost perfectly, however we wanted to add more dramatic pauses as they are effective in drawing the audiences attention and also filling up a bit of time.We also wanted to make her sound more angry when she said certain words such as 'parents' and 'their real kid.' The second reading was perfect,we couldn't believe how professional she sounded, we knew this was as a result of all the monologues she had to perform in GCSE Drama. The staff were also very impressed by how well read it was. Lauren sounded ever so slightly nervous however we believe this created the effect that the situation is a hard thing for her to discuss to people, therefore we found this very effective. Another thing which we chose to keep was the fact that when Lauren said 'I'm fine on my own' she swallowed. I discussed this with one of the staff and they claimed that this is effective and makes the monologue more realistic. In something professional such as a news reel this may not be accepted. We asked the staff to increase the volume when they send it to us, this is because we want it very loud because our monologue is the only dialogue, therefore it needs to draw in attention and be clear. If we have it very loud if it is too loud we can just turn it down. We also asked them to cut our any background noise, we need to make it as clear as possible because music will also combine with it so therefore we need it to be clear so the music doesn't cut it out. We were very pleased with our recording, we were told that it costs £30 to hire out the studio however as we were so quick to record it it only cost £15 so we only had to pay £7.50 each. We were extremely happy with the costs and our recording was even better than how we expected it to be. Molly and I are very pleased with our recording and couldn't have asked for a better job done.