I’ve been a bit quiet lately, but there’s good reason for it! I’ve been working on a new web site, which I hope to “launch” officially very soon. I also cut a commercial demo reel last week, which should be through post-production shortly.

And of course there was a meeting of the PSVAC, which went very well! It continues to grow, and we’re all as pleased as punch at the return on the time and energy investment we’ve put in.

I’ve also been neglecting my blogroll – bad Corey! I added J.C. Dunn’s blog today, and look for more to be added soon, I have a bunch of blogs I read but haven’t linked here yet.

Speaking of Mr. Dunn, he posted an interesting piece today- A list of “must-have” items for any studio. If you do voice work, go read it, because it’s exactly right. I have another piece to add to his list that I consider invaluable: A dog clicker.

Ostensibly a training tool for dogs, it’s just a little plastic geegaw with a metal piece inside that you can “click” with your thumb. It makes a very sharp snapping noise. When I’m recording long-form pieces, I keep it in my hand or nearby, and if I make a mistake during the read, I pause briefly and click it twice, pause again and pick it up.

 Later, when it’s time to edit, I can instantly locate those places I need to make changes, removing the stumbles or whatever. For a keychain widget, it’s invaluable!

Another piece of equipment I’m finding more and more valuable as time goes on is my iPad. I hate working with printed copy as every time I change pages there’s rustling and so forth. What I’ve taken to doing these days is saving the copy as a PDF file and sending it to my iPad. Using an app like Cloud Readers you can even annotate the document with a stylus. A stylus is about 15 dollars at a computer store and worth having.

Now I just set the iPad on my copy stand and any page turns are utterly silent. Bliss.

Your Turn

What do you consider the “must-have” items in your studio?

This entry was posted on Friday, February 18th, 2011 at 11:22 am and is filed under Blog, General, PSVAC, Tech. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.