Studio Brief 2 - D&AD Telegraph - Voice Recording/Tone of voice

As the animation for the app was complete, it was time to make sense of it all by doing a voice over. The overall tone of voice me and Lo was going for was more formal then informal. The Telegraph is more catered to an older audience and even though Your Telegraph is integrating young and old readers we still felt Your Telegraph needed a formal tone of voice to represent It's historic past and it's loyal readers and the type of content Telegraph creates.

Who's voice to use for the voice over?

It was very hard to decide what type of voice should be used for the voice over. If we were in a perfect scenario then we needed a voice to reflect the formal script and to reflect the tone of voice of The Telegraph. The perfect voice would be someone who has a plain english accent, preferably from London who is at the age of around 30.

If the person was too young then the overall tone of the video could seem like the app is aimed at a younger audience and a voice to old could seem like the app is aimed at an older demographic. A person who is in the middle balances out both extremes and maintains an average age balance. In terms of accents. It's more effective if the person talking is clear to understand with a plain accent. London accents (especially the queens english) are easier to understand and is most famous across the world, giving it a reputation of intelligence and clarity. Therefore, If the voice over was by someone with a thicker accent, it could be harder to understand what they are saying and some accents have a bad reputation for being unattractive and unintelligent to listen to.

BUT... we live in Leeds and there aren't that many people around that speak the queens english so we had a tough decision to make. In the end Lo decided to do the voice over, even though she wasn't between the age of 30 or have a London accent. We were against time as the deadline was fast approaching and a lot of other students were also very busy with their own deadlines, so It would have been difficult to locate a London speaking student to give up most of their day to produce a voice over for our app.

In the end Lo done a great job and tried her best to pronounce her words clearly with a touch of intelligence and without sounding to young and northern.