Have you seen
www.runjhunstory.com ?
Have you ever wondered what all it takes to create an amazing audio story like the ones available here? I will tell you.
1. First of all you need to choose the category for the stories you want to produce. Categories are of different kind - genre (mythological, action-adventure, sci-fi etc) , age group (3-5, 6-8, 9-12) et. So once you finalize that you need stories in this particular category for this age group children, you move to next step.
2. Then you look for stories. There are plenty stories available on net in various forms - text, audio, video, animation etc. You have to choose the stories which are not copyrighted by anyone (Panchantantra, folktales etc.)
3. Once you have short-listed the stories, you need to write the script for it. The script needs to have following properties:
a. Very easy language
b. grammatically perfect and semantically correct.
c. possesing lots of variety of moods and tones - should not be monotonous.
d. short and crsip - should not be dragged
e. possesing scope of dramatization while narrating
4. Once you are ready with your scripts, you need to read the script a couple of times. Now along with reading it, you need to imagine the story happening in front of your eyes. With that imagination, mark the places in the script where you think any specific sound effect should come. Also mark the lines where you want the narration to be in some specific tone.
5. Then comes the narration part. You have to narrate the story as if you are telling it to 10-15 children sitting in front of you. Whenever there is any description of any motion/movement/activity in the story, create some sounds yourself. Narrate the story very slowly and clearly. The pronounciation should be very very clear and immaculate. Leave some space for the sound effects you had planned. Also in case there are multiple characters, in your mind decide how you are going to modulate voice for each of them. While narrating every single line, understand the meaning and give the pauses at the correct places. Do not break the rytheme while narrating a single sentence. Be present in the story and not outside the story.
6. Once the narration and retakes are complete and you have enough footage to complete the story perfectly, you start editing the story.
7. The editing, dubbing and mixing is very important task. it includes the following steps
a. First round of editing is just to remove all the re-takes and take the best out of all retakes. You put together the best of the recordings and complete the narration part. Then you remove the air noice and balance the dB level of the complete story.
b. Next you start digging in your pool of sounds and picking up the ones you think can be relevant to any part of the story. Simultaneously, you need to think in the other way. You need to revise the story in mind and think of the sounds you need. And then look for such sounds. If you are not able to find any specific sounds,create such sounds using various audio editing softwares.
c. After you have a good collection of sounds, you need to start putting the sounds at the correct place in the story (on another channel) using the audio editing softwares.
d. Now you may also need some music in the background. Search for (or create) the music you need and put it along with the story in another channel.
e. Add reverb to the narration, whereever you think it is needed.
f. Now complete the story and listen to it for speech-music-sounds balancing. Correct in case there is any problem.
8. Congrats your story is ready. Enjoy