Representation was a key issue for me as I wanted all of the different voices on the radio, for the different sections, to sound as realistic as possible. A lot of my listening focused on the representation of voices in the news, show presenters and in adverts, and thinking about how these representations would appeal to the audience.
I chose the people playing my characters very carefully, trying to make sure that they had the right kind of voice for the representation that I wanted. I was also very careful to direct my actors so that they delivered their lines during recording exactly the way I wanted. I tried to make a distinction between the voices of the show presenters and the news presenter. I also made sure there was variation in the voices in the adverts and the voxpops - often using the same actor more than once but getting them to alter either the tone of voice, or the accent they used.
For one of my news stories I had a medical expert discussing a potential cure for asthma, and I asked the actor to put on a German accent as I thought that this would sound more convincing. The actor playing the Doctor was the same actor who was reading the news (Alex) so I needed to disguise his voice as he spoke as the news presenter straight after the soundbite. To help with this I added an effect that made it sound like he was on the phone (turning down the treble and bass to represent the effect of a phone call).
When Alex read the news I asked him to do it in a more serious voice, to reflect the tone I had heard on the news bulletins I listened to on Capital and talkSPORT. I don't think that you can tell that it is the same voice and I think that he sounds like the newsreaders I had tried to recreate.
I also asked Louise, who played two parts (the specialist reporter in the Tixmoor shopping mall report and the traffic presenter), to put on different voices for each role. She did an Irish accent for the traffic and I asked her to speak like a young enthusiastic reporter for the mall outside broadcast.
I wanted to represent the fact that my audience is from both genders so I included both a male and female voice in my main station jingle. The female voice sounds younger and the male older, to reflect the age range as well as the gender of my intended target audience.
In my adverts, for example the holiday advert, I felt that I should distinguish between the characters in the advert (representing women from the local area) and the voiceover (representing the travel company). I asked my actresses to put on regional accents that would suggest that they were from Essex (an area that I thought would be reached by my station) and I asked Jon to make the voiceover a bit more formal in terms of language and register, but to make sure that he sounded jolly and reassuring so that the product he was promoting would appeal to listeners.
To make the voxpops appear to come from members of the public I asked the actors to read the script as naturally as possible and told them that they could adlib if they wanted, so it sounded more realistic. I didn't want them to read the lines in a formal way and these people were the last ones I chose in terms of voices as I knew that anyone could read the voxpops.
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