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IVR PROMPT RECORDING SESSION SCRIPT PREPARATION

An organized script makes a recording session run efficiently, and directly improves the quality of the recordings. Here are some tips for how to prepare your scripts.

1. Bring enough copies

You need a copy for yourself, the voice talent, the recording engineer, any assistant engineers, and anybody else who might be attending. If more people follow along, you are more likely to catch mistakes.

2. Write everything out completely

Don't expect the voice talent to do mental substitutions of brand names in a sentence. Don't give instructions to read all the numbers one through 100. Spell out abbreviations, numbers, and insert spaces between letters of acronyms that are spelled out. Put it all down on paper. It's one less thing for the voice talent to worry about.

Occasionally, when there is a last-minute correction and we have to hand-write it or make a single word substitution, I notice that we do more takes than when the script is neatly typed out.

3. Number every phrase

I keep a running sequence for each project. I start with 100 as the first number in the sequence. Roughly, every time the talent takes a breath, it's a new number. This makes it easy to refer to notes that accumulate after several recording sessions, and if we ever have to re-do scripts from separate days, we can refer to everything unambiguously. It keeps the script from being cluttered with filenames or other notes.

The other reason to number phrases is so that I can refer to them without reading them aloud myself in front of the voice talent. I don't want them to copy my speech patterns, so I avoid saying anything that appears in the script myself.

4. Pay attention to page numbers and page breaks

Number every page, and make sure that the voice talent doesn't have to turn pages during related sequences. Consider the flow of the session overall and where you might need to take a break.

5. Avoid counting and listing by providing context

It's usually best to put numbers and list items in the context of a sentence, even if you end up cutting out the surrounding sentence. This makes sure you get the correct intonation. The intonation people use while counting is rarely what you want.

6. Allow for a warm-up

I put the most frequently heard prompts near the middle or end of the session, so we can use obscure error messages as a warm-up. I find it takes a while to build energy. If you start with high-energy prompts, it will be difficult to achieve a more calm voice later. A recording session is a performance; end with your best material.

7. Sleep on it

I like to have the script written the day before the recording session so I just have to give it one last look that morning. Usually I find a few things to tweak when I've had a chance to sleep on it.

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Last updated by Brian Krause, brk@adducive.com, August 20, 2002
Adducive 1 650-274-2415 (+1 650-BRIA-415)