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     English Wordplay ~ Listen and Enjoy

Your Voice Showreel

New Reduced Price: Only £99 to Include Advice, Direction and Recording by Shaun Macloughlin, an Experienced BBC Radio Drama Producer

For Your Submission to the BBC and to Audiobook,
Voice Over, Dubbing and Commercial Producers.

Including:

  1. Recording and Burning a Printed CD .
  2. Your Voices, Descriptions and Mugshot on Our Voices Page
  3. A linked webpage with your CV and More Pictures.
  4. A list of producers and directors to submit to, many personally known to Shaun MacLoughlin
  5. A Two Minute Audio Package for your Spotlight Page
  6. Further Printed CDs at £2.50 each

The Recording will take place in a recording booth at Shaun MacLoughlin's home in Bristol.
However for £149 and somewhere quiet to record, he would be happy to travel.

Landline: 0117 9734764
Mobile: 07766 839986
Email: shaunmacl@yahoo.com

Advice on selecting Radio Drama pieces.

  1. Select no more than 8 pieces, each approx 1 minute long
  2. Make sure they're contrasting.
  3. Make sure that they cover a range, including:
    1. Comedy,
    2. Classic drama,
    3. Contemporary prose ,
    4. Native accent or dialect,
    5. Something from contemporary theatre,
    6. Include a poem...
    7. Or a song, if you wish,
    8. Include any accents/dialects with which you are comfortable.
  4. Each extract should start with the name of the play and role you are playing.
  5. On Track 1, it's helpful to introduce yourself to demonstrate your natural voice.
  6. Enclose with your CD an accompanying letter and CV - this is especially useful if you can highlight radio, theatre, film or TV credits.  And timing is also critical: if you are about to appear on stage, in a radio production or on TV, it is possible for Radio Drama to flag that fact and to encourage producers to see your performance first hand.

I also advise you to listen to as many plays and drama documentaries as possible.  Make a note of who the directors / producers are and send your carefully prepared voice CDs to them.  It will probably do no harm to praise a programme of theirs that you have heard, but don't overdo this.

Advice on Commercials and Narration

There is a wealth of useful information online.  For example you can listen to show reels for commercials documentaries, voice overs and animation and learn from how other actors present themselves at Hobson's Artists Agency and at Rabbit Voice Management

Further Advice.

Shaun Macloughlin's book Writing and Acting for Radio (see below) has a chapter on acting, containing a list of what the BBC advise should be on your CD.

You should also find the following useful.  The workshops are for actors as well as for writers and directors.

Audio Drama and Documentary Workshops.

Read excerpts from the plays in red, while listening to the audio.  Click on the headings.

1. Beginning Your Play

Radio is not a captive medium.  Enchant and enthral your listener within the first two minutes or she will switch off.

The Disagreeable Oyster by Giles Cooper

2. Some Amusing Mistakes

Listen to as many Bad Plays as Possible.  It could be fun.  Learn what not to do.

This Gun in My Right Hand is Loaded; Scene 1 by Timothy West

3. Microphone Technique

The ALOUD voice and the THOUGHT voice.

Hard of Hearing by Colin Haydn Evans

4. Who or What Does the Talking?

Be a Monkey or a Parrot.  Different Narrators.

Song of the Forest by Tina Pepler and Lobby Talk by Juliet Ace and Vic Aiken

5. How Many Characters?

How not to confuse your listener - and how not to go way over budget.

This Gun in My Right Hand is Loaded; Scene 2 by Timothy West

6. What Makes a Radio Play?

The Differences between Radio and Other Media

Babylon is Fallen by John Fletcher

7. Music in Radio Drama

Music Can Capture Emotions and Images

Symphonic Variations by Bruce Stewart and Hot Rubber or Death on the Motorway by John Fletcher

8. The Elements of Radio - Your Kitbag

Language, Sound Effects, Music and Silence.

The Hole in the Top of the World by Fay Weldon

9. Recorded Sound Effects

Establishing them and making them effective

Arthur Halfshaft the Man by Alick Rowe

10. Spot Effects

Have fun and be inventive.

This page was inspired by Andrew Lawrence, an excellent BBC Studio Manager

11. Children

Your First Radio Play  -  Writing for Children  -  and Angels.

I Luv U Jimmy Spud by Lee Hall

12. Being Stylish for Discriminating Listeners

Total Listening on BBC Radio 3

Easy Traumas by Tina Pepler

13. Stucturing a Radio Play

The building blocks.

The World Walk by Jonathan Smith

14. Radio Plays as Poetry

Censorship and Script Layout.

Winston in Europe by Peter Tinniswood

15. Dramatization

How different the play is from prose.

Joseph Andrews by Henry Fielding, dramatized by John Scotney

16. Building a Documentary 1

Do it yourself - a personal odyssey.

The Field of the Star by Shaun and Seamus MacLoughlin

17. Building a Documentary 2

All the elements going into the history of a nation.

Australia Episode 13: Lucky Country?  by Mike Walker

18. Comedy 1

How to win awards.  Comedy is a serious business.

Crisp and Even Brightly  by Alick Rowe

19. Comedy 2

How to laugh at yourself.  A gradual smile of recognition.

The Non-conforming Non-conformist  by Geoffrey Parkinson

20. Selling to the BBC

A success story

The Flower Room dramatized by Shaun MacLoughlin from Leaving Mother Lake by Christine Mathieu and Yang Erche Namu

Actors' Voices Already Recorded  With more professonal advice to actors