Recently I have been busy with a video presentation project for an organization in PJ. This is my first time managing this type of project and I must tell you the learning curve is quite steep.However, I don’t want to talk about the video project per se, but rather I would like to share about the process of voice recording for the 12 minute video.

If you usually watch video presentations or adverts on the TV, you probably notice that the voice plays a big role in differentiating between a good advert and a bad advert. A good voice gives an average video an added kick, making it interesting to the viewers. To get a good voice over you need a good, professional voice over talent and you also must have a good recording studio. The studio also has to offer good value for money in order for you to stay on budget.

For the video project, my client had paid En Ishak Nengah as the voice over talent. He is actually Joe Flezzo’s father, to my surprise. He used to work in RTM and has a very deep voice, suitable as the voice over for the video. There are freelance voice over talents available, who charge prices ranging from RM500 for a 5 minute voice over and an additional Rm50 per minute over 5 minutes. But it also depends on what the voice is going to be used for. If it is a commercial, it will be much much more expensive.

Because of some mess ups, the script had to be changed, so this resulted in the recording had to be done twice, which is bad for the budget  but I had the chance to try out 2 totally different recording studios and compare the two studios, and there is a big difference.

The first Studio was recommended by a friend of mine. it’s called “One Zero One Studios“. Recording costs RM100 if you want to just record the voice without inserting it into the video and RM150 for recording plus inserting the audio into the video. The fee is counted on a per hour basis, so its RM100 and RM150 per hour respectively. pretty reasonable as i thought it would cost more than that. I chose to do record without inserting the audio to the video, as the video was incomplete.

A bit about the Studio

The studio is located along Jalan SS3/39, PJ. It is a bungalow house which was converted into a recording studio. Being a bungalow house that it is, the atmosphere inside is pretty cozy and I straight away felt at home. The studio was before used by quite a number of artistes such as Karen Kong and Siti Nurhaliza to name a few. The equipment used was pretty good for a small studio. Everything was digital and the recording quality was excellent. The sound engineer was young, but good. Paired with a software that can edit the voice in real time, the unwanted voice and mistakes were edited out in real time thus shortening the time of the recording. After a little more than an hour the whole thing was settled (but I still needed to pay for 2 hours).

The bottom line is this studio is a very good one and I can recommend it to anyone. The owner is very friendly and I feel comfortable working with the staff there.

The other studio

To be honest, I booked this studio out of desperation. Time was running out and there were no slots available at 101 Studios for the second recording. So I quickly googled a recording studio and came up with Sunshine Multimedia Productions. I quick call to them to get a quotation, and I was surprised that their prices were pretty expensive.  Recording + insert audio into video was RM900! I thought to myself, this must be a really good studio with advance recording technology. So i opt for recording only which costs RM300 for up to 2 hours of recording.

But upon arrival I was kindda disappointed. the studio was also a house. But a terrace house. It was not really conducive and the equipment was not that good. I think he was using analog equipment as there were traces of the hissing sound in the recording. But because I had to finish the recording I just went on with it. But I don’t recommend the studio. The quality difference is very big compared to 101 Studios. But just for reference, you can go to their site here.

So if you are thinking of making a video, advertisement or podcast I recommend 101 Studios.