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My Amateur Voice Over Process for E-Learning

E-learning, also known as asynchronous learning, has been a great tool during the pandemic, making education more accessible than ever before. In order to make complex topics accessible to a wide audience, visuals are necessary to demonstrate the concepts, but the key to explaining the rationale is in voice overs. When first explaining a subject, the route will not be optimal, so let me walk you through how I made this video explaining some basics of quantum.

3 years ago, I got the opportunity to learn about quantum through the Quantum Cryptography School for Young Students (now QSYS) and felt really passionate about making the subject more accessible to my peers, so I made it the focus of my IB Personal Project. I got in touch with a professor at the Université de Sherbrooke who arranged for me to partake in a postdoctoral experiment with a lab technician, which got me some hands-on experience in the field, to better relay what I’d learnt. Then, I attended Nobel Laureate Dr. Donna Strickland’s lecture at McGill to learn more about conveying science, and to hear how she made these concepts more accessible to a wider audience. At the end of 6 months of research, I had reduced a 20 minute presentation down to a 12 minute presentation, which I submitted to the local Science Fair, which didn’t pan out due to the beginning of the pandemic.

Since I had more time on my hands due to reduced schoolwork, I put more effort into streamlining this presentation to make it quick and to the point, cutting out excess detail, until by the summer, I’d brought it down to under 3 minutes. This long process yielded a short and sweet educational video I could share around to my friends, but still lacked in quality. But it doesn’t need to take a year to make this kind of video; experienced voice over services can review and streamline such scripts and provide high-quality recordings, elevating e-learning to a viable and effective level going forward.

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Can a Successful Brand Have an Accent?

In order to garner recognition, a brand must highlight its individuality amidst the thousands of other brands. Several variations on traditional advertising are becoming more and more prevalent, but these are no longer occasional outliers; their commonality strains consumers’ attention. But there is an easy solution to this problem: by using an accent in advertising, a sense of uniqueness is created without the need to overwhelm the viewer, allowing them to settle into the flow and properly absorb the message. This in turn is recognizable and can be turned comedic for memorability. For example, the Compare the Meerkats advertising campaign for the UK insurance company Compare The Market went viral, notably for the recognizable russian accent of Aleksandr Orlov, a fictional meerkat featured prominently in the campaign.

Another issue with branding is many consumers’ apprehension towards impersonal brands. Indeed, now more than ever, markets can service customers around the globe, and keeping true to its roots can make a company’s integrity shine. As such, an accent contributes to brand recognition, as well as consumer trust. And hiring voice talent with accents enacts these authentic values by supporting the brand’s root communities.

Certain accents also hold specific connotations on the global sphere, accentuating a product or service’s appeal in certain sectors of the market. Indeed, in anglophone parts of the world, a French accent can elevate romantic appeal, or a British accent can evoke sophistication. And featuring languages that may not be spoken by the target audience alongside subtitles can reflect cultural authority, for example in regards to particular practices originating in China and Japan.

Finally, localization can be used to target discrete demographics, in which case local accents are crucial to convey messages intelligibly to target audiences in whichever language is relevant. The global market for voice talent proficient in these languages is thus a great place to start looking, to kickstart an accented brand identity.

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If you're feeling miserable during this difficult time, imagine what those in less developed countries must be going through. This seems like a good time to reach out through charities, right? Please hold your donations until you've read what i have to say.

Please research a charity before giving, as many take a cut of the donations to pay their workers or for transport, etc. The major problem though is of charity being often treated as a business. In order to keep the communities in need as "customers", they offer short-term solutions: hire a european doctor for a year and keep them coming back.

However, I have found a charity which focuses on developing infrastructure to allow communities to become self-sufficient and which sends 100% of your donations to the cause at hand: the Aga Khan Foundation receives all logistical funding from a different branch involved in finances to ensure 100% of your donations directly help communities in need to become independent by developing infrastructure on which they can rely for generations to come.

The Aga Khan Foundation hosts a yearly initiative called the World Partnership Walk which this year has been taken online very interestingly: ambassadors and donors get taken on a virtual voyage to countries within the scope of the foundation to discover their initiatives and the impact of their fundraising/donations. Please leave a donation through my team at fundraise.worldpartnershipwalk.com/goto/quaranteens and keep an eye on my feed for a Facebook Fundraising Livestream where I will be singing songs of hope.

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Feb 1st, 2018

This is the most heavily structured poem I have ever written. The syllables go 1 3/3 5/5/5 7/7/7/7 9/9/9/9/9 7/7/7/7 5/5/5 3/3 1 and the syllable structure is as follows: A AB ABC ABCD ABCDE BCDE CDE DE E. The poem can be read forward or backwards, forwards being from the perspective of a bullied person and backwards from that of a person going through death, and the meaning of the words changes by context with the theme of each direction and phrasing. The letters in the title are in reverse alphabetical order and can be anagrammed to either "HateD" or "DeatH" depending on which way you read it. Anyways, here you all go

TRIGGER WARNING

tHeDa

Hell

Not so swell

Not as such

Only time will tell

If I've done too much

Fill the gaping hole

Whilst prejudices I quell

Serving as a mental crutch

Wits bother me on my stroll

As I take another swing

Anytime come to rupture my shell

Always I am but a simple hutch

Pushed to the side on a hinge I roll

Everything seems very frightening

Don't know what the future has in store

Tender but frost-laden touch

Biting painlessly my soul

A rather peaceful feeling

Chilling me straight to the core

The bells take their toll

Alongside their ring

I shall see once more

Beckoning

At my door

Four

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Here is a poem I wrote when I was in 5th grade (10 years old)

*Animals*

Foul is the Fox that does refuse

To help a Young One though it has nothing to lose

Keen is the Eagle that does percieve

The cries of a Young One crying "Help me, please!"

Brave is the Lion that does defend

A Young One from the kind not friend

Together a balance the Animals form

That without the Young Ones would be torn

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Feb 26th, 2018

WARNING: Prone to discrepancies due to lack of experience and/or insight in the subject matter at hand

Cursed Treasure

Before you I was arid

With you I am drowned

At times you seem frigid

But you come around

Though you act quite placid

Let these words resound

You are my guilty pleasure

I am your faithful toy

Scapegoat when necessary

You go from boy to boy

Come back when you grow wary

Though I employ many a ploy

To remain your primary

I relish in your leisure

As a gust of rapid windiness

Propulsed by a hurricane

I was lured in by a simple kiss

Your immediate spell was arcane

I've loved others but I digress

I can never be sane again

With you, I can't keep my composure

Like the doll and Geppetto

With your every lie my love grows

Though I know you much better

Than to need to see your nose

Together, allegretto

Apart the tempo slows

Ritardando this measure

Hooked by one careless moment

One instance I hadn't thought through

Now I clearly do repent

For blindly going where I'd no clue

I am now dependent

Dependent on you

Control me like a seizure

From my path you did make me veer

I used to be vain and proud

Though you know I'd never jeer

My emotions you always shroud

I know my feelings don't matter here

Yet I declare my love aloud

As this poem takes its closure

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Jan 29th 2018

TRIGGER WARNING

Keep going

I will not

Stop trying

I've got to

Stay true to myself

I can absolutely not

Succumb to worldly pressure

I feel like I'm starting to

See the value of life

I've never been able to

Think badly of others

I can't help but

Make people happy

I fail miserably to

Have a negative halo

I can only

Be myself

I cannot

Give up

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Feb 4th, 2018

Me: There are no strawberries left in this box of Special K cereal.

My mom: A lot were coming out when I opened the box and poured a bowl for your sister. Maybe they were all at the top.

Me: Maybe you should've shaken it at the start. Rookie mistake.

My mom: I wouldn't consider myself a cereal rookie.

Me: In life, we are all serial rookies.

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Feb 10th, 2018

I try to console my kin self, but can't cancel the cancelling of my console's cancellation cause I can't sell my console to a con soul, the cancelling council's consul, who's come soil my Yukon soil and can the sole who can solely live by kind souls

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Jan 29th, 2018

WARNING: Possibility of minor or major discrepancies due to lack of experience and/or insight in subject matter at hand

We spent so long together

I was constantly happy

But I wouldn't say that

I have loved

No, I can't say that

They wasted my time

But I wouldn't say that

I have loved

If they wanted to

I'd do it all again

But I wouldn't say that

I have loved

How to describe it?

It was marvelous

But I wouldn't say that

I have loved

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No one:

Someone (to me): What's up?

Me: Further from the nearest most influential centre of gravity than the plane perpendicular to the line going from the nearest most influential centre of gravity to the point of observation and passing through the point of observation.

The other half of the time I just say "the ceiling" reflexively, even if there is no ceiling.

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Our current fishing method is unsustainable, as it relies on overfishing a finite resource until near-extinction, then moving on. It also only survives thanks to the immense subsidies the governments provide to the fishing-industrial complex. In order to render the practice of fishing sustainable, or even possible in the future, we need to mobilize governments to take things into their own hands.

This fishing spree is leaving pretty much lifeless waters in its wake, and studies in 2009 were beginning to show how the aqueous biomass could attenuate the acidification of oceans (CO2 + H2O -> HCO3), which is one of the most dire consequences of our relentless pollution.

Consulting sources such as the Seafood Watch recommendations at the Monterey Bay Aquarium website (www.montereybayaquarium.org), the Environmental Defense Fund's Seafood Selector (www.edf.org/oceans), the Natural Resources Defense Council's Sustainable Seafood Guide (www.nrdc.org/oceans/seafoodguide/) and the Blue Ocean Institute's Seafood Guide (www.blueocean.org/seafood/seafood-guide) can guide us to make responsible choices in terms of seafood consumption; especially if you live where there are not many estuaries or other bodies of water nearby, it may be quite unsustainable to consume seafood.