I shared my first screencast with my new audio set-up in my last post. In this post I’ll attempt to objectively critique myself in the six areas I specified in my first post.
- Delivery: Am I stiff as a board or lively? To borrow from A. A. Milne, am I a Tigger or an Eeyore? I readily admit I lean more toward Eeyore, so that is something to work on.
- Cadence: Am I tripping over words or inserting a bunch of ums and uhs? Do I need a script? If so, how do I read it without sounding like I’m reading a script? Maybe just main points.
- Mouse movement: Am I being deliberate in my actions or distracting by moving the cursor all over the screen?
- Content: Did I get it right? Did I forget anything or show things in the wrong order? Did I present too much or too little material?
- Opening and closing: Do I have a coherent introduction and conclusion vs. rambling into oblivion?
- Sound quality: Too loud? Too soft? Humming? Echo chamber? Static?
Here is the screencast.
And here is my self-critique.
- Delivery – I think I did an okay job with my delivery. I still could be more lively.
- Cadence – I’d like less “umms and uhhs.” I think I need to write out my main points and practice a few times before recording. I know, a novel idea right?
- Mouse movement – a few jumps, but overall, I’m happy with my mouse control.
- Content – I think it was a decent length. I covered the content I wanted to cover.
- Opening and closing – Decent. Introduced content and recapped at the end. Also mentioned that it was for Storyline 2.
- Sound quality – meh. Sounds kind of like an echo chamber. Also hearing random bits of static throughout. Still need to work on eliminating the static.
Overall I’m satisfied with my first effort. It isn’t perfect and doesn’t need to be. I’m not an audio engineer or a professional voiceover talent, and I’m okay with that. I’m more concerned with getting better. My next step is to ask a few people from my PLN for critiques using the same review areas.