Young Women’s Trust is a small charity organization in support of young women on low or no pay in England and Wales. In order to help enhance a series of 4 short animations with music and sound effects, “Kurzgesagt” animator David Benedetti contacted me with his proposal.
The short video clips describe the story of 4 people under the age of 25. These Young women have to struggle with the social and economic implications of lower minimum wage jobs.
I did not want to overpower the narrator’s voice with the soundtrack. That is why I used only minimal instrumentation. The music was also written in a way, so it can be re-used in every clip without much editing.
Finally, I edited and enhanced the voiceover using EQ, compression and de-essing.
For the sound effects, I partially used self-recorded foley that came through a Rode NT2-A condenser mic. Other sound effects were synthesized. I also keep and maintain a huge library of licensed and self-recorded sound effects.
Some situations require a bit of creativity. Such as for the beginning of clip #2 – “Mattea’s Story”. It was impossible for me to obtain additional voice recordings of a real telemarketer-voice. In this case, I went and looked at Apple’s text-to-speech functionality which is baked into MacOS. Surely enough, there were 2 useful voice samples available with a british accent.
All the audio production, composing, editing and mixing took place within Cubase Pro.
- Client: David Benedetti / Young Women’s Trust
- Task: Composing, Editing, Foley, Mixing
- Website: https://www.youngwomenstrust.org/
