Single or multiple narrators? Discuss.

Jan 05, 2011

Hey all. Trying to figure out if we should spring for a second person to do the voiceovers for a course that I'm going to be working on next month. I kind of think it would be nice, but I feel like I should decide now before doing the course design. Because I'll write the narration a little bit differently if we end up with two people instead of one. What do you think about multiple narrators? Is it worth it? Does it make a course better?

4 Replies
Russ Sawchuk

Sam,

We now routinely use a female and male narrator for all of our SL courses. In fact our clients now are insisting on it once they have seen an example.

It makes writing the narration a bit more challenging and, of course, doubles up on the cost. It is also important that the two narrators work well together. (We use a couple of vo professionals that work together very well for most of our projects). However, we find it well worth the extra effort and cost.

Here are a couple of examples - Pressure Ulcer eCourse and Collecting Sensitive Patient Data

Russ

Bob S

I'm with Rachel here...    When I've done multiple narrators successfully in the past it was always one of two scenarios:

  1. When there was some form of conversation between the narrators. Either as an "example" or to co-present the same concepts  (think: TimeLife music collection infomercials) 
  2. When you have a couple of "consistent characters" we introduce first, then use throughout a course(s) to offer differing advice/points of view.  (example: Every time we hear Jane's voice, we know she's going to give the gruff/no nonsense option, but Mark's voice always offers the middle-ground option)

Outside of those two scenarios, I've found it to be more confusing for the learner (and harder and more expensive to pull off).

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