A cut through commercial when you’re busy

I have to say that these types of Radio Commercial are getting more and more frequent as our (Producers) numbers diminish and the amount of commercials being produced for the clients increases. It is without doubt, that these situations carry a lot of stress in a very small room.

http://alturl.com/ogrjm from Lifehacker looks at this from a different angle. The principle I have always used is this, It takes very little time to get a commercial to 80% of what it should be, the time it takes to get to  get the last 20%  is about 80% of the time to get to 100% perfect. (that is only in the producers mind too)

The trick is to have a bag of tools in your system to get to that 80% quicker.

Create a template, the place you always start. The standard eq to get you going, the way you set up a project to start the faithful reverb on the voice track, it can get the voice to decay just on 30 sec, for a clean cross fade. Then add your favorite Compressor at the end. Then if the voice over is good enough you have the commercial finished.

This bag of tricks also has benefits when you are really rushed, or you have the “Head Cold from Hell”. The ears are blocked you can’t hear clearly, just throw yourself into automation and produce. You get the 80%’er and the ad sounds fine too.
From our side too, with fewer Producers, the annual leave window becomes more stressful. The ones left holding the fort have to work harder to cover the man hours shortfall, but also, those on leave, when they return get the overload of work that has been skipped to get others on air? This also applies to the Long Weekend too.
There still will be the need for sound or voice track for the commercial TV or radio, that producers will still be making noise, the EQ maybe a little different…