A common effect in film and tv but how?

I’m sure you can picture the scene but how do we create it in radio drama?

The effect I’m looking for is some-ones inner thoughts as they’re mind recollects something.

Like the voice inside your head, what you don’t get them?


Idea is the speaker is not only narrating a tale but at the same time, you hear there thoughts on what they have just said.

Any ideas.

TIA

I'm thinking it's just a reverb effect.  Record two vocal tracks - the dialogue voice and the inner voice.  Apply reflections and reverb to the inner voice.

I'm thinking it's just a reverb effect.  Record two vocal tracks - the dialogue voice and the inner voice.  Apply reflections and reverb to the inner voice.

That's about it - but try it with rather less early reflections on the inner voice than you might use for 'normal' reverb, and you need to get the voice perspectives correct too - the inner voice should speak quietly, nearer to the mic than the dialogue voice.

Reverb (and perhaps some filtering to a narrower bandwidth) is the classic way to represent an internal thought in audio... Ken Nordine is the master of the technique.

I'd suggest possibly adding a subtle musical effect under the voice -- a very low-level drone, repetitive bowed strings (don't know the proper musical term), a sort of bubbly undercurrent, etc.  Just something minimalist and organic-sounding (!?) to set the voice off from the rest of the dialog.

I'm not a radio person, but my sense of logic suggests that the speaking voice should have the reverb since it is in a physical space, but the inner voice should be dry since it is disembodied.

Much of it is proximity.  On TV, most of the voices are not from close, in studio mics.  A lot also has to do with delivery.

To do this, I voice the normal voice part from about a foot away...For the "thought" part, I mic the voice from about 2".  Then I jack up the bass (80-125Hz) on the thought section.  Sometimes I widen the space by delaying one of the channels by about 6ms.  Also, lots more compression (smooth) on the thought voice.

Emmett

I'm not a radio person, but my sense of logic suggests that the speaking voice should have the reverb since it is in a physical space, but the inner voice should be dry since it is disembodied.

It seems to work better the other way around! I think that this may have more to do with working conventions and established practices (which would loosely translate to genre) than logic, though.

Thanks all for your help and replies.

Toneranger33

I tend to agree with Emmett and Steve, this is best achieved by changing the delivery. Reverb effects will give the speech a dreamy quality, and maybe even a sense of the past. Our inner voice when we're thinking is a quiet whispering voice, there is no echo at all! Although William Shakespeare took even this inner voice to magnificent levels, all of 400 years ago in his "soliloquy" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soliloquy .

I would concur with reverb and bandwidth narrowing.
For the "psyco" effect add echos.  

Think of Homer Simpson's conversations with himself...

Think of Homer Simpson's conversations with himself...

         

Homer looks in bakery window: "MMMMmmmmm... erotic cakes!"  "ahaghahggahghgha.."