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Conservatory of Recording Arts and Sciences – April 2, 2024
Meeting Topic: CRAS AES X Women of Audio Present: Cody Stephenson
Moderator Name: Nancy Scharlau
Speaker Name: Cody Stephenson, CRAS Grad and Audiobook Engineer
Meeting Location: Gilbert, AZ
Summary
This week we had a joint event between CRAS AES and WOA (shout out to Nancy for being the AWESOME). We had a guest speaker, Cody Stephenson, who is a CRAS Grad, come in to talk to us. Nancy opened with a quick overview of what WOA is for our new students, before moving on to an interview of Cody. Cody started with a quick background. He graduated from CRAS in 2014. He started with a focus on music but quickly became focused on Post Production. He interned at the Audio Mix House in Vegas. While on his internship he started freelancing to pay for his living expenses. He primarily did music production gigs, but also offered an option for audiobooks. Cody emphasized the learning curve he experienced with audiobooks. He went into editing audiobooks without any experience but kept at it. After his internship, he went to Michigan and got a job at Brilliance Publishing, which works with Amazon and Audible. He started with factory work, as well as burning CDs of audiobooks. He then got the opportunity to work as an engineer for Brilliance and learned how to record and edit audio books professionally. After a year and a half, he got a contract with Such A Voice. He still works for them today. Such A Voice works with up-and-coming actors to teach them about the industry and get them ready for professional work. He vets studios to take new voice actors to get them experience in their portfolio. Cody works from home and sees this as a huge perk. He was also clear about the benefit of CRAS. He talked about how his connections here at CRAS allowed him to get the jobs he also works alongside Such A Voice; He is a contractor with Dreamscape Publishing where he does editing and mastering. His current schedule has him typically doing 1 audiobook a week. Cody also talked about the different roles in the audiobook process. You have the narrator, producer, editor, recording engineer, and director. For the most part, Cody works in editing, proofing, and mastering. He touched on the fact that Directors are supposed to know the phonetic alphabet to do their job effectively. He also showed us an example of a proofing document, also known as a pickup packet that he has. He said that a 10-hour book will take 3-4 days for recording, 3-4 days for proofing and editing, with an additional few days for mastering. On average it is ~10 days per book. He also talked about the pay. He generally gets paid an amount per finished hour, rather than hourly as a contractor. He also did an overview of the general recording processes for audiobooks, as well as his editing and proofing process.
Written By: Kai Rocke
