I’ve just provided voiceover narration for a documentary programme for National Geographic, “Easter Island Eclipse”, which is currently scheduled for its first transmission in two weeks’ time on Friday 12th November on the National Geographic Channel and National Geographic Channel HD.
The hour-long show – produced by 1080 Entertainment, and originally part of Nat Geo’s “Naked Science” strand – gives viewers a chance to catch the rarest celestial occurrence, a total eclipse, as it happens above Easter Island – one of the most mysterious and remote archaeological sites in the world. The last time an eclipse occurred over the island site was in 591 AD. The documentary follows scientists as they gather new research that could play a key role in the race to understand the sun and its extraordinary impact on life here on Earth. You can read more about the programme and see clips from the original US version of the show at the National Geographic Channel’s American website here.
The “reversioned” edition is an example of a programme taken from one market and edited before transmission in another – in this case the UK. Reversioning typically includes changes to the script for localisation purposes: changing measurements in the American system to metric, for example, as well as changing the voice of the narrator to one more familiar to the intended audience. Narration styles are quite different in the United States to those in Britain, and my job is often to provide this revised voice track. With these changes in place, the programme in question is polished up, inspected and then released to a new audience. It’s a lot of fun, and some of the work I enjoy best of all.
National Geographic Channel is available on Sky Digital 526 (Knowledge pack), Virgin 230 (XL pack) and Tiscali (Entertainment Xtra mix) and UPC 215. National Geographic Channel HD is available on Sky Digital 543 (Knowledge pack), Virgin 232 (XL pack), and UPC HD 221.
- For details of showing times, please see my TV Schedule page
