Lonely Planet Walking Guides

Project Description

Lonely Planet Travel Guides approached Podcast Voices with an initial enquiry about the production of a series of European City walking tours.

The project was in association with Sony Computer Entertainment Europe (SCEE). The tours were accessed by the user via Sony’s Play Station Portable (PSP). The idea was that the end user would be able to purchase these tours in any of five different languages (English, French, German, Spanish and Italian) covering six European cities (London, Paris, Barcelona, Prague, Amsterdam and Rome). They were interactive so the user could plug into their Portable Playstation or iPod and whilst walking around London, Paris, Prague etc. they would be guided around historical sites, get an insight into the city’s culture and be recommended places to dine or drink. Each city was made up of three different tours at approximately ten minutes each. Within each of the three tours they would be further broken into ten to fifteen ‘stops’. With genuinely authentic sound effects from each of the relevant places as a background to the speech the user gets a real sense and flavour of the location as they wander the streets of the given city.

Our Solution

Podcast Voices supplied Lonely Planet and Sony with audition style voice samples covering the five different languages. These were accessed from our extensive database of international voice artists. We supplied over 100 different samples according to their brief. Eventually voices were selected and the services of each artist secured. Meanwhile the general locations for each city were established and Podcast Voices set about compiling the relevant sound effects of what each location would be. Consisting of street sounds, traffic, church bells, interiors of museums, people in restaurants, fountains and the like were duly acquired.

Throughout the project several producers worked with the chosen voice artists recording the scripts and layering the relevant sound effects to the file following the content. This process continued for approximately two months. Over the five languages and the six different cities we ultimately supplied our clients’ with 800 separate fully mastered audio files.

French Tour of Barcelona:

German Tour of Barcelona:

Italian Tour of Paris:

Spanish Tour of Amsterdam