On the 5th and 6th of June 2021, an online interschool exchange camp was held for the Broadcasting Club members of Chong Hwa Independent High School Kuala Lumpur, Kuen Cheng High School, and Chung Hua Klang High school over the Zoom video platform. The first listed club served as the main organiser while the latter two co-organised.
Through the theme, “Dash, Broadcast”, the camp encouraged participants to use their voices to send warmth and form connections, overcoming distances in between. Participants would learn about doing voice-overs in this camp.
The camp opening ceremony started at 10am with the main camp counsellor from Chong Hwa Independent High School introducing the organising committee and briefing the camp rules. Then, advisory teachers from all three clubs gave short speeches, all hoping that participants could learn from each other and leave the camp with new takeaways and sharpened skills.
Moving on, camp counsellors took turns introducing their own Broadcasting Club, introducing their regularly held activities and other special events to members of the other two schools.
All that formality was followed by something more light-hearted: games!
An activity coordinator hosted the first ice-breaker game, which involved members doing self-introductions and calling on others of different schools to continue on.
After that, participants moved into breakout rooms based on their pre-assigned groups to play more games led by their group leaders. These included a spin on the famous Chinese children’s game “Radish Squat” and a story sharing session regarding various topics. Laughter was prevalent among the participants when creative punishments were carried out for the former game and when embarrassing stories were shared in the latter one.
Each group then collaboratively designed their group flag via Miro Whiteboard before an hour-long lunch break.
After the break, participants went into breakout rooms once again to play a horror-themed “complete the story” game. Participants took turns telling a story while using a randomly assigned word or phrase, and had to undergo a punishment if their story was not scary enough.
With the conclusion of that game came a lecture by Mr Ho Soo Wei, an experienced vocal coach and advertising voice-over, with previous work experience at Ai FM. He is the founder of Voice Story and is currently running the “Dakids Speech and Drama” Facebook page, both being platforms aimed at training youth voice-over talents.
Mr Ho opened his lecture by talking about the status quo of voice-overs in Malaysia. “Being a voice-over is a pretty “niche” job, since in Malaysia, you can really only see it in advertising,” He then listed the different kinds of advertising voice-overs and explained professional terms used in the field; his humorous and charming tone kept participants engaged throughout.
Following that, he pulled up some sample voice-over scripts of different nature and invited participants to lend their voice to them, subsequently providing pertinent feedback and explaining requirements behind different forms of advertising.
A short Q&A session was held, followed by Mr Ho talking about working in the voice-over industry, notably recollecting the memory of an unreasonable client he had.
Then, he talked about the skills one would need to get involved in this industry. “Your eyes will need to be faster than your lips, and accurate pronunciation techniques must be second nature”, he notes, “because if you can’t do it right, they’ll always find someone else who can.” If one were interested in a head start, Mr Ho recommended investing in a cheap microphone for RM400-500.
Mr Ho’s talk ended in laughs with the four camp counsellors trying out another voice-over script.
Afterwards, the main camp counsellor revealed the graduating assignment of the camp: each group had to provide a voice-over for famous silent animated films, include at least five other sound effects, then edit it over the original film to be presented the next day.
Group leaders chose their desired film and went into breakout rooms to discuss job roles with their members. This marked the end of day one, and participants logged off at 4pm to work on their final projects.
Day two kicked off at 10am with a quick dance-along session to wake everyone up, then participants went into their group breakout rooms to wrap up the graduating project. Once that was settled, participants had fun with their group members till the lunch break at 12.30pm. Some danced, some played more games, and some just gossiped.
Once the lunch break concluded an hour later, the main camp counsellor presented each group’s final video, all showered with compliments from the chat and from the counsellor herself.
After every presentation, a few members of the group in charge were called to talk about their experiences working on the project and the challenges they eventually overcame. Following the end of the presentations, advisory teachers were invited to comment, showing general pleasure with seeing everyone bonding and expressing their creativity.
The closing ceremony for the camp then followed.
First, most outstanding participants were chosen from each group, and were all invited to share their feelings on being picked. Most expressed welcome shock at being picked, and all felt grateful for “having met so many amazing people”.
More emotions were shared in the subsequent sharing sessions, starting with participants followed by organising committee members.
Participants mostly had doubts about fitting in with those from other schools (one even felt left out of her own club due to having joined as a Senior student), but left feeling very close-knit and satisfied that they “made the impossible possible” after working through a lot to get their finished product. Of course, they did not forget to thank the organising committee for making this possible.
The committee had to go through a rushed organising process, but it was worth it in the end to see participants engage in friendly banter, alleviating the fear that they would not get along. A few group leaders were hesitant about joining first too, but were glad that the camp counsellors pushed them to join.
The camp wrapped up with participants writing their parting comments via Padlet. A group photo taken at 4pm concluded the two-day exchange camp.
