The Art of Voice Acting: the art and business of performing for voice over (62 page)

In comedy, you’re dead in the water without it. In drama, you’ve broken the illusion if you lose it. You’ve heard it before… Timing is everything. Along with comedians who blow though a seven minute set in four minutes because they were nervous, to stage actors completely stomping all over another actors lines, voice talent seem to struggle with timing quite a bit when faced with unfamiliar material. Anyone who has ever booked voice actors or engineered studio sessions has seen it happen.

For some reason, voice actors new and old seem to lose touch with their timing. It happens more in the early days of one’s career, but I’ve seen it from national talent, experienced actors and professional broadcasters. No one is immune, but veterans encounter it much less often. The biggest issue I encounter with timing is speed, or pace. Everyone, from time to time simply goes too fast.

Whereas new voice talent will likely always go too fast when they first start learning, a veteran talent will do it more when the copy is unfamiliar. Here I hope to give you a few rehearsal ideas about how to slow things down so that when it’s crunch time you’ll be well-versed in hitting the brakes.

Much of voiceover is about creative imagination and the development of the ability over time, to bring your imaginative creations to life very quickly while reading through a script. Practice and training are really nothing more than exercising and becoming familiar with one’s ability to tell an audience of 1 or 1,000 what is going on inside their head. By rehearsing, we are developing the ability to do it more fluidly and believably. Practice enough and you will eventually develop a predictable, repeatable pattern of delivery; one that is familiar to you and if you’re lucky, to your audience.

Those of us who do not rehearse a lot, or rehearse with bad habits in place, tend to fly past or glaze over conversational opportunities that pop up in a script. When a writer or producer tells us to slow down what they are really saying is, “Hey, take a moment to ingest the next line and consider how you really want to
share it before you present it.” What we need to remember as talent, is that just because the copy is laying there before us waiting to be read, it doesn’t mean we have to give it to them right away.

Hold back a little. Savor the flavor of the words and in much the same way you might wait for your favorite wine to open on your palate, hold fast for a moment and try to grasp the entire intention of the writer. I absolutely propose that voice talent who more accurately capture the voice inside the writer’s head at the time the copy was written will land more auditions than any other talent in the waiting room, hands down. While so much of voiceover still has everything to do with your voice, there are many jobs won solely because of someone’s given interpretive ability.

Here is a small exercise which I have passed on to many new talents over the years, and even a few people who thought they knew everything, including myself.

When you encounter any piece of copy, commercial or narrative, do not look at the content as a continuous piece that should be read from A to B, top to bottom as one collective thought. Rather, look at it as a collection of small fragments on a page, each one possessing its own set of circumstances and at times, limited connectivity to the others. Each fragment needs and deserves its own space and time. It has a life and meaning all its own.

Some fragments will need to be read a little faster, some much slower and some may even need to be fragmented further once they’re give a second look. Though it’s not a universal rule and at times impossible to apply completely, there will never be a time where a line in a piece of copy wasn’t put there for a reason. Something may have happened along the way to eliminate the need for a particular line in a script, but as talent our job is to give every piece of the script the proper attention. Notice I didn’t say equal, just proper. Not every fragment in a piece of copy deserves an equal amount of attention.

Just take your script and break it down to what’s between the periods and go over your initial observations of fragments. From there, look for lines that can be broken down into even smaller fragments, usually lines with commas and colons. From those fragments the copy can sometimes be broken down even further, especially when it is first person narrative or highly conversational in feel. Now try to read your fragments out loud, one at a time. During your first few run-throughs on a given piece of copy, you will feel like you’re trying to play tennis in lead shoes. It’s very clunky and your recorded auditions will sound choppy and lack continuity. During rehearsal this is of little importance.

After you feel confident you have deciphered the intention of the writer and more, the true intended tone and inflection of the words
and fragments, begin to read each fragment collectively, with ever smaller pauses between them. Keep a keen ear out for areas where two fragments need more connectivity. You will find that very little copy carries a great deal of connectivity from line to line and certainly very little from paragraph to paragraph. Though the script as a whole was written with one overall intention and meaning, the small parts of which a script is constructed often reveal more to the reader when focused on individually. You just have to look for them. Rehearse better and you will audition better. Audition better and you will more frequently get what all of us as working talent are after: the job.

If you’re interested in a career in voiceover or if you’re already working regularly as a voice actor, one of the keys to your success will be your marketing materials.

I think of marketing materials as anything that your clients or prospective clients see, hear, or use to learn about you or to interact with you. They represent you to your potential buyers, which is why it’s crucial that you pay attention to their importance right from day one. I want you to realize that your marketing materials encompass much more than just a website.

They include:

• Your online reputation and credibility
  
• Your appearance and demeanor on auditions and jobs
  
• Your outgoing voicemail message on your phone
  
• Your email correspondence
  
• Your business cards
  
• Your voiceover demos
  
• Your website
  
• Your thank you cards and invoices
  

In other words, ANYTHING that creates an image of you in a prospective client’s mind is marketing.

If you’re interested in making your voiceover career the best it can be, then I strongly suggest you make your marketing materials the best they can be BEFORE you start actively marketing yourself.

Let me briefly outline how you can best use each of these vital tools to your advantage.

• Your online reputation and credibility:
  Don’t discount the importance of your reputation and your online presence. If you contribute to forums, Facebook, etc., never use profanity or denigrating verbiage. Be aware of what pictures of you are available online. Remember, clients can see all that too so make sure your online image is one you’re proud of.
  
• Your appearance and demeanor on auditions and jobs:
  Many voice actors think because it’s only their voice that’s being heard and not their face that’s being seen, it’s permissible to show up at auditions and jobs in torn jeans and tee shirts and flip-flops. I couldn’t disagree more. You don’t have to get dressed up to the nines, but I believe a professional appearance and a patient, cooperative demeanor on auditions and jobs are vitally important. It shows respect for your clients and portrays you as a professional with high personal standards.
  
• Your outgoing voicemail message on your phone:
  Your outgoing message should be clearly spoken, professional, short, to the point, and gracious. No music, background sounds, slang, or sarcasm.
  
• Your email correspondence:
  Your emails should be professional, error-free, and contain opening and closing salutations. As your relationship with a client progresses, you may become more informal but NEVER cross the line of becoming too personal, emotional, or using profanity. Even if your client’s emails are all lower case, contain no opening or closing salutations and are filled with typos and slang, take the high-road and keep it professional. Trust me on this one. Create a code of conduct for your email correspondence and stick to it.
  
• Your business cards:
  You should have professionally printed business cards, ready to go at all times. They don’t need to be fancy but they should be clear, easy-to-read (no tiny fonts or wild graphics) and contain all the contact information you can supply. As you secure your domain name, email, and website, you can add information as you go. If you’re just getting started
  and don’t even have a demo yet, at least get a business card with your name and phone number. But DO have a business card, no ifs ands, or buts on this one. No business card = unprofessional.
  
• Your voiceover demos:
  Depending upon your market, you should have a demo for each genre of voice acting that you do: animation, corporate, commercials, etc. They should be current, fast-moving, have superior sound quality and be professionally produced. You must also be able to perform in the studio at the level demonstrated on your demo. Have your demos available on CD, as individual MP3 files on your computer, and also available for download on your website.
  
• Your website:
  As soon as you have your demo or demos produced, you’ll need a professional website. Your website should be current, easy to navigate, and well-optimized. When you’re first starting out a simple, one-page website is just fine. Any call-to-action or important information should be “above the fold” (the top part of the page) so no scrolling is necessary. Check your website regularly to make sure everything is working as it should be.
  
• Your thank-you cards and invoices:
  Thank-you cards are, of course, a given—after jobs, referrals, assistance from others. Make them prompt, brief, and specifically mention the reason for your gratitude. Avoid including any unrelated information, questions, or concerns. Your invoices should be easy-to-read, clear, and detailed. They should contain your contact information and address, payment information and terms, job details, as well as a thank-you comment ON the invoice, thanking your client for their business.
  

This is just a brief overview of some of the important aspects of your marketing arsenal, but if you pay close attention to these from day one, (or get them back on track if you’re mid-career), you’ll be way ahead of those that don’t.

Wishing you success!

Technology has changed the way we do business as voice talent in many ways, but one thing that stands out is auditioning. I have never auditioned so much in my life as I have since Internet casting and remote recording came in vogue. Back in the 80’s I rarely auditioned for anything. More often than not, voice talent were booked off their demos. In some areas where the stakes were a bit higher than my little pond, the initial casting was done off the demos and the talent brought in for call backs.

But nothing stays the same. After about a ten year hiatus from VO work while wearing lots of hats for a major corporation (producer, writer, on and off-camera talent), I started to ease myself back into voiceovers—and boy oh boy had the world changed!

It seems that the moment I had the ability to record out of my home studio and send voice files over the Internet I suddenly had to prove that I could read the client’s specific words. If you are competing for pretty much any kind of voiceover work, no longer is the artfully prepared demo enough. And the competition is fierce.

After many years in this business, I am starting to have the opportunity to go vocal cord to vocal cord with some of the best, most well-known talent in the industry. Several times a day, I hear spots on the radio and TV that I auditioned for and didn’t get. I have returned to my audio files to compare what ended up on the air with what I submitted. And I know that my audition was truly competitive—but being the subjective business this is—I was just not the voice in the head of the people making the decisions that day. And it is a mystery for sure sometimes as to why one voice is selected out of all the choices submitted.

So what makes a winning audition when the process is so subjective? Your audition has to catch someone’s ear. They do have a sound in mind – but may not have been able to express it. Or they fall into the “know it when they hear it” group. Either way, there are some basics to help your audition stand out.

1. It must be technically clean – no background noise, volume not too loud or too low. It is expected that you have your own professional studio, or have access to one. Your competition does.
   
2. You must know that you are “right” for the copy you are reading. And yes, “right” is subjective. But none of us are good at everything. Know your strengths and pass on
   auditions that are not “right.” There is still some debate over this point. But auditioning does take time, so choosing auditions that are up your alley instead of going for long shots may help your audition to booking ratio.
   
3. Be ready to audition. Warmed up, focused, relaxed, confident.
   
4. Understand the script. Just what the heck is going on!
   
5. Understand who you are talking to. In the case of a commercial, who is the target buyer for the product? In the case of a corporate piece, are you talking to a peer? Are you talking to someone who really doesn’t want to hear what you have to say?
   
6. Understand what you are saying. Tell the story that lies beneath the words. Don’t just read the words. Dig under, around, above each word to communicate the meaning and the emotion of the copy.
   
7. Know that what you have recorded is actually competitive. You are the one hitting the send button, so you must be the one to make that final decision.
   

Hard to tell what the magic sound will be for any specific client, but if you submit high-quality auditions technically and creatively, your audition-to-booking ratio should pay off.