Voice Acting For Dummies

by David Ciccarelli

  You never know when you might get caught off guard by something in the book that throws you for a loop. If you haven’t read through the book before creating a character voice, midway through the story, the author may give you a hint about that character, and suddenly you realize that the character you thought sounded one way is actually quite opposite.

  Typically, narrators read through the book if the material is new to them given that they have time to do so. Sometimes a narrator doesn’t have to read the book before recording it, particularly when he or she is reading books in a series. After the narrator has read one or two of the books, he or she will have a good idea of the plot and characters.

  Although reading the book before recording is the most obvious way to gain pertinent information, you can also acquire this information in other ways if you’re unable to dedicate sufficient time to read the book in full or conduct an in-depth analysis. Refer to the nearby sidebar for some excellent online resources that provide summaries of books with detailed character sketches and more.

  Listening to the Announcer

  The announcer, often heard live at events, on commercials or promos, and as segment introductions for podcasts, is a product of the broadcast age, most celebrated at its height in the Golden Age of Radio and early television broadcasts. Announcers can introduce an idea and assertively make a call for action at the conclusion of a commercial advertisement or short video.

  One common misconception is that an announcer has to sound like an announcer from decades ago; however, modern announcers act more like narrators, and in many cases, adopt the real-person approach.

  These sections walk you through the forms an announcer can take and how you can give an effective announcer read.

  Identifying the two types of announcers

  When announcing, you can announce in two different ways:

  You can be a live announcer.

  You can record announcements in advance that are played at the appropriate time.

  Announcing lends itself to both, and in some instances, a live announcer also pre-records some of what is said during a live event. You technically can be announcing some parts of a program live while other, nonchanging aspects are cued up for just the right moment.

  Announcers have the exciting job and responsibility of sharing the news or providing commentary, often without much time to review what has been handed to them to read. To be a professional announcer, you have to be quick on your verbal feet to clearly deliver a message.

  Measuring your announcer abilities

  The Announcer’s Test, as it is commonly referred to, originated in the 1940s at Radio Central New York as a cold reading test given to aspiring radio talent to demonstrate their reading ability. Today most voice actors and announcers use this test as a warm-up for their voice to get their articulators going.

  The Announcer’s Test involves:

  Retention: Being able to retain information is important, especially if you have to refer to it later or as you’re building on what has already happened. Having the capacity to remember what you’ve said is important, especially when trying to recite something by heart.

  Memory: Doing the test helps to increase the length or extent of your memory span as you’ll need to repeat each line numerous times.

  Repetition: Repetition can help you to remember more, follow and identify patterns, and become more comfortable speaking your way through difficult passages, phrasing, and most importantly, with budgeting of your breath! If you know how repetition works in the 12 Days of Christmas carol, you get the idea.

  Enunciation: Speaking clearly and coherently is important. You want people to know what you’re saying, right? Recording yourself while you recite the test and then listening back afterwards can give you an indication of how clearly you’re speaking.

  Diction: Spitting out consonants helps dramatically with the shaping of words and how your audience receives your voice. Be particularly sensitive with consonants, such as t, k, p, b, f, and v.

  Ten factors that use every letter in the alphabet a variety of times: This test incorporates literally every letter in the alphabet and will give you a great workout. You’ll likely encounter words and combinations of words that you’ve never seen before, which will happen often in the course of announcing.

  You can find recordings of announcers reciting the famous test online. Here’s an especially wonderful example of Jerry Lewis showing how it’s done at www.youtube.com/watch?v=06D1F5-4Atc.

  Although you can rehearse some aspects of announcing, such as in the cases of award shows, game shows, and special events, you’ll always have surprises along the way that you need to be mentally prepared for in order to articulate on the go. The best way to prepare for cold copy live to air is to train. One of the best ways to train is with the fun Announcer’s Test (see the nearby sidebar for details). You can take this test for your own benefit (more of a warm-up). Taking the test isn’t required of you at a job interview or for becoming a professional announcer; it’s more just a fun way to gauge your skills and abilities.

  Grasping the message

  As an announcer, you need to be, in effect, all knowing or omniscient, which is different from the narrator role. Sometimes announcers have to work with what they have at the moment and be prepared for new information to come their way as a story unfolds or if something changes unexpectedly. Regardless of whether you’re announcing live or recording for something to be used at a later date, be diligent in your work to highlight the central plot, pivotal moments, and underlying themes so that you don’t get lost in the midst of it all. A voice actor’s comprehension and knowledge of the story helps drive key points home so that the listener is able to fully understand the core message and enjoy following alongside.

  Pacing your read

  If you’re reading as an announcer, you have a set amount of time that you need to deliver the copy. Because you have a limited amount of time to read, you want to pace yourself appropriately so that the copy fits within the time frame and doesn’t go long. Pacing yourself is important for commercials as well as any other application where voice-over is only one component of a storyboard.

  To help keep within the time limit, use a stopwatch and measure your read. For example, if you have only 30 seconds to deliver the copy, practice so you can fit it all in 30 seconds without rushing or finishing early.

  When narrating audiobooks, you have a little more freedom with pacing your read. When voicing for animation, the artists often animate to what your voice has already done. If you’re dubbing, however, you need to be able to match what a character is doing on the screen in keeping with the original performance.

  Selling without sounding like a salesperson

  The more conversational your speech is when you’re an announcer, the more likely your listeners will believe you’re engaging them in a dialogue that is safe and has their best interests at heart. On the other hand, if you speak quickly or appear too aggressive, they will think you’re only trying to sell them something instead of building a relationship. Audiences these days don’t fall for much. They seek relationships and need to know why what you’re presenting to them matters in their lives.

  Just think about it: Have you ever listened to an advertisement where the actor is talking at you rather than speaking to you? If the actor’s tone of voice and approach to the script sounded like a sales pitch, you probably were turned off. People have built-in radar for this sort of technique nowadays.

  Knowing How to Be a Spokesperson

  The fourth kind of character you can play as a voice actor is the spokesperson. A spokesperson can be on or off camera, depending on the medium you’re using. A confident, charismatic person able to promote a cause, product, or service with ease and authority usually plays a spokesperson. This type of voice-over needs to be driven, optimistic, and ass
ured.

  The spokesperson represents a brand and is associated with that brand. If the spokesperson is on camera, his or her physical image is more aligned with the brand, but if the spokesperson is off camera, the voice resonates more closely with the brand.

  The next sections provide more detailed information about what a spokesperson does and what you can do to be an effective spokesperson.

  Representing the brand

  When you record a voice-over, you’re representing a company and its brand. Being an organization’s vocal ambassador can be an amazing opportunity with enormous responsibility. Knowing the brand and understanding how the company wants its brand projected to the public is very important. In this capacity, your voice isn’t merely a representative of the brand, it also must embody the brand and advocate for the company while exuding the essence of the brand and its core objectives.

  The bigger the brand, the greater the likelihood that it requires some form of exclusivity regarding the use of your voice in the industry. In fact, a number of larger companies pay significantly higher fees to their voice actors to secure insurance for a brand and ensure that a competitor or another company doesn’t use the voice actor. If such an agreement is in place, you may need to turn down opportunities.

  Working with a brand may also mean that you not disclose that you’re the company voice or that you have done work for them. The industry refers to this as a nondisclosure agreement (NDA). These sorts of agreements can last for a very short time, or they can be in place for as long as the voice-over is used, perhaps even longer.

  Feeling comfortable

  As a spokesperson, being fully comfortable with a script and the director’s expectations of you is paramount. Are there certain words that you won’t say, and are there particular kinds of roles or concepts that you steer clear of or don’t identify with? If you find instances in a script that you don’t feel comfortable with, let the director know. Perhaps the writer can change the copy to make you feel more at ease.

  At the end of the day, you have to think of what the story is that you want to tell in your own life, not just what the stories other people are telling through voice-over. If a project doesn’t sit well with you or goes against every fiber in your body, leave it on the table.

  Endorsing with confidence

  Endorsing something that you don’t believe in or subscribe to can make you feel like a fraud, and that will come across in your read. As a result, make sure when you’re playing a spokesperson role that you know the brand well, are familiar with the product or service being promoted, and understand all that you can about what is being asked of you.

  If you can’t stand behind and endorse it 100 percent as a spokesperson, you should pass on the opportunity rather than compromise what you stand for. Although most voice acting, including spokesperson roles, goes without credit (where your name generally isn’t associated with the final product nor are you recognized publicly in most cases as the voice artist), if you don’t feel as though you can put your name on something publicly, don’t do the work. Recording the job in private doesn’t make a difference; you’re still doing the job, even if other people don’t know you did it.

  Learning from the Instructor

  A straightforward, didactic, and encouraging voice is the voice-over best suited for teaching someone how to do something, such as a corporate training video or a children’s game. The role of this particular voice talent, called the instructor, is to provide information to fulfill a specific goal or purpose. Everyone learns better when they feel that the person teaching comes from a place of authority, knowledge, and a genuine desire to see them succeed. We describe the instructor role in more detail in these sections.

  Becoming the expert

  As an instructor, you read as though you’re knowledgeable. In fact, the script can enrich your understanding of the topic and thereby your read, which can allow you to sound like an expert. Experts typically sound formal, didactic, and confident.

  Doing a little extra research to help you understand the script is always a good idea. Knowing more about what you’re talking about is a critical piece for sounding like you’re in a position to teach. You can do research in other ways too, including the following:

  Use a dictionary to look up words.

  Search online for the topic or profession for more information.

  Ask the director for advice.

  Go online if you’re unsure how a word is pronounced. Many online dictionaries have a listen feature where you can hear how a word is pronounced in North American English.

  If for whatever reason you’re working in a different accent, you can go to the International Dialects of English Archive (IDEA) to hear native speakers from different parts of the English-speaking world and appreciate how they sound when speaking. People who are studying a different dialect of English often use this resource.

  Speaking with authority

  When you’re recording an instructor role, your voice and how you use it can tell an audience a lot about how informative and prepared you are to teach listeners with your voice-over. Tone, pacing, and comprehension all play into how authoritative and confident you can sound. Speaking with authority means that you understand what you are saying, that you believe what you are saying, and also that you feel the information is of value to other people.

  Communicating objectives

  Communicating clearly the objectives set before you can give your audience a good idea of where the value lies and how they can best apply the teachings presented. When you’re able to identify what is most important in a script, you can zero in on those objectives and place greater emphasis on them with your voice and manner of speech. If you feel something is important, use your voice to let people know by varying pitch, tone, pacing, or the weight you give to a particular word or concept. Check out Chapter 5 for information on breaking down a script.

  Chapter 5

  Interpreting a Script and Finding Your Character

  In This Chapter

  Playing detective: Investigating a script

  Creating your character

  Comprehending context

  Using the tones of your voice to represent your character

  Making the sell with your voice

  One of the primary responsibilities of a voice actor is that of a storyteller. Instead of passively reading a story, the voice actor has an opportunity to actively tell the story by being directly involved in how the story is told.

  Although being a storyteller can be fun, you, as the voice actor, have been entrusted with this significant responsibility. You have the power to shape how someone may receive what you’re saying, so you carefully need to exercise that power without robbing the audience of its experience or imposing your own views. You’re also responsible for how well the author or copywriter’s intent is being delivered.

  Because you get to read the story before the listener hears it, you can decide how to bring it to life, which allows you to construct a safe place for the story to unfold.

  In this chapter, you discover how to find clues from the author, create believable characters, use your voice (tone and so on) to shape a message, and get buy-in from the target audience.

  Analyzing a Script: The Five Ws and How

  When figuring out how to read a piece of copy, you need to first analyze the script. Think of yourself as a detective, sorting out the most important pieces of the puzzle, such as the who, what, when, why, and how of a script. When answering these questions, you’re looking for clues that can help determine who your character is in the script, why you’re saying what you’re saying, and who you are speaking to. Doing so is important because you need everything you can get your fingers on to help you create a believable and effective read.

  You can dissect from all kinds of angles wh
en you know what to look for. The more you know about the script, the better you can interpret your script, thus giving a richer performance.

  Use these exercises to examine the script as a whole and more specifically your character. You want to know every detail possible about the script you’re voicing, who the intended audience is, and how you need to convey the information or story being shared.

  Who you are playing

  When reading the script, look to see who you are in the script and what role you play. Are you a narrator who is supposed to be all knowing? Are you a character in need of a back story? When trying to figure out who you are in the script, you also need to read between the lines to gain a better appreciation for who your character is, why your character is relevant, and how your character relates to other characters in the script.

  The “who” question also refers to other characters in the script. Make a list of all the characters you come into contact with and write down bits of information about them to see how they relate to each other. This information can help you to understand the story or script better as a whole and make your interpretation more fluid and believable. Each character is there for a reason, so you need to know who your character is in relation to you and everyone else before you pick up that script and hit record!

  What you want to communicate

  You also need to answer the “what” question regarding the plot, including what is going on, what needs to be communicated, and what the theme or the subtheme of the script is.

  Answering the “what” question gives you a firm place to stand and sets the expectations. When you’re reading from a place of confidence and have laid a firm foundation, your read can be more believable simply because there are no unknowns or ambiguities. You know what you’re talking about because you have all the facts and can therefore set the mood and listener expectations by communicating to your audience with authority.