Voice Acting For Dummies

by David Ciccarelli

  When the story happens

  The third “W” question you answer when reviewing the script is “when.” Figure out when the story takes place, including the time period. What is the time frame for the story unfolding (does it cover an hour or cover many years before reaching a conclusion)? Answering this question can help you to establish a timeline and gain historical context.

  Where the story takes place

  One of our favorite questions to ask is “where.” Where allows you to create a physical environment for yourself or a stage to set your players on in the theater of the mind.

  Having an idea of your physical location, based upon a place that could be either fictitious or real, can help you to visualize your surroundings and understand the world that the characters live in. An understanding of this particular element can help you to suspend your audience’s disbelief as you paint word pictures and soundscapes. (Refer to Chapter 4 for more about suspending the audience’s disbelief.)

  Why?

  Answering the “why” question helps you better understand the story’s context, which tells you what’s going on, how it affects the characters, and why it matters. (Refer to the later section, “Understanding Context” for why you need to know the context of a script.)

  When you answer these why questions, you’re able to more fully comprehend the author’s intent with the characters, plot, theme, and so on. On a deeper level, you can also discover the purpose for a character or gain an understanding of the reason for a particular situation by answering “why.” An appreciation for these answers allows you to picture beyond what the audience would see.

  How?

  “How” is a problem-solving question. When you ask how, you instinctively need to find a solution. How does this factor into the story? How should you interpret this phrase? How can you best deliver your lines? Studying the script reveals the answers to these different questions. A good author or text provides you with many clues.

  Developing Your Character

  Knowing the ins and outs of your character is essential for any voice actor in order to give a believable performance. You can develop a character in many ways, including writing a character sketch and understanding how your character relates to other characters in the script. You also want to take note of any physical characteristics each character has. The following sections explain the different ways you can identify your character and understand the role you’re playing.

  Understanding your role: Back to basics

  The author (or copywriter, depending on what you’re reading) has provided you with some clues in the text about who your character really is. Authors tend to have more to share regarding how characters behave, what motivates them, how they relate to others, and why they do the things they do. You, as the voice actor, need to find out who your character is and what makes him tick.

  A copywriter may only have a paragraph at most to share her vision for voice roles in the script. As a result, making the determination about your character may not be easy. Even if the details are handed to you on a silver platter, you still have to create a distinct voice that fits your given character description.

  Break the copy down by asking yourself simple questions. The answers to these questions can help you get in your character’s skin and what makes him breathe. You can delve deeper into the script and ask yourself more who, what, why, where, when, and how questions as we explain here. (These questions focus on helping you figure out your character, while the previous discussion on questions deals more with breaking down the script as a whole.)

  Who: Decide who your character is and give him a life history. What makes him tick, what does he like, and what kind of person is he? Is your character an influential person?

  To help, write a character sketch, which is a detailed description of your character, including everything known about his personality and any physical attributes. In your sketch, include physical attributes and personality traits. You may even want to draw a picture of what you envision your character looking like to help you get a complete grasp of who he is. By setting the stage for your character and developing a persona for him, you can slide into the role and create a more authentic, organic performance. You may also consider how your character sounds. Does he have an accent? Does he have a speech impediment of any kind? How does he speak?

  What: What is your character trying to say? Whose attention is he trying to get? What makes his message important and worth listening to?

  If you can distill what your character’s main objective is in relation to whom he is trying to reach or persuade, you have more purpose and authority behind your words.

  Why: Why should people listen to your character? Why does your character need to share his message?

  You really need to get inside the head of your intended audience for this question. Make your audience members care about you and help them to grab hold of your cause by way of artfully communicating the message.

  Where: Where is your character when delivering his lines?

  You may not think this question is all that important, but you need to know where your character is in terms of physical location while he’s delivering his message. This knowledge can affect your read and also make it easier for you to create an ambiance if you’re using sound effects or including music in your recording to complement the voice. Having music in the background can do much to support your read.

  For example, if your character is in a restaurant, you may want to include some soft music in the background, the sound of utensils on plates, glasses clinking, and so on. Building the scene through audio design can be fun and make it easier for the listener to feel as though he or she is in the scene with you, thereby making the recording more believable as a whole.

  How: How is your character relevant to the people he is speaking to? How is your character motivated?

  Revisit the character sketch you created earlier in this list. Now identify the target market or audience (A target market represents the people an author or advertiser wants to reach with the message.) For example, the audience for a popular laundry detergent is generally women of a certain age with families who have lots of laundry to do. What inspires your character to speak to this audience in particular? How much does he have invested in successfully delivering the message to those people and what is the desired outcome?

  Reading between the lines

  When developing your character, you want to look at what the author’s message is that he doesn’t come out and clearly state. Finding the unspoken words in a script and conveying them through your voice demands not only attention to tone but also to the choices you make when interpreting the text and use of inflection, timing, and punctuation.

  Each script that you read, whether for an audition or a booked gig, demands that you make distinct and motivated choices in order to do proper service to the words. Knowing the script and your characters well gives you what you need to read between the lines. When reading between the lines, you’re able to infer important elements, such as motivation and tone.

  The legendary late, great Don LaFontaine once said that your voice is merely a vehicle for the written word. The words take center stage, and your responsibility is to convey them in a respectful and meaningful manner. In fact, Don had even been quoted as saying that you should specifically “devote yourself to the service of the words,” which means interpreting the written word to make informed choices.

  To do so, you need to be not only sensitive to the copy, but you also need to create a character as we explain in the previous section. Each job that you do as a voice-over professional requires you to take on the persona of the character in the advertisement, narration, or cartoon to deliver a message as someone other than yourself.

  Understanding Context

  Context gives you a 360-degree view of the s
tory and your character, and how your character and his story relates to others and his surroundings. Knowing everything you can about the production can aid you in building a plausible back story from which you can draw upon to flesh out your character.

  In addition to providing a solid foundation for your choices, context supports your back story and helps direct how your character would react in any given situation.

  Building a back story can be a lot of fun. Each character you voice for, and even ones you don’t, require a back story in order to deliver a thoughtful, well-engineered performance. These sections explore what a back story is and how a good back story can set you up for a successful read and an informed acting experience.

  Building a back story

  A back story is all the information about a character that an actor creates, based upon clues the author has given the actor, and through character development and details the actor infers from his own imagination from the text. Essentially, having a comprehensive back story allows you to make solid choices about how to be the character you’re assigned. The choices you make concerning your character are very important and need sound reasoning to support them.

  The back story can include details such as where your character grew up, what his family was like, what he likes to do, what types of people he associates with (basically who his friends are), what his political leanings and religious beliefs are, and any experiences he has had that shaped who he is up to the point he is presented within the confines of the script.

  In order to truly understand your character and present him well, you need to know the lens through which your character sees the world. How a person sees the world determines how he views himself, what’s most important to him, how he makes decisions, and how he relates to other people.

  Every person sees the world a certain way, based upon his or her life experiences. You can refer to this as a worldview. You have one of your own, and if you’re trying to create an authentic personality for your character, your character has one as well. This worldview is why you want to know about your character and why creating a history for him gives you insight for why your character may do the things that he does or feels the way he feels about people or events in the script.

  When you make a choice as your character, such as choosing what to say, how to say it, or when to flesh out your character’s back story, make sure you commit to the choice or otherwise it won’t come across with authenticity. Then physically play the character in your voice and act on those choices with conviction. For people to believe you, you need to first believe in yourself and the choices you’ve made for your character.

  Gaining an appreciation for your character in its relation to other roles

  Another aspect of character development includes making sure you know in great detail how your character relates to other characters in the script. Look at this experience as an adventure and have fun exploring.

  Understanding relationships between characters isn’t only important in longer scripts and productions; it can also be critical for giving a believable performance in shorter projects like commercials.

  Relationships fascinate people. Stories are interesting mainly because they involve people and how they relate to each other. Just think of all dramas, sitcoms, and reality TV shows. Although the show’s genre or plot may initially pique your interest, the characters and their relationships with each other pull you in and keep you interested.

  When you first receive a script, we suggest you do the following to help you figure out as much as you can about the characters:

  Take note of who the characters are and jot down a little bit about them. You may want to know, for instance, if certain characters are related to each other. Whose lives are interwoven? What do these people have in common with each other? Are they part of each others’ lives for a reason, a season, or a lifetime?

  Create a mini character sketch for each one. (Look at the earlier section, “Understanding your role: Back to basics” for how to create a character sketch.)

  After you know who the characters are, categorize each one in terms of their significance to your character. By categorizing, we mean that you identify which characters are most important to your character and also note whom your character interacts with most. This ordering can tell you whom your character has loyalties to or feels strongly about. Relationships between your character and those characters listed near the top of your list will be different than relationships your character has with characters who are lower on the list.

  If you’re a narrator, consider how each character impacts the story and other characters as well.

  Draw a family tree. Doing so can help you visualize how the characters are connected to each other.

  Be careful and don’t overthink the script or who your character is. Overthinking can make it difficult for you to change your read if you’ve studied it one way. Keeping an open mind until you get the go-ahead from a director is important because your first attempt at the character may not be what has been asked for or what is expected.

  Identifying the takeaway

  Identifying the takeaway message, or premise, of a project can help you to better deliver on what the author’s intent was and give your read a richer, more informed interpretation. A premise is a statement that is assumed to be true and from which a conclusion can be drawn. This exercise is important regardless of project type or length of copy.

  By focusing in on the premise, you can also find that getting where you need to go in terms of direction where plot is concerned is easier. Some examples of premises you may find in scripts are

  Good triumphs over evil.

  Love conquers death.

  Pride comes before the fall.

  Honesty is the best policy.

  Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.

  In our research online and via published works, we discovered a number of traditional literary genres, including but not limited to the following. Although voice-over scripts are very short, they often have some of these same elements:

  Mythic: The triumph of God or gods; triumph of a hero because of an act of God.

  Heroic: The hero is triumphant because of his own strength.

  High ironic: The hero triumphs because of a twist of fate.

  Low ironic: The hero fails because of a twist of fate.

  Demonic: The hero is overcome by evil forces or uses evil to defeat evil forces.

  Considering the plot

  All stories have a basic plot. A plot consists of the main events of a work that the author devises and presents as an interrelated sequence. A well-devised plot is critical to telling a great story and helps you understand what happens to your character. Characters need a challenge or an obstacle to overcome and are often presented with this challenge at the beginning of the story.

  These four basic plots include

  Man against man

  Man against nature

  Man against himself

  Man against the supernatural or the sub-natural

  When doing research on anything you read, consider what the plot is and if there are any subplots. If there are subplots, consider what their purpose is and if they strengthen or weaken the principal plot.

  Marking Up a Script

  Have you ever looked at an actor’s script or peered at a musician’s score? No doubt you noticed as many pencil markings as ink! Although the effort may seem over the top, those thoughtful markings can help you better navigate your script, color your read, and keep it consistent. Following a well-marked-up script is like reading a well-written map.

  When marking up a script, consider a number of factors:

  Where to breathe or pause

  What tone of voice and inflections to use

  The volume of your voicer />
  Some voice actors prefer to print off a script and mark it with a pencil, making sure that their erasers are handy should their interpretation change during the process. Others read directly off a screen and find ways to mark up copy using italics, bold, different colored font, and so on.

  Don’t be married to your markings before you’ve voiced them aloud and know how they come across. Feel free to experiment before setting your markings in stone. Sometimes, plans for how you deliver the copy may change!

  Although markings should act as boundaries for how your interpretation of a script comes across, you don’t need to be legalistic about them. This artistic freedom, when guided by markings, can blend together to create a purposeful and believable performance.

  In this section, you discover how to choose and mark where to breathe and also how the volume level you speak contributes to a great performance.

  Choosing where to breathe

  Knowing where to breathe can depend on a few things. You want to observe punctuation marks in particular. For singers, it’s often permissible to breathe wherever there is a comma, colon, semicolon, or a period. In voice-over, you may need to be more selective with where you breathe.

  You can definitely breathe after a period, but may need to be more choosy with what commas you can breathe after or sail right through. Another good place to breathe is when a new idea or concept is introduced. If breath support is something you are working on, you may need to structure your breaths accordingly so you can get through a phrase without losing tonality or speeding up. Check out Chapter 3 for more specific how-to information about breathing.

  Adding dynamic markings

  You will need to determine the volume level you’re speaking at and any variation on how your voice is being heard. For instance, sometimes you may need to be a bit quieter. If so, mark it on the script. You can even use the musical decrescendo “>” symbol. Other times, you may find that there’s a movement building that leads to a climax in the script. Mark it in! Try the crescendo “<” symbol. Perhaps you’re simply reading comfortably and setting a relaxed, conversational tone for the script. You still need to know how you’ll be speaking, so get that pencil and start jotting your dynamic markings down!