Voice Acting For Dummies

by David Ciccarelli

  Directing Yourself When You Record Your Voice

  Even when you receive artistic direction from the client and director, you still may need to self-direct yourself, especially if you’re working on a smaller project and recording it by yourself. You’re ready to press record, and you’ve evaluated your character and studied the script. You’re confident and positioned behind the microphone. In this section, we explain some studio basics for acting on your own and expectations that may be applied to you as a voice actor working in the 21st century.

  Understanding what self-direction is

  One of the biggest challenges today in voice acting isn’t getting work. It’s self-direction, where you put on the director’s hat and make creative decisions that influence your read. Being able to direct a session on your own is a fundamental skill voice actors need to develop in order to give a solid performance.

  Before the phenomenon and boom of the professional-grade home recording studio, voice actors used to go to studios to audition and to recording studios to complete work they were hired to voice. Recording at the studio was far less technical and more social and interactive. It also provided a more conducive environment for coaching and directing during the recording process.

  The voice actor’s role has changed dramatically over the years, mainly because recording technology has become more economical and easier to use. As a result, voice actors are required to take on additional roles and responsibilities, such as becoming an engineer, business person, manager, and director.

  Being your own director

  It’s showtime. Acting as your own director and recording your voice for the finished product are really no different than recording an audition (refer to Chapters 11 and 12), except this time is the real thing. The only difference is that you’re on your own, so get comfortable and put all your hard work leading up to this point into practice. You’re prepared to do a great job, and if you’re well-rested, focused on your performance, and warmed up, your voice won’t let you down.

  To self-direct, take care of the same preparations as if you had a director, including the following:

  Set up your microphone and stand for the script: The position of your microphone and stand are important because they’re part of the signal chain that helps your voice make it through to the computer to be recorded. (Refer to Chapter 18 for how to do so.)

  Interpret the script: When you read a script, you need to prepare yourself for a role and not just regurgitate what is written on the page. (See Chapter 5 for how to interpret a script.)

  Determine who the audience is: As a self-director, knowing your audience is even more important because no one else is there to fill in the gaps information-wise. (Flip to Chapters 4 and 5 for understanding your role as a voice actor as it pertains to your audience and uncovering helpful tools.)

  Create and develop your character: Knowing your character means that you have a good understanding of what your character would do in any given situation. You understand your character and can make solid judgments on how he or she would say something, why he or she would say it, and how he or she would best communicate the message.

  Knowing this information applies to all applications of voice acting, not just animation or commercials; every job that you take on is another role you will perform, even work that you may perceive to be corporate, including telephone system voice-overs, podcasts, or business presentations. (Refer to Chapter 5 for how to create and develop your character.)

  Speak to your audience: You need to know your role so that you can competently and confidently speak to your audience. This means understanding who you are in terms of whether you are an announcer, an instructor, and so on. (Check out Chapter 4 for how to speak to your audience.)

  When you’re self-directing, you need to draw upon all the information you have at your disposal, including what role(s) you are playing, who you are speaking to, why the audience should care, and so on. You also need to consider the brand you’re recording for and what its values are.

  To direct yourself well, you need a quiet space where you can experiment with different takes and listen back to them. One of your best allies is the script because it’s chockfull of clues, particularly in audiobook narration. The author gives you an amazing amount of direction that you can interpret on your own. The best part: The author is consistent with this direction, providing you an almost foolproof guide on how he or she intends for you to voice the script.

  Depending on the length of the assignment, make sure you have allocated enough time to record the entire script in a single sitting. Why? Believe it or not, your voice changes slightly from day to day. External factors, such as the amount of rest you received, the weather, and the time of day you record, all affect the consistency of your recording.

  To combat these challenges, schedule your sessions for long recording projects, such as audiobooks, one day after another until the project is done.

  Listening to the Finished Product

  When you’ve finished recording the script and following the client’s directions, you want to listen to the finished product. Consider the final listening to the finished product as proofreading where you can double-check to ensure the work is ready to submit.

  When you’re listening to the finished product, stick to these steps to ensure the final product is ready:

  1.Follow along with the script.

  You want to make sure you read the script just as the client wanted and you didn’t accidentally skip a paragraph. Believe us, even the best voice actors have inadvertently done it. You can catch omissions simply by listening through your takes.

  2.If you identify any missed material, record it.

  Try your best to match your voice, speaking at the same speed and register you had performed earlier in the session, so that what you voice after the fact fits in nicely with what you had recorded earlier.

  3.If you identify material that needs rerecorded, rerecord it.

  If you notice a word or phrase that isn’t as clear as it needs to be, or an outside noise (such as a neighbor dog barking), rerecord that part of the script. The great thing about audio editing is that you can move one part of your recording and place it wherever you want to in a file.

  4.After you complete the recording, have edited any mistakes, and mixed the audio to your satisfaction, export the recording into the format as requested by your client.

  If the client hasn’t specified a particular format, deliver the audio as a WAV file, which is a high-quality, uncompressed format. (Refer to Chapter 21 for more information about file formats, including WAV files. Check out Chapter 19 for editing and mixing instructions.)

  5.When you complete the exporting processes, play the audio file.

  Sit back and listen to the recording from start to finish without starts and stops. In fact, stand up, walk around, and then return to the studio for one final listen.

  Be careful of falling victim to listening fatigue, which occurs when you’ve been editing or mixing for hours on end. After sitting in the same position and listening to the same bit of audio, your ears tend to get foggy and you can miss little nuances. To overcome listening fatigue, take a break and then return to the session with fresh ears.

  Listening fatigue is similar to the effect of driving at high speeds on the highway for hours and then driving in city traffic. You feel like you’re driving slowly, even though you’re probably going faster than the speed limit.

  Chapter 21

  Delivering the Final Product

  In This Chapter

  Eyeing the best way to send audio

  Delivering files to your client

  Verifying your client approves the final product

  Getting and obtaining feedback

  Recording great voice-overs is just part of
what it takes to be a successful voice actor. Knowing about the technical side of things, such as using file formats, delivering files to your customers, and receiving approval of your finished work, is very important.

  Utilizing your business acumen is also necessary for getting valuable feedback from your customers in the form of either a feedback rating and review or a testimonial that you can use for future marketing purposes to obtain more work.

  In this chapter, we discuss some of the most common file formats used in digital audio production today. You want to make sure you’re sending the files in the format that your client desires. After your client reviews the files, you want to ensure he or she is pleased with your work. You also want to acquire a taste for giving and receiving feedback as a professional voice actor.

  Identifying Best Practices for Sending Audio

  Applying the best practices for sending audio recordings demonstrates that you’re a professional who knows what you’re doing. Best practices are generally accepted as the “best way” to do something. In this section, we look at the best practices for sending audio files, which include saving the audio in a common file format, naming the files appropriately, and sending the files over the Internet.

  Handling file formats

  Many types of audio file formats exist, but as a voice actor, you only need to be familiar with a handful of them. You’re probably familiar with the common ones, such as a WAV file or an MP3 file. You may have even heard of an AIFF. In the following sections, we discuss just the file formats that you need to know about and how and when you may come across them.

  Note that we list the file formats in this section from the highest quality file formats through to lesser quality file formats. The lesser quality are still useful and can do the job.

  WAV

  Without a doubt, WAV, which stands for waveform audio file format, is the most common professional audio format — professional in the sense that it’s uncompressed and most widely used. Microsoft and IBM jointly developed the WAV file format, which explains why it was built into Windows 95 as the de facto standard for sound on PCs. The quality of a WAV file is superior to MP3 (see the later section on MP3s), but it takes a lot longer to download, because of its size. Most broadcast-quality audio is saved as a WAV file. You can always encode a WAV file as an MP3, but you can’t change an MP3 to a WAV file.

  AIFF

  AIFF stands for Audio Interchange File Format. Apple developed AIFF, which explains why it’s the standard audio format for both storing and transmitting sampled sound on Mac computers. AIFF file extensions tend to appear as .AIF or .IEF.

  When using AIFF, you can’t compress the audio file, and an AIFF tends to be rather large. That being said, a version of the file type called AIF-Compressed, referred to as AIF-C or AIFC, supports compression ratios as high as 6:1.

  MP3

  MP3, which stands for MPEG-1 or MPEG-2 Audio Layer 3, is a common audio file format for consumer storage (think your music collection) as well as the de facto standard of digital audio compression for the transfer and playback of music on digital audio players. Although its quality isn’t as high as a WAV file, if the MP3 is encoded at a high enough bitrate (a measurement of the quality of the audio), the quality is more than acceptable, even broadcast-ready in some cases. The higher the bitrate, the better the sound quality. Most audio files you encounter on the web are MP3s because the files are much smaller than other formats and can be quickly downloaded.

  OGG

  The Ogg Vorbis (OGG) format is comparable to other formats used to store and play digital music, such as MP3. Unlike those formats, however, Ogg Vorbis is license-free, so commercial video games often use it.

  When you save an OGG file, you can select one of three basic encoding options:

  VBR (target bitrate): It allows you to specify the target bitrate in kilobits per second. This option maintains audio quality by varying the bitrate, depending on the complexity of the audio being encoded. This method can maintain higher audio quality, although file size isn’t as predictable as with fixed bitrate encoding.

  VBR (quality index): This option is similar to VBR (target bitrate), but it lets you specify quality on a scale of 0 to 10.

  Fixed (bitrate varies): This option measures the quality level as needed to ensure that the bitrate stays at the specified rate. This method makes a consistently sized file, although the quality may not be as high as with variable bitrate encoding.

  Naming files

  When you name a file, be sure that the name directly relates to the contents of the audio file. That may mean that you include the name of the client you’re working for and your name. Use hyphens or underscores to separate words in the file name. An example of this may be:

  yourname-client.mp3

  Properly naming the file can help you keep track of what the file contains and who the client is. For more complex jobs, your client may ask you to use a specific file naming convention to identify which files are which. If the file name is important to your client, she often spells it out for you before you start on the project. If you don’t receive any instruction, you may want to double-check with your client about how she wants the files named.

  If you’re working on a project with hundreds of files, using this clear file-naming convention not only comes in handy, but it’s also a necessity. For example, telephony work, e-learning modules, and some audiobooks can have complicated file naming conventions because of the sheer number of individual files you have to record.

  Zipping files

  If you have large file attachments to send, you can shrink files to manageable sizes by zipping them. Zipping a folder with files in it is also a great way to send multiple files in one package.

  To zip, follow these easy steps:

  1.Create a folder for the files that you want to send to your client.

  2.Copy or add all the files that you want to send into that folder.

  3.Right-click (on a PC) or Control-click (on a Mac) to open up a menu of actions that you can take on that folder.

  On a PC, select “Send To” and “Compressed (zipped) Folder.” This may be different depending on what version of Microsoft Windows you have.

  On a Mac, it says “Compress your folder name here,” which is Apple’s way of saying “zipping.”

  You may want to double-check that all the files you have zipped are together in the .zip file. After you see they are there, you can attach the .zip file to an e-mail and send it.

  Sending Files: The How-To

  How you landed the job and how big the files are will determine how you send the audio files. Check with your client to determine if she has any requirements for how you deliver your files. These sections identify some of the many ways you can deliver files to your clients, including email or third-party services.

  Emailing files to your client

  For small projects that involve a small number of audio files (say less than five), you can simply email the files to your client. Doing so is as easy as composing a new email message and then attaching the files to your email.

  Include in your email message something like “Please confirm receipt of these files.” You’re not asking for the client to approve the files, but you simply want acknowledgement that the client received them.

  If you don’t hear back from your client, follow up by email (or by phone if you’re working on a tight deadline) to verify that the client did indeed receive the files. Just because the email message is in your sent box doesn’t necessary mean your client received it. A spam filter may have caught the message, or it may have exceeded a file size restriction on the receiving end.

  Every email service provider has file size limitation and may result in your email bouncing back as undeliverable. For example, Gmail has a file attachment limit of 25MB (megabytes) pe
r email. Other email services have similar constraints, which is why zipping your files can come in handy (see the previous section about how to zip files). If you receive an undeliverable message, you may want to try another means to deliver the files. As a general rule, if the file size exceeds 25MB, you should deliver the files through a file-sharing service or by FTP (as we discuss in the next sections).

  Using a file-sharing website

  In recent years, file-sharing websites have been all the rage. They solve a pretty significant challenge online. They allow you to deliver large multimedia files quickly and easily — and at low cost.

  A file-sharing website, sometimes called a file-hosting service, offers a convenient way to upload, organize, and share multimedia files, such as audio, video, photos, and large PDFs. You can organize files into folders just like you do on your personal computer and then share either a single file or an entire folder with your client.

  Considering most services offer a free entry-level package, we see no reason why you shouldn’t set up an account at one of the following sites:

  Google Drive: Previously known as Google Docs, Google Drive (https://drive.google.com/start) allows you to store files conveniently online so that you can access them from anywhere at anytime. You can easily share these files with others by sending a link to where they can download the file from.

  Microsoft SkyDrive: With this file-sharing website (http://windows.microsoft.com/en-CA/skydrive/home), you can easily store and securely share files with others. You get 7GB of SkyDrive Storage. You can also install a SkyDrive app on your computer.

  DropBox: DropBox (www.dropbox.com) creates a new folder on your computer, whether a PC or Mac. You can save files or other information in specific folders on the site. You can share a DropBox folder with someone else, which allows that person to access the files you want to share.