Ace Tips for voiceover artists
Photo by Adi Goldstein on Unsplash
You should be able to find all kinds of tips and advice for doing a good voiceover recording with a quick Google – and we hope you’ve done that already! We absolutely encourage you to scour the internet with ways to improve the dulcet tones of your voice delivery for a professional recording. Some tips online might be what you already knew, and some might surprise you by how small a change it would take to do and be very effective. Each tip will work differently for different people and so it’s important that you do your research. Whip out an empty notebook, your phone to record your voice, and get cracking!
Just because you think you sound alright talking in day-to-day life doesn’t mean it’ll be easy speaking into a microphone and taking direction from strangers who really know their stuff. And you’ll either be in your home studio or in a professional sound booth which both have its pluses and drawbacks – at home, you’ll be comfortable BUT your equipment won’t be as good so you’ll need to work extra hard to keep all sounds apart from your voice hitting the microphone. You won’t be able to sheepishly apologise for that ambulance going by JUST as you read your perfect delivery and it will just annoy your clients to have been THIS CLOSE to nailing the recording. But in a Studio, although you won’t have to worry about hearing anything else but yourself, you’ll have the eager faces of your clients, creatives, producers and the like all waiting for you to speak as you sit in a sound proof booth where you can hear your own breath!
But never fear! The road to being a professional voiceover artist is a rewarding one! Here are our Ace Tips to being the best you can be so that you can get more and more projects out there in the world and become a happy voiceover artist – we’re here with you for the long haul and want you to succeed.
FIVE ACE TIPS TO LEVEL UP YOUR VOICEOVER WORK
1. Practice as much as possible
Practice, practice, practice! Everything from reading scripts to your cat to recording yourself on your phone for you to hear back over and over again to improve your speaking style. Even practice things not directly about reading a script but will help leaps and bounds like learning how to breathe and control your breath when speaking. Get your partner or friend to test you by giving any kind of direction – “read that line slower but more energetically” or “stress on this word and not that one” or switch up the audience who will listen to your words from mums to scientists as you’ll speak differently to different audiences.
And like any sports instructor will tell you (with you likely ignoring their advice and regretting it) – before you do a full sprint, do some stretches or warm ups. It’s the same with voice work when you’re using muscles to speak – so pick one or two of your favourite vocal warm ups and enjoy doing them as a ritual before you go into the recording.
And finally, as you practice, bear in mind the four elements to a good VO – 1. Audio clarity & volume, 2. Pacing, 3. Vocal Tone & Inflection, and 4. Pronunciation. Check out TechSmith’s article for more details on the big four here.
2. Learn to be cool as a cucumber
Pre-booth fright is very natural as you’re in a strange environment and have high hopes pinned on yourself to get the delivery right. The good news is that the more voice recordings you do, the more and more zen you will be and later on enjoy doing them fully and completely. But for those initial jitters, we recommend closing your eyes, breathing in to the count of six and breathing out to the count of six and do it one more time. Ignore thinking about people outside your booth, they’ll be able to hear you breathing and will assume you are doing breathing exercises. Then once you’re feeling calm and good, only think of the words and the message you’re trying to give.
3. Do as the Italians do
In the Italian culture, it’s widely known that speaking and talking is not only about using one’s voice. You use your voice, yes, but what’s equally important is to speak with gestures – hands, arms and shoulders waving about – to really get your point across. Although your audience won’t see your entertaining movements and body language, it can have an incredible effect on how your voice is heard. Sometimes our mind reads a script knowing it’s a script and it can sound a bit flat without us intending it to but by using your hands to explain how you feel, it can add that oomph to the script and bring it to life.
4. Make your script your friend
Ah, the script – the passage that you’re going to bring to life and get paid for it. In most cases, you’ll only get the final script as you’ve entered the recording booth because your clients were making tweaks to it and finalising it. Once you have your script, you’ll be given the chance to read through it once or twice to make notes with your pencil and eraser (make sure you arm yourself with these before every recording) but you won’t have long – maybe 5-10 minutes to familiarise yourself with it – which is why we refer you to Tip No. 1 and practice reading different scripts and marking them.
But if you’re lucky, you’ll be able to get the script a few days beforehand to practice reading and you’ll have enough time to ask questions you have for the client on the script but this rarely happens so you’ll have to make it work in the studio within that precious hour. If you feel certain words don’t feel right, speak out respectfully and professionally to your clients to make suggestions.
Writing your notes and cues down is important because after your 25th take of the same script, there’s a good chance you might have forgotten what your specific directions where the next day if you’re revisiting the same script. Yes! You may have to re-read the same thing over and over to get it right so patience is another virtue to have!
What kinds of things are you marking out with your pencil and eraser, you ask? Apart from noting where you need take your breaths in between sentences and guiding yourself to pronounce certain words a certain way, make sure you note where the punctuation marks are as they are there for a reason, make sure you pause when you need to or it could completely change the meaning of the line. Just like a panda that eats, shoots and leaves.
5. Good body, good mind, good voice
You don’t need to be a bodybuilder or health nut to have a good voice that’s for sure but if you’ve ever experienced a sore throat and had to speak, you’d know that it wasn’t great to do or listen to. So before a recording avoid chocolate, nuts, caffeine, alcohol and carbonated drinks up to three days before for your best voice quality and get plenty of sleep. It’s tough, we know, but they make a big difference.
And before the recording, remember to sit up right in front of your microphone to give yourself good breath support as well as help you speak in a clear, strong voice. And always, always have some room temperature water with you to hand (too cold and it restricts your vocal cords and too hot and it irritates them – see, it gets technical!) Drinking water just before speaking also prevents your mouth from getting dry which will reduce those smacking, clicking and popping sounds when you speak that distracts from the message.
We hope you’ve enjoyed reading our five Ace Tips to help you on your journey as a voiceover artist. For our Ace Talent, we have our mini community Whatsapp group chat for you to ask questions to our agents or other artists. If you have any other questions feel free to email us at hello@acevoices.com.
For extra reading on voiceover tips, we love Julia Letts’ article on voices.com which you can read here for advice from other voice actors – from using a sock as a pop filter to brushing your teeth before a recording, these tips are unconventional but brilliant and can be some to try out that can work wonders for your recording.
Ace x