We’ve moved! ProComm has relocated its website from www.procommss.com to www.procommvoices.com. The old web domain will redirect to the new domain. We felt it was time to make the change in order to reflect our emphasis on providing top quality voice talent and voice over services.

Founded in 1980 by ProComm President John Brooks, ProComm Studio Services has provided voice talent casting and production services for thousands of clients throughout the years, including the PGA Tour, Verizon, Anheuser-Busch, QVC, IBM, and more.

What does the change mean to you?

If you like to hear from us from time to time, please change your email address book to reflect the new domain, with @procommvoices.com replacing @procommss.com. That will help keep our correspondence out of your SPAM folder.

ProComm Voice Overs has an immediate opening available for producer/audio engineer. We’re looking for someone with:

• 3 – 5 years experience in commercial audio production and directing voice overs
• a positive attitude and good work ethic
• bilingual skills – English and Spanish (not necessary, but a big plus)
• a willingness to relocate to Asheville, NC

ProComm is an equal opportunity employer and we’re really looking for someone who can hit the ground running. We provide competitive wages and benefits, 401k, and a laid-back, smoke-free environment. The pay will be commensurate with experience.

If you would like to come join us in the beautiful mountains of western North Carolina, send your resume and an mp3 demo of your work via email (no phone calls please) to:

opportunities@procommvoices.com

Please put ‘audio engineer position’ in the subject line.

*****update********

The position has been filled and we are no longer accepting applications.

-thanks

Want to make your voice talent happy? Want to make your next voice over session go more smoothly, perhaps saving you some money in the process? Take an extra minute and examine your voice over script. Following a few simple rules can make your script easier to read, easier to interpret, and ultimately get you better reads in less time from the voice over talent you have hired.

White Space is Good

Voice over scripts come in all shapes and sizes and can often vary depending on the application. Some include visual cues and storyboards. They can have lots of instructions for interpretation or none at all. No matter the format, the first rule of voice over script formatting is to allow plenty of white space. Always send scripts to voice talent double spaced to give room for pencil edits in the session. Make sure the type size is large enough to read comfortably, preferably at least 12 pt. If possible, simplify scripts that have video information included. While it’s helpful to know what the visuals are, when a :30 TV script comes on 3 pages it makes it harder for the voice talent to follow.

Don’t Go CAP CRAZY

Capital letters in the online world signify raising your voice or yelling. In the voice over world they can show the talent points of emphasis, but you may not realize that a script written in ALL CAPS is harder to read. We tend to see words as familiar shapes more than individual letters. Scripts are much easier to read and perform when you use capital letters only at the beginnings of sentences and for proper nouns. This is especially true when cold reading a script that comes right at session time.

Punctuate Please

A script without good punctuation is like a road without traffic signals. Sure, you can get where you’re going, but the likelihood of crashing and burning goes way up. Without proper punctuation in a voice over script it becomes impossible to tell where thoughts begin and end and can drastically change an interpretation.

Go Easy on the Text Formatting

When used sparingly, Bold, Italics and Underlines can help the voice talent see the most important points in your copy. But be careful. It’s easy to go overboard. Most good voice talent will be able to interpret which words deserve more weight. Giving too many signals in the script will limit the range of the read and may lead the voice talent to make unnatural points of emphasis!

Numbers and Symbols

Often times scripts come in with numbers and symbols written out as words, which is important if you’re using word count as a guide to script length. Most voice talent, however, prefer to see such items written as the numbers and symbols themselves for performance purposes. It’s much easier to process and read a phone number when it’s shown as 123-4567, rather than one-two-three-four-five-six-seven. Same goes for dot-coms (.com), monetary figures ($) and symbols (%).

Is it Ralph LAUR-en or Ralph Lau-REN?

Look your script over for words that might present questions on pronunciation. This might include localities that an out of town voice talent might not necessarily know (for instance, Worcester MA, is Wʊs’tər, not WOR-chester) or people’s names (It’s LAUR-en, btw). For technical or medical scripts, consider printing out phonetic spellings to save time. If you don’t know how to pronounce some of the words yourself, there are plenty of handy websites to help out.

.doc vs .pdf

Many sessions have copy changes that come on the fly. Often voice talent read scripts directly from their laptops or computer screens in studio. Word documents allow them to type in changes as you go. Sure, you can copy and paste the text from a PDF into a word doc, but that’s one more step that might be on your dime if the session has begun.

The voice talent you hire probably is not going to complain about how the script comes in too often. They’re probably happy to have the gig, so even if you send it hand written on a napkin, most are likely to just go with it. But if you take a few extra minutes to prepare your script properly, you’ll avoid wasting precious studio time.

Recently, ProComm helped produce a fun series of spots as part of Subway’s “Brinner” (“Breakfast right on through dinner”) campaign in North Dakota.  These creative spots were written by Lee Ziegler @FlintGroup and featured ProComm voiceover talent Joshua Swanson & Jaz Adams, with John Oliver as the announcer.  Apparently, you can get breakfast all day in your dreams…

Subway Brinner spot 1
Subway Brinner spot 2
Subway Brinner spot 3
Subway Brinner spot 4
Subway Brinner spot 5
Subway Brinner spot 6

It’s a question that creative directors and writers ask themselves all the time.

“Should I cast a male voice talent or a female voice talent?”

Recently Adweek and Harris Interactive set out to answer this question with a survey conducted over 3 days in February. The survey, titled “The Effect of Voices in Commercials”, asked over 2,000 online participants a series of questions such as:

When there is a voiceover in a commercial, which type of voice is…

The results were shown as a whole and also broken down by the gender of the respondents. Harris Interactive goes on to say this about their methodology:

Figures for age, sex, race/ethnicity, education, region and household income were weighted where necessary to bring them into line with their actual proportions in the population. Where appropriate, this data were also weighted to reflect the composition of the adult online population. Propensity score weighting was also used to adjust for respondents’ propensity to be online.

The Results

In Adweek’s news blurb on the survey, they state that “gender stereotypes are alive and well”.

On the question of which sort is “more forceful,” 48 percent of respondents said a male voiceover is, vs. 2 percent saying a female voiceover is. (The rest said it makes no difference.) The pattern was just the opposite when people were asked to say which is “more soothing,” with the female outpointing the male by 46 percent to 8 percent. There was no significant gap, though, on the question of which is “more persuasive.” Eighteen percent said a male voiceover is, while 19 percent said a female voiceover is.
-Mark Dolliver

When the results were broken down by the gender of the respondents, 51% of men and 46% of women felt male voices were ‘more forceful’, while 54% of men and 38% of women thought women were ‘more soothing’.

When it comes to selling a car, 28% of respondents felt a male voice was more likely, while only 7% felt a female voice would work better. A whopping 66% said it made no difference. Similarly, when the product was a computer, 23% felt a male voice was more likely while only 7% sided with the female voice over. Again, the bigger number is the 69% who said it made no difference.

So what does it all mean?

As the Adweek author suggests, the survey seems to break down along stereotypical lines, like you might expect. Words like ‘forceful’ and ‘soothing’ have natural male and female connotations, so it follows that more people would associate a male voice as being more forceful and a female voice as being more soothing. If anything, I’m surprised that the percentages weren’t higher. I think the interesting thing to notice is that for each question nearly half of the respondents felt it made no difference whether it was a male voice or female voice.

Secondly, as a commenter pointed out in the Adweek article, how people answer a survey and how they actually react or take action are sometimes two different things. Advertising works when it creates an emotional response or connection. It’s often a process that takes place without a lot of conscious thought.

When it comes to deciding which gender is more persuasive in advertising the survey neglects too many other factors to be relevant, such as target audience, ability of the individual voice talent, the product or service that is being advertised, etc.

So, does gender matter when casting voice talent? Sure it does, but it’s only one of several factors that a good casting director should take into account. With each new campaign or script, you must ask yourself:

Once you know who you’re talking to and how you want them to connect to your message, it should become clear as to how you should cast the voice over.

In our two previous articles about getting the most out of Spanish voiceovers and script translation, we focused on the importance of using fully bilingual, native speakers throughout the process, and the practice of using a neutral Spanish dialect versus regional dialects.

In this third installment, we will focus on different ways that timings affect Spanish voice over sessions.

You know that feeling you get as a writer/producer/creative director when your beautifully worded radio spot times out at 75 seconds on the first read through?  It surely didn’t seem that long when you were writing it and mumbling the words under your breath, as you sipped the finest of coffee beverages.  So in the session, you sigh as you realize the need to remove some words, and you condense other lines to retain the necessary information, but you’re now doing so using a time saving strategy.

Well a similar situation may occur when you translate an English radio/TV/video script into Spanish. Even if the English version times out at sixty seconds or under, if you get a direct translation of your script, the Spanish version could easily balloon to seventy seconds or more.  And for longer scripts, the Spanish translation will generally expand at the same rate.

How can this be?  Simple answer – Spanish generally requires about 20% more words than English to say the same thing.  That’s just the way it is – due to syntax, sentence structure, lack of contractions…all the little things add up.

So again, we go back to the main objective in getting a great translation – translating for content while taking timing, phrasing, meaning and understanding into account.

Before beginning a Spanish-language voice over production, you should think about a few factors that can help guide your approach:

• Is your voice over for a broadcast Radio/TV spot where you have strict time limitations of 10, 15, 30, 60, 120 seconds?

• Is your Spanish creative an entity unto itself, or are you matching the creative elements of a corresponding English audio production – using the same transitional cues such as music edits, sound effects, graphics or on-camera action?

• If your production is for a TV spot or long-form video, do you need the Spanish voice over segments to match the timings & transitions of an existing English version?  Or will you prefer that the Spanish audio times out to its natural length, and then you go back to re-edit the video to match the pace and length of the new Spanish VO?

Generally speaking, if you just get a word-for-word translation, you should expect that the Spanish version will be a longer piece.  But if you’re aware of this as you go into your project, you will have a better idea of the approach you want to take, and you will have an idea of some of the obstacles associated with producing a Spanish language voice over.

So taking all of this into account, there are two basic approaches you could follow:

• Be sure that your experienced translator is aware of any timing constraints, and have them translate the content to meet these marks.  Sometimes that will mean condensing the essence of the message into a smaller space.  Thus the importance of working with someone you can trust to boil down content and rephrase it effectively to retain your message.

• Make sure that your editor/engineer/producer/director is aware of the situation…whether they need to hit specific marks or cues as the voice is being recorded, or will they be re-editing the background elements to coincide with the length of the new read?

You should be ready with one or both of these approaches, because making seventy-five seconds of Spanish voiceover fit into a sixty second hole is not easy…some may say it is downright impossible.

Foreign language voice over production can be intimidating, but by following these simple guidelines you can make your production a great success.

To recap the basics for getting the best out of a Spanish voice over, you should:

• Be aware of timing issues when doing a foreign language VO.

• Decide if you will use a neutral/standard Spanish dialect.

• Use a translator and director who is totally bilingual and who is familiar with voiceovers and the recording process.

• Use a native Spanish speaker as your voice talent.

If you follow these steps, you have a good chance of wowing your client with your production savvy. Using the skills of a seasoned professional is helpful, as this person understands all the things that can go right or wrong during a recording session, and they can come into it with contingencies in mind.  So relying on the experience of others can make your job that much easier.

Best of luck with your next Spanish voice over project.  You are now free to go enjoy a café con leche & write your next award-winning piece.

Ciao Amigos!

Over the holidays, we lost a member of the ProComm voice over family with the passing of Rich Bartholomew. Rich was a fine voice talent who could be heard regularly on the Biography Channel, but he was an even better person who will be missed by many. Services for Rich are being held in Los Angeles on February 3 and memorial donations can be made to one of two charities.

The Charleston Animal Society

The Arthritis Foundation

For those of you who knew and worked with Rich, please say a prayer for his family in this difficult time.

We’ve all been touched by the devastating news that continues to come from Haiti. Many lives were lost in the initial earthquake, but many more stand to be lost if the world doesn’t come to Haiti’s aid.

In an effort to speed the process of soliciting donations for this tragedy, a large group of ProComm’s voice talent roster has agreed to lend their voices free of charge for clients who are producing PSAs tied directly to Haitian relief. In addition, ProComm will also donate studio time. If you are a broadcast producer or agency currently working on such a project, or know of anyone who is, please contact ProComm at 866-438-6423 for voice overs.

If you’re interested in donating directly to the cause, several of our clients have relief projects already under way. Just follow the links below.

Samaritan’s Purse

Old St. Andrew’s

Providing voice overs for eLearning presentations is nothing new for us here at ProComm. Recently though, we had the chance to work with a client on a series of eLearning projects that not only presented a number of unique challenges, they also gave us the opportunity to provide a service that has great social value as well.

Shortly after contacting us, Ah-Ha! Media co-founder Mark Schoder stopped by our studios for a personal visit.  Mark explained that his company develops web-based programs for a variety of human resource issues, ranging from sexual harassment, to diversity, ethics, and violence.  The website/eLearning courses his company creates are tools to help school personnel recognize and deal with the interpersonal issues they face on campus each and every day.  They are also an effective, yet private means for students to learn to deal with the situations that happen inside and outside the classroom through a familiar technology.

The first eLearning component dealing with sexual harassment required nearly 60 voice talent and encompassed almost 6 hours of finished material. James K Flynn provided one of the main narrator roles, with various other ProComm voice talent acting as testimonial voices depicting a variety of difficult, yet true-to-life situations that occur in academic environments each and every day.

One challenge with a project of this magnitude is having a talent roster large enough to accommodate the whopping number of testimonial reads required. Several days of casting and scheduling preceded the voice over sessions, with ProComm engineers Garth Smith, Jeff Pittman, and Bob Peck all working on the recording.

Given the serious nature of the subject matter, the voice talent had to rely heavily on their voice acting skills to ensure the reads sounded honest and believable.  The voice talent also had to be diverse, to mirror a typical college and university population. ProComm delivered on all of these fronts while efficiently managing the hundreds of files used across several different versions. Here are a few sample reads from the program:

Emilie Brown

George Washington III

Chris Porter

Catherine Smith

Bill Munoz

Bill Ballenberg

Gregg Easterbrook

While some of the testimonial pieces feature serious issues and may be uncomfortable to record, the process becomes easier when you remember that the audio could end up helping someone struggling in a real situation.

The beauty of this eLearning project is that the subject matter is common to many types of industries.  After the college and university narratives are finished, Ah-Ha! Media will start translating the content for financial institutions, the travel industry and many other workspaces where interpersonal conflicts can interfere with workplace goals.

“Our company has had great success in recent years providing online training programs, but we never imagined the enhanced learning experiences we’d be able to offer thanks to ProComm. We’re looking forward to relying on the professionalism and expertise of ProComm and the talents of their voice actors as we develop our new Diversity and Discrimination program for the academic community.”

-Mark Schoder, Co-Founder, Ah-Ha! Media

The ability to use proper microphone technique to bring out the best in your voice is indicative of a true voice over professional. Learning and utilizing proper microphone technique is incredibly helpful when it comes to editing, mixing and producing great voice overs. For a voice talent, knowing how to: avoid plosives, adjust for dynamics, and “work” the microphone so that it will enhance the emotion of the delivery are essential skills. Expertly applying these skills helps a recorded voice track fit into a mix almost effortlessly.

General Mic Positioning

Your proximity to the microphone, how near or far you are to it, affects the microphone’s frequency response. Your axis to the microphone – how centered or off center you are to the diaphragm – affects frequency response as well as how well the microphone captures your voice depending on its polar pattern. Naturally the dynamics of your delivery affect the microphone as well.

Note: “Frequency response” refers to the lows and highs in the tone of your voice (like bass and treble on a stereo) and “Polar pattern” refers to the space around the microphone’s diaphragm that picks up sound. A microphone for voice over typically (although some are adjustable) utilizes a cardioid polar pattern. Imagine a space the size and shape of a large pumpkin around the grill of the microphone: this is a cardioid pattern. “Dynamics” refers to how loud or soft your voice gets while reading a script.

Each microphone, no matter what type you are using, has a sweet spot. This is the place in proximity to the sound source where the microphone generally sounds its best. In large diaphragm condenser microphones the sweet spot is generally about 6 to 8 inches away from the diaphragm (fig. 1). This is often where your voice will sound its most natural relative to the ability of the microphone to reproduce that sound accurately.

(fig. 1)

When using a large diaphragm condenser, position yourself about 6-8 inches away from the microphone with the diaphragm slightly off center (left or right, whichever feels comfortable – fig. 3) and above your mouth (fig. 2). If your voice sounds too “nasally” try moving the microphone lower or higher. Tilt the microphone slightly backwards so that the air coming from the mouth and nose doesn’t hit the microphone’s diaphragm directly, but at an angle. Tilting the angle of the microphone helps to diffuse the impact of the air which helps to avoid plosives. This initial position will work for more common voice overs such as straight-forward announcer, narration, and promotional reads.

(fig .2)

(fig. 3)

Getting Creative

For more creative script scenarios, treat the microphone as you would someone’s ear. For a voice over that is intimate, don’t be afraid to move in closer. Getting closer to the microphone will enhance the lower and higher frequencies of your voice, which is perfect for whispery, breathy, romantic or seductive reads. For reads that require projection, such as a shouting car spot or a voice over where you are supposed to sound as though you are calling out from another room, it is best to turn away or increase the distance between you and the microphone. In this type of scenario, creating physical distance during recording makes the scene sound more natural when mixing. In some situations, you can even move to the back side of the microphone.

Avoiding Plosives

One basic but very important element to good microphone technique is being able to restrain plosives. Hard consonants such as “t” and “p” can cause the diaphragm of the microphone to “pop”. At worst, this “pop” can potentially damage the microphone and at best it is a guarantee that another take will have to be done. Plosives can also occur at the ends of words where a consonant requires an expulsion of air such as with “f”. Tilting the microphone backwards, as previously described, can help but there are also several other techniques and tools for avoiding plosives such as: skewing your mouth or head away from the microphone, understating the consonant, using a “pop filter” (fig. 4) and/or using a “wind sock”. Be aware that when using a wind sock (this is a foam cover that goes over the head of the microphone), the sound of the microphone can be somewhat altered. High frequency response and sibilance is often diminished and therefore proper technique in combination with a pop filter is a much better solution.

(fig. 4)

Good technique takes practice. Record yourself reading various types of copy from various distances in proximity to your microphone. By doing this, you will learn how your microphone is affecting your voice under various conditions and how it improves, or impairs, your ability to communicate the intended feeling that goes with the message.