Your Message

You’re about to direct a voice over session. You may be producing a TV or radio commercial. Maybe you’re producing a corporate presentation or program narration. Whatever the project is, your goal will be to get your chosen voice talent to communicate your message to your audience.  Your message could be many things, but one thing is almost certain… it is probably more than just the words written on the page. Being able to direct your voice talent to communicate both the written and unwritten messages within your script takes skill and flexibility. You must also be certain as to what your message is meant to communicate. Furthermore, it helps to have the ability to communicate effectively yourself, and a willingness to allow your talent and your engineer/producer to help you achieve your goal.

Who Will Deliver and How?

The most important thing to know and understand before beginning is… your message. What do you want your message to be? What emotions are you trying to evoke in your audience? The answer to these questions will determine how you want that message delivered and who will be best at delivering it. Your choice of talent is critical. Often a voice talent with a bold announcer’s voice will be chosen to do a role that would be better suited to someone with a regular-guy/gal voice, and vice-versa. These contradictions make it difficult to hear the message beyond the voice. Simply hearing a nice voice speak your written words is not enough. The emotion comes from how those words are delivered. As the director, you need to determine what voice is right for a role, as well as the type of delivery that will communicate your message and elicit the desired response from your audience.

Professional voice talent should be able to look over your script and know reasonably quickly what type of delivery is required. Most often the words will dictate what the message should be. However, as the talent reads the script aloud, the director should be listening for the nuances in the delivery. There is more than one way to effectively communicate a message and the director should be sure to listen carefully to those nuances and determine which communicates the message best.

Keep it Simple and Clear

When offering direction to voice talent, keep it simple and succinct. The more direction you offer at one time, the less likely you will be to get everything you need or want.

Lots of directions… often lead to contradictions. These contradictions lead to confusion. This invariably means that it will take more time to get your message where it needs to go (which possibly means spending more money as well). Directing a voice talent is analogous to being a passenger in a car and telling the driver where he or she needs to go. If the passenger tells the driver to go both right and left at the same time and at the last possible second, the driver is likely to crash.  Even when the direction is clear, offering too much direction or too much explanation, can also present a problem. Going back to the passenger and driver analogy; if the passenger tells the driver he’ll have to turn right but then continues to explain the right turn or begins to discuss what will happen after that (or really just about anything that takes the drivers attention away from the road), the driver could miss the turn entirely.

Using descriptive and unambiguous terminology is another key factor in hastening your success. Telling the talent to make it “flat”, for example, could mean many things. Does it mean to read without emotion, without inflection, or to simply read the script conversationally and not sound like an announcer? Terms such as: “dramatic”, “forceful”, “proud”, “nonchalant”, “conversational”, with “more/less energy”, or “more/less smile” are much easier to understand. Books about voice over (the same books that voice talent read) can be very helpful when directing. Many offer a more comprehensive list of terms and also explain delivery styles.

Trust Your Engineer

Some voice talents respond very well to concepts. They may want to know who the audience is or what the setting will be. Others need details, such as simple directives about inflections or emphasis on a line or word. Usually a combination of these things will be most effective. If you do not have experience directing or are unfamiliar with a particular voice talent, the engineer or producer can be a tremendous asset. Allow them to help you. One of the great things about working with an engineer or producer who is experienced in voiceover is that they often work with many of the same people on many different projects. They get to know the talent well and know how each responds to different ways of directing. If you are having trouble explaining what it is you want to hear, the engineer or producer may be able to interpret your needs and convey them to the talent in a way that the talent responds best.

Line Reading… The Last Resort

Still not able to get what you want from your voice talent? As a last resort… offer a line read. It is rarely a good idea to start a recording session by offering a line read. Line reading is usually unnecessary and can be misleading. After all, the talent was hired for more than just their voice. They were also hired for their interpretation skills. William Shatner famously coerced a director to line read for him after the director gave Mr. Shatner several unnecessary directions about his delivery. Needless to say, the director couldn’t begin to deliver the message like William Shatner, and Mr. Shatner was quick to let him know it.  That session is legendary in the voiceover community and the audio is available here.

This director surely learned that line reading can lead to big problems. Thankfully, most voice artists will not be as brazen as Mr. Shatner was with this particular director on that particular day. Many voice artists will kindly ask for a line read after they’ve made several attempts and still aren’t delivering a line the way you hear it in your head. Most voice talents are very appreciative to have been chosen to deliver your messages. They are more than willing to do what is necessary to give you the read you want. That being said, it is still a good idea to save line reading for small parts, pronunciations and when all other methods of communicating your needs have failed.

Directing a voiceover session can be the easiest and best part of your workday. If you understand your messages and communicate them to the talent and the engineers/producers as simply and clearly as possible, you’ll be able to sit back, relax and allow the talents of your chosen voice artist communicate your message to the world.

For more information about Dan Friedman visit soundadvicevo.com

Congratulations to Rodney Saulsberry for his recent nomination in the “Outstanding Actor in a Daytime Drama Series” category of The 42nd NAACP Image Awards for his role as a “Homeless Golden Voice” singer on the Bold and the Beautiful.  The awards program will air live March 4th, 2011 on Fox.

Rodney has been a successful voice over talent with ProComm Voices for several years, with campaigns including Zatarain’s, Instant Tax Services, and many more.

Check out this Zatarain’s commercial featuring Rodney as the announcer:

www.youtube.com/watch?v=ovcJSWsdr3g

WC Fields is quoted as saying ‘Never work with children or animals’. While I can’t say I’ve ever worked with an animal in the voice over booth (although Lindsay Ayliffe does a pretty convincing Schnauzer:), I have worked with plenty of young voice talent and child voice actors, and usually with pretty good results. Using children for your voice overs can be very rewarding, but it does take a different approach to directing. In most cases, with a little patience and the right amount of positive reinforcement, you’ll get that cute-as-a-button take you’re after.

Make it Fun. The first key to getting great voice overs from children is to put them at ease. This is especially true for kids who have never done voice overs before, but even for seasoned pros (well, as seasoned as you can be for 7 years old). Start the session by finding out something about them, their interests, how they’re enjoying summer break, what grade they’re in, etc. – anything to take their mind off of performing. Try to make the session about having fun and not about work. Young children who do voice overs are in it because it’s fun, not because it’s their life’s obsession or because they need the money.

Avoid direction by committee. In fact, the less people involved the better. One on one coaching, preferably from someone who has built a good rapport with the child works best. A good approach is to get into the voiceover booth with the child and engage them face to face. Get the audio engineer to set levels and monitor the sound and then just hit ‘record’ and let it roll as you work with the child. Make them forget about the microphone completely and focus on what you’re saying, then you can be goofy, make them laugh, tell them stories or jokes – whatever it takes to put them at ease.

Don’t worry about in depth direction or too much back story. Kids don’t care that your target audience is women 25-34; They don’t care that your product is set to launch in Q4. Make your direction simple and relatable. If you’re looking for excitement and energy from the read, tell them to pretend like their talking about something really fun, like going to a water park, for example.

Try shorter passages. If the voice over script has long passages, try breaking it down into short chunks of copy and working on each small segment until you get what you need. By doing this, you’ll have a better chance of keeping a young child’s attention allowing them to focus on what you’re saying.

Play ‘Follow the Leader’. One of the best techniques you can use when directing small children is to have them mimic, or ‘parrot’ you as you deliver the read you want to hear. Read the line, then have your child voice talent repeat after you. Vary the read and have them follow your different inflections. Children will often listen more intently by making it a game of ‘follow the leader’, and the result is a great voice over.

Be quick. Long and tedious sessions in the voice over booth are hard enough for adults, but when children are involved, you’re more likely to lose their interest if the session drags on. If you have a large amount of material to cover, consider breaking it into multiple sessions or taking breaks. Aside from short edits to make sure you have what you need, save your mixing until after your child voice actor has left the booth.

Finally, be positive. Use patience and remember to give lots of positive reinforcement to keep your young voice talent’s confidence up. Make sure your child walks out of the voice over booth feeling good about themselves and they’ll be more likely to be excited about doing it again next time.