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

As an editor of voice overs and a voice over talent, I’ve spent a lot of time listening to voices, and not just the ones in my head. Each and every one has their own unique tonal quality, interpretation style, phrasing patterns, and emotional palettes. But the one thing they all have in common is that they all have to come up for air once in awhile. Shocking, I know – voice talent actually breathe!

But, if you listen closely to the finished product once it hits the TV, radio, IVR system, or whatever medium you are producing for, you find that many voice talent have become ‘breathless’ – as if they took one big breath at the beginning of the script and read straight through to the end. Herein lies the fine art of de-breathing.

If you’re new to producing voice overs, de-breathing involves editing out the short sips of air everyone takes when talking. If you’re an experienced voice over producer this is nothing new to you, and you may have strong opinions about how, when or even if you should remove those breaths between sentences and phrases. The point of this article is to explain why, when and to some extent how you should go about de-breathing a voice over.

Why

De-breathing didn’t really become commonplace until the advent of non-linear editing. Before that, trying to chop out breaths with a razor blade was darn near impossible. Now it’s a fairly easy process to go through a finished read and eliminate all traces of breathing. However, it does take some fine tuning to sound good.

Many times this editing becomes a safety net for the lengthy script. When a read needs to be :59 for a radio commercial, but the favorite take is timing out at :61, removing the breaths and tightening up the read helps get the voice over in time.

It also comes in handy when a voice talent has particularly loud or distracting breathing patterns. Not everyone breaths the same. Some take large gasps (often the case when the style of the read is very taxing, such as hard sell car spots), others are barely audible at all. You’ll find many seasoned voice over professionals are conscious of this and have learned to minimize the sound of their breathing. For those who haven’t mastered this ability, a seasoned editor can be the voice talent’s best friend.

When

It is not always appropriate to remove breaths from a voice over. Some old school editors and producers have the opinion that you should never de-breath voice over reads. The argument is similar to the old debate over records versus CDs. Purists think you lose the natural pacing and feel of the read when the breaths are removed.

I agree, that if done haphazardly, removing breaths can sometimes cause the read to lose its rhythm or sound stilted. But when done properly, you should end up with a read that is paced correctly and feels just as natural as the original. In fact this type of editing often allows you to enhance the timing of the original read.

The other argument against de-breathing is more technical in nature. When a recording environment has a high noise floor, cutting out sections of audio without adding back room tone can sound very unprofessional and distracting. However, most professional recording studios are constructed to keep room tone to a minimum, thus allowing the editor greater flexibility when cutting between lines of a voice over.

Personally, I feel most voice overs that have been recorded properly can benefit from being cleaned up by a professional editor. The one exception is when the read is meant to be very conversational, such as a testimonial voice over or an ‘everyday person’ type of read. For these reads, it’s sometimes best to leave them alone.

How

There is a definite skill to de-breathing voice overs. Simply cutting out each breath without adjusting the timing between words will leave you with a read that doesn’t feel like the original. It can sound ‘stilted’ and you can lose the emotion the read was intended to convey.

Likewise, if the process is purely for the sake of saving time in a read, you run the risk of eliminating too much air, giving a very produced feel to the read. This can sometimes be used for effect, particularly in car spots, but is not usually desirable.

After removing the breath and editing as closely to each word as possible without clipping, you should tighten the spacing by a couple frames, to start with. This will give you a rough edit that can be massaged after listening back and getting a feel for the pacing.

The most important thing you need to do is listen. This includes hearing playback on each edit as well as taking in the entire piece as a whole. If you can hear the edits or the spacing sounds unnatural, it needs some more work.

De-breathing can be a handy technique to improve the quality of your final product. Edit carefully and take the time to listen, and you’ll end up with polished, professional sounding voice overs.

the following is an article reprinted with permission by Terry Hartzell/JPL Productions www.jplcreative.com

Who wants a movie line?

There’s a line in the movie Jurassic Park that only audio dweebs like me think is funny, or probably even notice. It happens before the wheels fall off the prehistoric cart and the dinosaurs run around eating lawyers. The main characters are about to embark on an automated car tour of the park. Prior to this scene, park creator John Hammond has impressed his guests with top-of-the-line amenities proclaiming, “We spared no expense.” Now, as they climb into the vehicles for the tour, we hear a pre-recorded narrative of the sights they’ll see. Hammond comments, “That’s Richard Kiley. We spared no expense”.

For those who don’t recognize the name, Richard Kiley was the voice of practically every serious documentary produced at the time the movie was released. The message, understood by discerning audio specialists like me (i.e. geeks who knew it was Kiley as soon as he spoke), is that if you’re going to spend a ton of money on the rest of a production, don’t skimp on the voiceover.

The more things change, the more they stay the same

We’ve come a long way since the early days of filmmaking. With the impact of computers and daily software upgrades, the face of film and video has changed, and continues to change, at warp speed. But what about the soundtrack?

Sure, we’ve replaced monaural music scores with 5.1 Surround, but there’s another key soundtrack ingredient that hasn’t changed: the human voice. What the voiceover quality adds to the overall impact of a piece, whether it’s a documentary, a 30-second television commercial or 20-minute training video, is as important as any of the other components.

So why is the voiceover so often undervalued, even neglected, in the production process? Sure beats the heck out of me. I have a few theories, though.

The budget-saving theory

The budget got eaten up during the production phase. (Those on-location“tweaks” to the approved script requiring two additional days of shooting may have had something to do with it.) Now it’s time to get someone in the studio and read the copy (after some additional “tweaks”). Hey, here’s a great idea! Let’s get part of that budget money back by hiring someone really cheap. I know a guy who works at a college radio station who’ll do it practically free.

Terry’s Retort: To quote a good friend in the advertising biz, “You don’t get what you don’t pay for.” Ironically, the money saved by using unproven talent may end up costing you more in recording and editing time, and the end result will be less than show-stopping. Talent + experience = value.

The “I get a lot of compliments about my voice” theory

This one usually goes something like this: “People tell me I have a great voice. I get compliments all the time about the message on my answering machine. I should do the voiceover on my project, right?” (If you believe this is true, please move on to the next section as I don’t wish to offend you).

Terry’s Two Cents: Having a good set of pipes doesn’t make you a good voiceover candidate any more than having a set of paints makes you Renoir. Continuing with that metaphor, a voiceover artist paints pictures with his or her voice. Good voiceover artists combine articulation, interpretative ability, acting, proper breathing, patience, and the ability to detect minute differences in inflection, rhythm and tone. Plus they have to be able to take direction. If you can’t do all that, hire a professional who can.

The “I think voiceover talent charges too much” theory

This may be related to the budget theory. Or it may be a case of resentment for someone who earns a living just for talking, for crying out loud. Another good friend, someone who’s made a career out of voiceover work, shared this next anecdote with me. Following a “grueling” recording session of about ten minutes during which my friend nailed the copy in a couple of takes, the client remarked to the engineer, “He makes good money for ten minutes of work”. “No,” the engineer replied. “It took him over twenty years to do that. You just saw the last ten minutes”.

Terry’s Response: I don’t think I can add anything to that.

Bottom-line time

If something is worth doing, it’s worth doing well. That should apply to the “voice” of your production, the narrator. Here are a few pointers to help you select the right talent for the job:

• * If you’re the writer, imagine the type of voice that best suits your script and then convey that information to the casting director. If you’re producing someone else’s script, ask the writer. If that’s not possible, determine beforehand the tone you want from the piece.
• * Make casting choices based on potential, not just example. You may not hear exactly what you want from a demo. If you have room in your budget, go the audition route. If not, at least get input from seasoned production people.
• * Even if you have a clear idea of the tone you want before the session begins, be open to suggestions from others during the session, including the voice talent. Believe it or not, he or she may give you an interpretation you hadn’t considered, but it’s worth a listen. After all, professional voice talent people do this reading out loud stuff all the time.

Remember, if you’re willing to shell out the bucks for the other components of top quality production, it just makes sense to follow the Jurassic Park model and spare no expense for the soundtrack. Or at least be willing to make room in the budget for a good voiceover artist. You’ll hear the difference. And, more importantly, so will your audience.