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.

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.

A client came to ProComm the other day with a project that’s becoming more and more commonplace. Fred Baier of Delta T Engineering had created a video in Camtasia to demonstrate his software, which provides temperature monitoring for electrical systems in commercial buildings. The video was a basic screen capture walk-through of the software, which Fred narrated himself to demonstrate the features of the product.

The audio was very low resolution and Fred was interested in having a professional voice over replace his narration to take the piece to the next level and give it a bit more polish.  However, the voice still needed to sound conversational and the listener still needed to feel like he was being shown the software by someone with intimate knowledge of how the product worked – in other words, it needed to be Fred… just not Fred.

The other technical challenge was that the new voice over needed to match Fred’s pace so that the mouse movements and scene changes matched the copy.

Fred browsed through the ProComm voice talent demos on ProComm’s website until he found the voice and style he liked and cast Ron Whittemore to replace his voice over narration. Ron has a very unassuming style and is good at bringing a conversational tone to his reads, so it made for an excellent choice.

After receiving the quicktime version of the Delta T video with Fred’s narration, I spent a little time in pre-production timing out the sections of the video, so we could break it down in to smaller chunks. Ron also spent a little time in preparation viewing the video and going over the script to get a feel for the pace and tone of the narration.

One approach for a project like this is to shadow the scratch track. The voice talent will listen to the original read in his headphones while reading the copy to make sure he stays on pace with the original. This method is great when you have a longer narration that needs to match for time, but the drawback is the voice talent has less focus on the tone of the read.

After reviewing the video, Ron and I decided it might be better to just time sections and let Ron try to match those timings. Fred’s voice over had a pretty even pace and there were some open areas that we knew we could move things around a little, so there was some flexibility.

In the session, I played each section prior to Ron’s read so he could get a feel for where Fred paused or made certain inflections to match the video. Ron then gave his interpretation and after a take or two, we generally had the voice over we needed. A little nudging of the lines in post and we had a perfect match.

Check out the before and after snippet’s of the Delta T video below…

Ron’s voice over definitely gives the video a more professional feel. Fred was pleased as well…

Everything worked out great.  I just want to say “THANK YOU” to all who helped with this voice over.  It sounds great and matches the video perfectly.
Regards,
Fred Baier
Delta T Engineering

The internet is a wonderful thing. (Stating the obvious is a strength of mine, btw.)

But seriously, we take for granted the fact that any question or random curiosity that pops into your head at any given time can probably be answered with a couple keystrokes. This comes in handy for just about any business and the business of recording and producing voice overs is no exception.

The other day, I was thinking about some of the sites that I use on a regular basis for voice over sessions and thought it would be useful to share, and perhaps find out what sites others rely on. I also took an informal survey from some of the other engineers here at ProComm to see what sites they use in the voice over studio.

One of the biggest time wasters in the studio is having to track down or verify pronunciations for unfamiliar words. That’s why I always have a link to Answers.com handy. You can look up any word and hear it’s correct pronunciation with a click. it also includes some other useful tools such as a Thesaurus and Encyclopedia.

A site that Dan Friedman likes to use is Dictionary.com. It offers similar features and also includes a translator which can come in handy on those foreign voice over sessions.

Another reference for finding out pronunciations is a site I came across the other day – ForVO.com. It bills itself as ‘All the Words in the World. Pronounced.’ Might be a bit of an overstatement, but the unique thing about this site is that it’s wiki-driven. Users can contribute their voices to pronounce words that might be missing and fill in the gaps. The drawback to that is you get contributions that may or may not be verified and you also get regionalisms. Try ‘aluminum’. The gent from Spain appears to be trying to make a point:)

Have an international ISDN session coming up? you may want to have this link to TimeandDate.com handy. It gives quick answers for international dialing codes to any country.

Youtube comes in handy when the client wants the voice talent to sound like that guy/girl/talking Chihuahua in that movie/TV show/commercial/viral video. Another good character reference site is Hulu.com

ProComm producer Bob Peck likes to visit the websites of the companies for whom he’s producing voice overs, to get a feel for their brand and style.

These are some of our ‘go to’ sites. Do you have a favorite site that you rely on in the voice over studio?