A voice over session can be quite overwhelming for a creative director, especially if the actor’s performance is poles apart from what he had pictured in his mind. However, by following our tips on directing your voice over artists, you can effectively guide the actors to follow your instructions and deliver the performance exactly the way you want them to.
Define the purpose
One of the critical aspects of great voice over direction is the ability to adequately explain to the actor the exact purpose of the performance. For instance, you need to guide them about your target audience and the message that you want to convey via your campaign. Unless the voice over artist actually understands what he/she are doing, he/she will never be able to emote or create the rhythm required for the performance.
Test for speakability
Before handing out the final script to your VO artist, you must test the content for ease of delivery. In other words, the text must be fluent and the sentences should be delivered without having to roll your tongue a lot. Although the text might flow naturally on paper, sometimes the vocabulary or the choice of phrases can render a piece largely unintelligible.
Set up the Logistics
As a creative director, it is your responsibility to ensure that the technical side of your voice over performance is well taken care of before the session. Any relevant documents must be prepared and all the audio visual equipment must be in place. If the actor has any specific questions regarding the piece, you must make sure to clarify them in detail before they stand behind the mic. Preparation is the key to ensuring that your VO artist is able to focus primarily on their speech and deliver a great performance without any glitches.
Keep track of the time
You must provide your VO artist a heads up on any time specifications required for the video. For instance, if the audio has to be timed to fit a certain timeframe, you must ensure that the actor sticks to the guidelines. Apart from using a stopwatch to time your VO actor, you must also make sure that your script is not over written and is accurately timed as per the requirement.
Most importantly, be confident of what you are doing and your determination will reflect in your artist’s performance as well.
ABOUT ROBERTA –
Roberta is a Professional AND award Winning International Voiceover Actor, as well as an accomplished on-camera actress and spokesperson. She lives in the beautiful San Francisco Bay Area and is the owner of Roberta Kennedy Voice Talent and RK Productions, Inc.
She voices for companies around the world using her state of the art, broadcast quality studio. She’s hired for commercials, web demos and explainer videos, product infomercials, documentaries, promo/imaging, political ads, e-learning videos, podcasts, guided real estate tours, telephony/IVR projects, high profile corporate presentations, video games and character animation.
Her voice is described as: playful, contemporary, compelling, commanding, inviting, sultry and smooth. A hip edge with sophistication, bold, warm, interesting and engaging are also commonly used adjectives to describe her voice.
Her home studio is equipped with ipDTL, ISDN and phone patch capability with lightning fast turnaround times! A voiceover talent with over 20 years of voiceover acting experience, she offers a full range of voiceover services at highly competitive rates & will work with your budget to help you promote your business to new levels of excellence!
To request a personal quote or audition and/or to review more of her credits & demos, feel free to visit her website: www.robertakennedy.com – or mail her at roberta@robertakennedy.com. You can even give her a call on (408) 313-7202.