Voiceovers! Don’t read scripts!
Voiceovers! Don’t read scripts!
What do I mean by this? Well, I learnt a very powerful technique decades ago when I had my first job, working for the production department of Piccadilly Radio in Manchester, UK. This was way before the internet, and so voiceover artists had to come physically in to the studio to record their scripts.
I had started my voiceover career and was in audio production as well — I was learning from the very best — in person! The voice artistes would come in, we’d have a chat and then we’d get down to recording. They would get into position in front of the microphone, holding the -then — paper script of course and suddenly- when we were recording and the red light was on — they’d intriguingly turn into almost another person in front of me as the tape recorder reeled round.
Of course, they weren’t just READING the script, they were actually ACTING it! Now, many of these fine voices I was working with WERE trained actors with a great track record, but don’t worry, if you’re “just” a voiceover artist, you don’t need to regularly tread the boards or be RADA trained to be a great voice actor. I discovered that it’s all about understanding and learning how to quickly get into the zone for each script, and I’ll teach an easy technique of how to do this.
When a professional movie actor or theatre actor gets a part, they won’t just learn the lines, turn up on set and “read” their script from memory, they’ll research the type of person they are playing in the movie; they’ll “get into” the role. If they’re playing a police officer, they’ll hang out with the cops, see how they talk, move and react to things. Playing a doctor, they’d observe medical professionals in great detail in their workplace to help them get into their role. You get the picture.
But hang on, us voiceovers can a whole load of scripts or more per day to record, we haven’t got time to do all this stuff, and anyway, we’re not talking voice ACTING are we, like proper acting in video games where we DO play characters….what about the straight forward promo scripts or commercial radio and TV spots?
Look — this applies to EVERYTHING. In EVERY script you can use basic ACTING skills, so you don’t just READ the script, you need to PERFORM it! I know that some clients will be perfectly happy with their scripts being simply “read”, but if you want to really WOW your clients and to make their, hopefully well-written copy come alive, and to win more auditions, try out this technique! When you get into the right mindset as well as understanding what the script is about, you’ll naturally hit the right emphasis points, give just the right pauses in the right places and the “melody” of your narration will just sound right!
You can get into this mindset really quickly before every script you get given. Simply try your best to firstly UNDERSTAND the script, and then answer three questions.
1 — WHO AM I? 2 — WHO IS MY AUDIENCE? 3 — WHAT IS MY EMOTION?
Let’s look at examples. Say you’ve got a script to be used at a big business conference. It’s for a video aimed at potential investors for a set of massive warehouses that are proposed to be constructed. Who are YOU? Who are you playing when you perform this script?
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Well, I imagine that you are the person who has spent years getting this project off the ground. You have put a lot of your personal money into this project, your house is on the line. You need this investment, this project has got to succeed. The audience is of course the investors who you are trying to convince. Your emotion should be one of professional pride in the project, excited that the new warehouses will bring new life to the area, create jobs and reap back rewards in the future. So, with this in mind, you can snap into this person as you get behind the microphone. Pretend you are on that stage, facing the investors at that all important conference. So, just “reading” the script, it could sound like this:
But following the “Understand and 3 question method”, it could sound much better, all round.
I hope you’ll agree that is much more compelling. It sounds like I really care, and I have passion and professional excitement about the scheme. But what if you’re given a highly technical or complex script about a niche that you have no knowledge? How can you possibly “understand” the script in the first place?
Don’t worry. I’m not an economics genius yet I get given many highly complex scripts on the subject, and people THINK I’m an expert! Even though I don’t understand what I’m saying, I can still answer the 3 questions. Who am I? An economics expert. Who is my audience? Other economic experts and the educated public. What is my emotion? A focused mind on the importance of the message. With scripts like this it’s all in the words you emphasise and the pauses you leave so that it sounds natural and that you’re ad-libbing rather than reading.
So just “reading” could sound like this:
But answering the 3 questions and getting into the right mindset, it gets recorded like this:
I hope you find this useful, you may totally disagree with me, but I know this method works for me in both winning auditions against others and in really making clients happy to re-book me in the future. What I’ve told you is a quick and easy way to describe what all good actors already know, and if you’d like to know more, look up “Uta Hagens Given Circumstances “ to find more detail about this method of sounding realistic and authentic.
Is this the secret sauce you’ve been looking for? A recap: Read through the script and do your best to understand it, the answer the three questions. Who are you? Who is the audience? And What is my emotion?
If you’d like further tips and videos on all things voiceover and voice training, please visit VoiceoverMasterclass.com.
PETER BAKER
