Casting

10 Tips for Directing a Voiceover Talent

So you’re gearing up to record a live session with a voice talent! This is a great way to improve the visibility of your product or service and humanize that commercial or narration in such a way that can help you for weeks or months to come. But this can be kind of intimidating, especially if you’ve never taken on a directing role before.

The first major choice you have to make is whether or not you want the talent to record in an outside studio, or at their home space. The major advantage in recording in an outside studio is an environment that you control completely–you know that the recording space is top notch, and you have an expert engineer on hand to sort out any hiccups.

The big disadvantage here is the additional cost, since you have to pay for the space and time in an external studio. If the talent is recording from home, you gain a great deal of flexibility, since the talent doesn’t have to travel, and you don’t have the additional cost, but there can be more hiccups with technology or the recording space than otherwise.

Luckily, home studios have really benefited from the huge leap into remote working over the last 2 years, and all the technologies that talents were using have become even more stable and easy to use.

Helpful Tips

Once you sort out that issue, below are ten tips to work through before you record to make sure that your experience is as smooth and effective as possible. It can be a truly rewarding journey to collaborate with a voice talent and it can only benefit you and your company in the long run.

Minimize adjectives

When figuring out how you want a talent to voice your script, it can be easy to get a little too enthusiastic with the description words. Less is more here. For example, “Super conversational, like you’re talking to your best friend” or “Professional, Clear, Confident.” You want to use specific language, but not pile on the words until it becomes unclear for the talent, and makes it harder for the session to go smoothly. Too many words (especially if they start to conflict) make it harder to get the read you want.

Reference a demo sample

If possible, this can be a great reference tool to find out what you want your talent to do. Talent generally have several different reads on their demos, mixing a variety of scripts and styles, and one of them might be close to or exactly what you’re looking for in your read. Referencing this can cut the explaining short and give you both a shortcut to your goal.

Know your message and audience

Make sure before you get started that you have a clear description of what the message and feel of the script is, and also who the target audience will be. This helps the talent align their skills and craft your perfect read, and makes it easier to dial into exactly what you need.

What’s important?

Are there certain lines or words that you need to have stand out? Are there sentences that need to carry a specific emotion? Create this map for yourself and the talent to give them another tool to make a great read.

Read it aloud

Many times scripts have to go through multiple revisions before being ready to record. Finalizing your script before hand is crucial to saving time in the long run. The last thing you want is to be making re-writes on the fly during a session, especially in a situation where they need to be approved by legal.
There’s a simple, vital step that you need to take before you put the script in front of your talent. Have someone sit down and read it aloud. It won’t work if you don’t read it out loud, and here’s why: this is the fastest way to identify trouble spots in the writing. Perhaps there’s an awkward phrase, or something could be made a contraction to flow better, or anything of that nature. It will probably feel a little awkward, but the benefits all around outweigh the minor discomfort.

Audio Quality Check

This tip specifically applies to talent recording in their home studio. It’s unfortunate, but some people choose to get a demo that does not accurately represent the work they are able to do in their home studio. Audio software in the hands of an expert producer can create a hot rod out of the proverbial lemon pretty easily. A short test recording from the talent will give you a quick and easy idea if they can deliver on the promise of their demo. This may already be covered in whatever audition they do for you, but if not, you should be able to negotiate a couple sentences to make sure no one is promising something they can’t deliver.

Be ready for your ABC’s

Requesting ABC’s from a talent means asking them to read something three different times in three slightly different intonations. This can be very useful if you have any parts of your script you’re not totally sure about the read of, particularly the tag line. Time equals money so it’s good to get a few different reads from the talent to make sure you have more than you need just in case. Having extra makes it much less likely that if you have to switch anything around or alter a tone you have to call the talent back in and pay for an additional session fee.

Too many cooks

In a directed session, it’s natural that many people in your company may want to listen in. It’s very easy for that type of situation to get overwhelming for everyone, and make the direction and recording far more difficult. It’s natural for different people to hear sound in quite a variety of ways, and your colleagues may have their own ideas for direction or alterations in tone. This will slow down the recording, drive the cost up, and make it harder to get the perfect recording. If you aren’t able to slim down the invite list, establishing someone at the beginning of the session as a point person who will convey directions to the talent after the group has taken time to mute and discuss changes will make everyone’s session go more smoothly and will ensure everyone feels heard.

Get your music ready

If music is part of your final product, have it ready to play for the talent if at all possible. Music is a great way to get across the mood and tone of what you’re looking for and will help the talent dial into your needs. If you don’t have the specific piece yet, get as many descriptors as you can about genre and attitude to help set the idea and space for your talent.

Don’t forget to have fun

This might sound silly in the business world, but it’s an important part of your session. Everyone has experienced a work environment that is a little too serious and it can be a real drain and drag for everyone. Making sure that everyone involved knows that it’s okay to be human, flub a line, or laugh at someone’s joke can help everything to go smoother. And the positive energy can make a significant difference to the overall energy and read from the talent.

Whether it’s an internal training, a telephone system, your latest commercial, or simply a scratch track, collaborating with a voice talent for a directed session can be easy and relaxed with the right preparation. You and the voice talent will hopefully be working together for years to come. Keep these ten tips in mind, and you’ll get that recording session polished off in no time flat.

Breaking Boundaries: Female Voiceover Talent

Casting, History of Voiceover, Voiceover Industry

In a world of voiceover, you’d think all pipes would be created equal if they sounded right for the job, right? Not always. Our industry has often been very male heavy. For instance, most of the ‘voice of God’ type work goes to men. There are many reasons why this is the case, and the biggest one is the typical patriarchal thinking of our society. Studies have been done that show how listeners typically trust a male voice more than a female one. Resonant, lower pitched voices pique this niche well, coming across as authoritative and trustworthy. But an interesting nuance of technology has helped shape these already-existing perceptions throughout the last hundred years of technology’s march.

Back in the Day

In the early days of radio, only AM stations were on the air. Broadcasters proliferated, and then the FCC came about to regulate frequencies. To make a long story short, the frequencies chosen for these early radio stations were in a particular band that did not transmit the higher parts of women’s voices well. This particularly affected the consonants, making women’s voices sound distorted and unpleasant. In addition, since there was a wide perception of women’s voices being softer at the time, the engineers would turn up the volume when a woman stepped to the mic, causing the distortion to be even worse. Unfortunately, rather than viewing this issue as a fault in the way the equipment was made, broadcasters and engineers of the time simply believed that women’s voices had biological and psychological faults that made them unsuitable for broadcast work. Women at the time were generally given the advice that they should speak unemotionally and at a lower pitch, which made their voices sound stiff and artificial. Even the march of technology has not significantly altered the embedded preferences, since FM radio with wider frequencies available did not become equally popular until the 1970’s. And as various kinds of speakers and compression algorithms affect higher pitches more strongly, continuing to make women’s voices sound thin and tinny.

This century’s worth of disdain and distortion for the female voice has had lasting effects, and doubtless has heavily affected the proportion of voiceover jobs alloted to women, and probably even the studies that give male voices as more ‘trustworthy’. And if you consider the women that do high profile work, they mostly uniformly have lower, melodious sounding voices-to sound ‘better’ in this atmosphere of distortion and misunderstanding. Voice talents with higher pitched voices often specialize in children’s parts.

“In a World…”

In the movie trailer world, producers admit that they just don’t often consider women for the parts cast. John Long of Buddha Jones Trailers says “…his company had worked on dozens of campaigns a year, “and as much as everyone talks about wanting to be innovative and do unexpected things, the idea of a female voice doesn’t come up that often,” he said. “It’s really not part of the formula. Maybe that’s our own shortsightedness.” Actress and Director Lake Bell explored this dichotomy in her 2013 comedy film, “In a World…” in which Lake’s character competes for a trailer part with male voice talent and lands the job. Lake’s character Carol delivers a very fine performance, and she is able to use the role as an asset in her coaching career to encourage new students that they can find a way out of the typical gender boxes for voice roles. Lake was fascinated by the preponderance of male voices in trailer work, with the exception of using Melissa Disney for Gone in 60 Seconds in 2000. She was then inspired to write the movie where a woman had a chance to overcome this prejudice and gain a trailer part.

Although voiced movie trailers are less common than they once were-studios seem to prefer trailers that show the film as itself rather than someone vocally introducing it-there are still plenty of parts that have to do with a ‘voice of God’ type sound.

Actress/Producer/Casting director Joan Baker weighs in on the nature of our internal biases and how we can all make choices to discard them and move forward in the nature of sound.“All of us in the industry have the opportunity to discard our biases against female voices, challenge the old voice of God assumptions, and look upon all voice actors with open minds. It’s not a matter of forcing an even split between men and women; that would be as arbitrary as forcing painters to use equal amounts of all colors in their paintings. All I’m asking is that we do what we can to eliminate the thorn of bias and let the chips fall where they may.

Progress is slow, but change is happening

As I said earlier, things are slowly changing. Advertisers are getting smarter about what people want, how they want it, and who they want to hear it from. It’s a slow evolution, but it can be seen emerging as women land roles of mastery, leadership, power, and responsibility. Of course, the voice of God is not gender-specific. In my opinion, the concept is light years beyond the anatomy that produces the tambour of male and female voices. If we want to use “voice of God” as a term, it has to be metaphoric: a voice that moves mountains with the authority of heart, mind, and spirit. It’s the stuff of life, energy, and inspiration. Babies have it when they cry out, long before they can form words. When a baby cries out, you are absolutely compelled to give it your undivided attention. It wakes something up inside you that can’t be appeased, except through your attendance to its call. This is the genderless power of the human voice. It’s bigger than voice acting, but as far as voice acting goes, producers and actors need to catch up to this reality and act accordingly.

TV audiences are ready for a shift

Joan is right, and the industry is changing outside of movie trailers quicker than within. TV is it’s own frontier, and it’s doors are a little wider open. “In television many cable channels regularly aim programming at women, and there has been more latitude in the use of female voices. “We’re all trying to make shows that cut through the clutter and stick out,” said Tim Nolan, senior vice president for marketing at Lifetime Networks. “But for me it’s less about being authoritative and more about being relatable. It’s a big turnoff for TV consumers if they think they’re being sold. Whether the show’s about fashion or drama or reality, it’s about which voice is telling those stories better.”

In testing “One Born Every Minute,” a Lifetime series set in an Ohio maternity ward, the channel found that audiences responded most favorably to a voice-over by Jamie Lee Curtis, even before they recognized her, Mr. Nolan recalled, adding: “One woman said that the voice understood who she was.”

Technology, cultural bias, and the heavy hand of perception has left women’s voices out of certain genre for a very long time. Many of these things have an opportunity to shift now with the trend to look at representation, and relatability as being the cornerstones of good voicing. Let’s hope we can all work together so that balanced representation doesn’t take another hundred years!

Finding The Right Diverse Voice For Political Ads

Casting, Political

When you are producing political ads for your next campaign cycle, it may be time to look for a new voice–or in some cases, new voices.

It’s important to find voices that not only represent your current constituency and likely voters, but also the diversity in your voting area. Using a diverse range of voices, and even some new voices, can keep your campaign fresh and help your message resonate with a greater audience. This is especially true if you are a new candidate or have a new message. Breaking into a community that has historically voted a certain way or for a certain type of candidate can be daunting, but a plethora of voices in your campaign messaging can help you break ground.

Why The Right Voice Matters

But how do you go about finding that voice talent? Here’s the thing. You don’t want to just grab someone from your campaign that looks the part and can maybe pull it off. You need professional talent that can speak consistently throughout your campaign messaging and can deliver your message clearly, concisely, and cleanly in your video ads.

You also want someone whose voice really reflects the tone that you need in your message. There are positive, upbeat, hopeful political campaign videos that share an exciting view of the future and change to come; and there are negative, attack videos that highlight the reasons not to vote for your opponents. Each message has a very specific purpose. A professional voice actor can help you truly broadcast that purpose in tone and demeanor so that the hearers get it, not just in the words, but in the emotion and connection with the video.

How To Find A Diversity Of Voice Actors For Your Campaign

Okay, so you get it. You need more voices in your campaign. Maybe there’s a target audience that you want your message to resonate with. Maybe there’s a niche that no one else is talking to. Maybe it’s just time for more voices to be heard. (We certainly think it’s that time.)

There are so many places to find great actors of diverse backgrounds and experiences, if you just go looking. That’s my first suggestion. Be willing to look. Be willing to work with new agents or new organizations. Don’t just keep turning back to the same sources that you always have. If now is the time for change, that starts with small changes—like being willing to hire voices you’ve never hired before. Take a chance.

Second, I have a number of great resources for you:

BlueWave Voiceover is a great place to start for diversity of progressive voices. There’s a database of different voice talents that you can search if you’re looking for something specific. They specialize in working with Democratic and progressive voices.
The African-American Voice Actor Database has been around since 2019 and is a great place to turn if you want to highlight Black voices. Now more than ever, I encourage you to turn here for new voices to liven up your campaign ads.
Voquent has a sample database of non-binary voices, which are not only under-represented, but according to this article, bring a certain distinctive quality that can perk up a listener’s ears and help them tune in a little longer.
If that wasn’t enough, here’s a spreadsheet developed by Edward Hong that showcases literally hundreds of BIPOC voice talent with a wide range of accents and native languages.

Choosing a Millennial Voice

The millennial vote has been a topic of much discussion over the last number of election cycles. It’s a politically active and engaged generation that has recently begun aging from the “youth” vote to the young professional vote, with growing families. While their engagement continues, their concern for the future, for the sake of their children and their careers, grows. On one hand, millennials have now peaked in their numbers of electorate voters, with GenZ now the up and comers.

But now is not the time to overlook the Millennial voice. As mentioned, Millennials are very engaged in the world around them and many times are not necessarily beholden to one candidate, but rather to a cause or a message, according to this article. Speaking to their concerns, in a Millennial voice, can be a way to connect with that voter base and help them see that your cause is their cause.

Furthermore, while the numbers aren’t growing in those now eligible to vote by turning 18 (as we leave that to GenZ), there is a bump in growth in naturalized Millennials becoming citizens. In other words, the Millennial electorate is becoming more diverse. And the Millennial voice is therefore becoming more diverse. Have I convinced you yet that now is the time to hire from the databases I shared above?

Is It Just Acting?

When it comes to politics, we all have our own convictions on particular issues and particular candidates. So as I mentioned above, there are certain databases where you can find actors who work specifically with one type of political leaning or the other.

On the other hand, you will find some actors say that it’s acting and they are equal opportunists. Here’s an interview from the Today Show with a couple of voice actors who worked on national campaigns in the 2016 and prior. This article makes the same argument.

However you will note that the hook of these articles is “here are the voices you’ve always heard but didn’t know.” That’s fine and rather interesting.

But I want to make a different plea. Maybe it’s time for the voices you’ve always known but haven’t heard. Maybe it’s time to shake things up. It may take some time to find a voice actor who connects with your viewpoints, while reflecting the diversity that your campaign needs, but that time is a worthy investment. There are a wide range of voices in every camp. It’s time to find them and hire them. They deserve it, and we want to hear from them.

Lauren McCullough

Female Voiceover Talent

717-281-1991‬

LaurenMcCulloughVO@gmail.com