The Art of Voice Acting: the art and business of performing for voice over by James Alburger Read Free Book Online
Authors: James Alburger
voiceover, improvisation, business, and marketing. Get as much experience as you can reading stories out loud. Read to your children. Read to your spouse. Practice telling stories with lots of variety in your voice.
Analyze the characters in the stories you read. Take more classes. Read the same copy in different ways, at different speeds, and with different feelings or emotional attitudes—loud, soft, slow, fast, happy, sad, compassionate, angry. If possible, record yourself and listen to what you did to see where you might improve. Take some more classes. Become a master of performing on a microphone. You can’t take too many classes!
One of the best ways to acquire skills as a voice actor is to constantly be listening to what other voiceover performers are doing. Mimicking other performers can be a good start to learning some basic performing techniques, but your ultimate goal is to develop your own, unique interpretive skills and your own, unique delivery style. To really get an understanding of communicating on an emotional level, listen to how other professional voice actors deliver their lines and tell their story:
How do they interpret the message?
How do they reach you emotionally?
How do they use inflection, intonation, pacing, and express feelings?
Is their delivery conversational or screaming?
How do you respond to their interpretation?
In short, do they sound as if they are reading or do they sound natural and believable? Use what you learn from studying others and adapt that information to your own voice and style. Learn how to “make the copy your own.” This simply means that you bring to the performance something of yourself to give the character and copy truth and believability. That’s good acting! Chapters 5 through 10 will show you how to do it!
A TWIST OF A WORD
You will notice that the better commercials and voiceover work do not sound like someone “doing” voiceover work. They sound like your best friend talking to you—comfortable, friendly, and most of all, not “announcery.” A good performer can make even bad copy sound reasonably good—and what they can do with good copy is truly amazing.
Create an emotional, visual image in the mind of the audience with a twist of a word. A slight change in the delivery of a word—a shift of the nuance—can change the entire meaning of a sentence. Speaking a word softly or with more intensity, or perhaps sustaining a vowel, making the delivery crisp, or taking the inflection up or down can all affect the meaning of a sentence and its emotional impact in the mind of the listener. These are skills that are acquired over time and are all basic acting techniques that help to create an emotional connection with the audience.
To be an effective voice performer you need to discover the qualities and characteristics of your voice that will make you different from all those other voices out there. Keep developing new techniques. Keep practicing and studying the work of others in the business. Find your unique qualities and perfect them. Learn how to make any piece of copy your own, and you will be in demand. Remember, it’s not about your voice, but what you can do with it.
CLASSES
One frequent observation that has appeared in discussions of this book over the past several editions is my repeated recommendation for continued training. The necessity to keep up with business trends and constantly hone performance techniques cannot be over-emphasized! It is impossible to take too many classes! There is always something new to be learned. Even if you leave a class with only one small piece of useful information, that small gem may someday pay big dividends. The same is true of books and articles. You will be amazed at where you can find a tip or trick that will help you create a believable performance.
There are four types of classes that are most valuable for the voiceover performer: acting, voiceover, improvisation, and business. Acting classes will
Analyze the characters in the stories you read. Take more classes. Read the same copy in different ways, at different speeds, and with different feelings or emotional attitudes—loud, soft, slow, fast, happy, sad, compassionate, angry. If possible, record yourself and listen to what you did to see where you might improve. Take some more classes. Become a master of performing on a microphone. You can’t take too many classes!
One of the best ways to acquire skills as a voice actor is to constantly be listening to what other voiceover performers are doing. Mimicking other performers can be a good start to learning some basic performing techniques, but your ultimate goal is to develop your own, unique interpretive skills and your own, unique delivery style. To really get an understanding of communicating on an emotional level, listen to how other professional voice actors deliver their lines and tell their story:
How do they interpret the message?
How do they reach you emotionally?
How do they use inflection, intonation, pacing, and express feelings?
Is their delivery conversational or screaming?
How do you respond to their interpretation?
In short, do they sound as if they are reading or do they sound natural and believable? Use what you learn from studying others and adapt that information to your own voice and style. Learn how to “make the copy your own.” This simply means that you bring to the performance something of yourself to give the character and copy truth and believability. That’s good acting! Chapters 5 through 10 will show you how to do it!
A TWIST OF A WORD
You will notice that the better commercials and voiceover work do not sound like someone “doing” voiceover work. They sound like your best friend talking to you—comfortable, friendly, and most of all, not “announcery.” A good performer can make even bad copy sound reasonably good—and what they can do with good copy is truly amazing.
Create an emotional, visual image in the mind of the audience with a twist of a word. A slight change in the delivery of a word—a shift of the nuance—can change the entire meaning of a sentence. Speaking a word softly or with more intensity, or perhaps sustaining a vowel, making the delivery crisp, or taking the inflection up or down can all affect the meaning of a sentence and its emotional impact in the mind of the listener. These are skills that are acquired over time and are all basic acting techniques that help to create an emotional connection with the audience.
To be an effective voice performer you need to discover the qualities and characteristics of your voice that will make you different from all those other voices out there. Keep developing new techniques. Keep practicing and studying the work of others in the business. Find your unique qualities and perfect them. Learn how to make any piece of copy your own, and you will be in demand. Remember, it’s not about your voice, but what you can do with it.
CLASSES
One frequent observation that has appeared in discussions of this book over the past several editions is my repeated recommendation for continued training. The necessity to keep up with business trends and constantly hone performance techniques cannot be over-emphasized! It is impossible to take too many classes! There is always something new to be learned. Even if you leave a class with only one small piece of useful information, that small gem may someday pay big dividends. The same is true of books and articles. You will be amazed at where you can find a tip or trick that will help you create a believable performance.
There are four types of classes that are most valuable for the voiceover performer: acting, voiceover, improvisation, and business. Acting classes will
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