"People always ask me for advice on how to get started in the VO business. My advice: 'Get this book'."
- Phil LaMarr, Actor Futurama, Family Guy, Metal Gear Solid
Begin by reading the list below and noting what each particular word means to you: how each word affects you, or what kinds of thoughts or feelings come up when you read them. What are the attributes or qualities of each specific descriptive word? Of course, if there are any of these words that you are unfamiliar with, do not hesitate to look them up.
Adjective/Adverb List
Wry Calm Perky
Honest Open Cut-to-the-chase
Sarcastic Happy Clipped
Giddy Haughty Innocent
Secretive Emotional Bored
Inquisitive Playful Cool
Sexy Witty Crazed
Earnest Angry Grounded
Trustworthy Confident Relaxed
Start with the first word on our list: wry. Think about what it means to you. Who is someone you think is wry? What are the qualities you associate with wry? What pictures or images come to mind when you think of that word? As they come to you, jot them down.
For example, when I think of wry I imagine someone who cuts-to-the-chase, makes no-bones-about what they are saying but does it in a very tongue-and-cheek kind-of-way. Someone who is wry almost seems to be smirking as they tell you the facts; I can picture a weary mom telling me about a trying to keep her kids’ clothes clean with a wry, “What are you gonna do? I love them, but they just get so darn dirty.”
One great way of getting your ear (and then your voice) attuned to a variety of voices, inflections, accents and qualities is to go people watching, or people-listening, rather…
Find a fairly busy spot, like a mall, a zoo, a crowded lobby, café, etc, sit yourself down, and observe. Listen to how different people talk, take note of their pauses, inflections, their unique affectations and things you find interesting about them. Without appearing creepy, you might even pay attention to their mouths to see if there’s something specific they’re doing to create sounds.
If you think it might help, bring a note pad along so you can take notes on things you want to remember. Consider also bringing your quality check list with you so you can quantify for yourself the characteristics of the voices you’re hearing. In case you haven’t built a quality list yet, here are some examples to start with. Use them as a jumping-off point and add your own!
Calm Pointed Sincere Flustered Agitated Loving
Hypnotic Polite Warm Shrill Distant Brash
See how many different qualities a particular person’s voice might have: perhaps they have a calm, sincere, loving, polite voice, or maybe their voice is pointed and agitated. Mix and match to best describe the voice you are listening to, or add any qualities you become aware of that aren’t yet on your list.
We stress the importance of reading out loud. It may seem simple, and maybe you haven’t done it in years, but it can be hugely effective in improving everything from your acting to your ability to quickly assess a script, make choices, and pull the words off the page. Sir Ian McKellen claims that reading out loud was how he learned to act, and I think most of us will agree that he knows his stuff in that area. So, good enough for Sir Ian, good enough for us.
Here’s a simple exercise you can almost anywhere and on your own time: Pick three things to read. Any bit of written media will work. Start small if you want. A pamphlet, a matchbook, a newspaper article, a newspaper ad, a comic book, a shopping list, someone’s blog, anything. Over the course of the day, collect those three things. Now– and this is where it gets tricky –read them. Out loud.
Read each one at least once through, and if you’ve got time and you’re enjoying yourself, read them through again. See if each time through differs for you. See how the writings may be different from each other. Is one a story? Is one just trying to sell a product? Is one using a story to try and sell a product? Is one just a list of numbers on a receipt? If you’re having fun, give a different “character” to each one, or even switch it up within the writings.
You may not feel a change after doing this exercise, but trust us, it gets your brain and mouth working in all the right ways. Most importantly, as long as you’re reading out loud there is no wrong way to do this exercise. Unless of course you’re a monk who had, until this exercise, taken a vow of silence. Or if you’re in a library where they frown on doing anything out loud.
As a voice actor your job is not only to come in and do your voice acting, it is also to get the jobs that you will come in to do in the future, and almost more importantly to take care of your voice (and the future health of your voice).
Unfortunately though, sometimes, no matter how hard you fight to take care of yourself, you get sick. This has to be one of the worst things, since you feel like poo, but more than that, you can’t work (’cause you don’t sound like yourself) and you can’t audition for future work (since you don’t sound like yourself!). It is torture. Besides the inconvenience of illness or even the rescheduling or canceling of work, which is so hard, the not-auditioning can be even harder, since you have to make the call to not put yourself in the ring for jobs down the line.
I just had to talk with my agent about a client request audition for a video game from last week. At the end of the week, I was sick and I made the call to decline (hopeful that come this week I would be right as rain). Monday I got the call that they still wanted to hear me, but still under the weather so I begged off once again, but somehow it was harder this time. I sound a little better, what could screaming and yelling a little bit hurt?
Well, it can hurt everything, even coughing while being sick can strain the vocal folds which can possibly lead to nodules and even nodes. Knowing this, and having battled vocal strain in the past, I know it is the responsible thing to do, to not push my vocal health (since not only do I sound like a frog underwater, but pushing to record could permanently damage my vocal cords and future vocal health).
It is so hard to say no, to turn down work, and potential work, but ultimately as Yuri’s favorite arachno-human says “with great power comes great responsibility.” In my case it may not be power to save the world or throw killer spiderwebs, but I have the responsibility to take care of my voice so that I can have the power to use it! So I am begging off work with the hope that my responsibility to myself and possible jobs will pay off and come health, I will be ready and able to work once again.
Being sick can affect everyone, or as I like to say: Cause ’sick’ is just ’suck’ with an I for a You.
As actors we can sometimes become too focused on the craft of acting and neglect something that’s equally important: the business side of acting. This may not be as “fun”, but just as important as tuning your vocal instrument is finding out who might hire you to use your voice and where they are. It’s a pro-active way of forwarding your career in voice-over. So for a moment look at VO as a military objective. This week’s exercise focuses on selecting a few targets and doing a little recon, or research. And you won’t even need to get your hands dirty.
Start with what you like. For example, if you really like the show Naruto, you might search and find out that in the United States, Naruto is licensed by a company called Viz. A little more looking (with your friend Google) might turn up that the English dub for Naruto is recorded at Studiopolis. Voila! You now have a production company to add to your hit list when you have a demo to mail out! With commercials, you might have to be a little more investigative, but there are resources (such as adforum.com) out there that can help you find the ad agency who produced the commercial and who’s associated with the promotion of that product.
So, for this exercise, pick an area to start with: animation, video games, or commercials. Now choose three of your favorite shows/movies, video games or commercials. Begin to do a little Internet legwork. Find out who the production company is, and in the case of commercials, the ad agency who commissioned the spot. Try and discover if the company/agency casts their projects in-house, or if they have a relationship with a separate casting company. In some cases, you may even find that the same studio/ad agency produced more than one of your selections, then you know they’re definitely somebody you want to target.
There is plenty of information available on the Web, and a little digging could turn up e-mail addresses or maybe phone numbers that you could use to contact the company and find out who might be best to send your reel to. Start a file and keep the info you find for future reference. Good hunting!
Sure, breathing is important to staying alive, but because we do it all the time, we kind of take it for granted and we sometimes get lazy with it. Breathing is crucial in voice-over. You can’t speak without breathing, and you can create powerful (and safer) vocal effects with proper breath control. To increase your breath control try this simple exercise.
Start standing. Simply notice your breath. Now, exhale all the air in your lungs and hop/jump up into the air as you inhale as much air as you can. Then as you land begin counting aloud, “one-two-three-four…” up as high as you can on that breath. When you’ve emptied your lungs of air once more, jump up as you inhale as much as you can, and then land and begin counting out loud again. See if you can’t get a few numbers higher than the first time, speaking as you exhale, or “on your breath.”
Do this several times. Try to see if you can best your initial count by 10. Do this every day and you should begin to notice that you have better breath control and increased lung capacity. This will help sustain and protect your voice as you speak “on your breath.”
** If at any point during this exercise you begin to feel dizzy, or otherwise uncomfortable, stop immediately. As with any other exercise, consult a physician before engaging in a new or unfamiliar activity.
Flip channels on your television or radio for 5 minutes to listen to commercials. Each time you find a commercial, try parroting the voice actor who is speaking. Try to repeat not only the words, but the musicality, the nuances, the tone, and the inflections.
Then turn off the radio or TV and pick up a random piece of text (it can be an advertisement in a magazine, a book, a piece of mail, etc). Try to use the same vocal patterns, tonality and style you were just mimicking as you read this new material.
Practicing this will begin to train your ear, attune you to what is currently “hot” in the advertising world, and get you reading and speaking aloud, which is important in and of itself.
