Read The Art of Voice Acting: the art and business of performing for voice over Online
Authors: James Alburger
This category of voice work is for television and film promotion, which is different from radio imaging, although there are similarities. While imaging covers station IDs and programming transitions to establish a radio station’s audio brand,
promotion
is generally considered to be advertising for a television station’s programming products.
Promo
voiceover work usually refers to television station promos, although it can sometimes apply to radio.
Trailer
voice work, on the other hand, refers to the promotion of motion pictures.
Originally
promo
and
trailer
voiceover work were lumped into the same category because of the similarities of style and purpose for the product. However, as the voiceover world has become more and more niche oriented, the two genres of voiceover work have each become specialties in their own right. Both are essentially storytelling and the differences in style are subtle, but distinct.
Let’s discuss promo voiceover first: As with radio, television stations present a specific image in their market. While radio must rely only on audio, a television station has the advantage of adding pictures and graphics to their broadcast image. If you watch much TV, you’ll notice that each station has its own look and sound. The pictures, graphics, and voiceover will be consistent for just about everything the station airs to promote its programming and image. This is true for all television and cable broadcasters, from the local station to the national networks.
A network promo voice talent will generally work to an already-edited video with a music track and sound bites that set the tone, pace, and attitude of the promo. The delivery will be one that is involved with the story and characters. For local television stations, promo voiceover will often be done as
dry voice tracks
without the benefit of seeing the picture or hearing the music.
Working as a television promo voice talent can often mean the talent is “the voice,” or one of the voices, of the television station. A promo voice talent will voice station IDs, program introductions, program promos (commercials for the station’s programming), program VOCs (voice over credits — the “coming up next” voiceover you’ll often hear at the end of a program), public service announcements, news opens, news promos, and possibly even station marketing and sales videos. As the voice of the station, you may be asked to voice anything and everything that serves to promote the station. Depending on the station and market, a television station might have two, three, or even more voice talent to handle specific promotional needs. One might voice only news promos, while another might voice the VOCs and program promos. Still another might only voice the radio commercials for the station.
Landing a job as a station promo voice can mean a lot of work on a regular basis. It used to be that you would have to travel to the station’s
studios to record your voice tracks. However with today’s technology, you will most likely be recording at your home studio and send the tracks to the station via ISDN or an FTP website. Promo work is usually recorded on a daily basis, and most promo voice talent are “on call” in the event of a major breaking news story that needs a promo produced quickly.
Promo voice work for a television network is a completely different animal. At one time the networks hired one person as “the voice” of the network. However, today the major networks will use many different voice talent for different aspects of their promotion. There might be a specific voice talent hired for comedy promos, dramatic promos, political promos, and so on. Most voice talent who are hired to work on promos at the network level have several years of voiceover experience and understand the performing styles for voicing promos.
Although very similar to promo voiceover, trailer work does require a somewhat different form of storytelling. The copy is usually read
wild
, without the benefit of picture or a soundtrack, but the lines must be delivered within a specific time.
While a promo may be delivered with a range of delivery styles from conversational to intensely dramatic, trailer voice work will generally treat almost every word and phrase as the most important, dramatic, or impactful word or phrase ever spoken. The style is often one in which the voice actor is less involved with the characters and moves the story forward with a very dramatic, detached or almost “announcer-y” delivery. A conversational style used for a commercial will usually not be effective for promo or trailer voiceover.
By now you can see that there are many facets to the craft of voiceover. To be successful in this business you need to discover what it is that you do best, and focus on developing those skills and your marketing within that niche.
This chapter covers some of the highly specialized performing areas of voice acting. Some of the top professionals in each area have contributed their thoughts on what makes their work unique and their suggestions for breaking in and succeeding.
Audio books are a highly specialized area of voiceover work. This kind of work is not for everyone! To be a successful audio book narrator you must have a passion for reading. Audio books are challenging projects, and the pay is often not as good as other types of voiceover work.
An audio book reader will read a book, on average, three or four times. The first time through is to get a sense of the story. The second time through is for the purpose if identifying and marking the scenes, characters, emotions, and story dynamics; and starting to develop the voice treatments for each character. The third time through is usually the recording session, or perhaps a final read to rehearse the delivery, in which case the fourth time through would be the session.
A typical audio book recording session will last about four to five hours per day. Most
readers
recommend taking frequent breaks and speaking continuously for no more than 50 minutes at a time. For the most part, the session goes nonstop, and the same process will repeat for as many days as it takes to complete the project—and that could be one or two days or up to several weeks. And even when you think your recording is complete, you
may be called back to the studio months later for
pick-ups
to replace some lines or retrack a page or two. When this happens, you need to be able to match the original delivery both in delivery style and vocal quality.
Remember that the microphone hears everything. Even a slight change in position can result in a change in the quality or consistency of your performance. Wear clothing that doesn’t make any noise, move silently, and learn to take shallow breaths. Page turns should be done as quietly as possible. If a sentence at the bottom of one page continues to the next, complete the sentence at the bottom of the page, pause, turn the page, then pick up with the next sentence. Don’t try to do a page turn in mid-sentence. Changes in your delivery style, vocal placement, or bad edits will all result in your voice becoming a distraction to the listener.
Marketing yourself as an audio book narrator requires some special skills and knowledge. There are some companies that specialize in audio books; they arrange for the recording rights and book the performers. These are companies you can contact regarding work as an audio book narrator. Some will ask that you record at their facility, while others may be open to having you simply provide the completed and edited recordings.
Some audio book voice actors will take on the roles of both talent and producer by finding a book that they think will be marketable, arranging for recording rights from the author or publisher, preparing a production budget, and pitching the book to an audio book publisher with themselves as the performer. Developing an audio book project in this manner can create an income stream from several different areas.
One of the best ways to learn about audio books is to begin by studying acting and other performers who narrate audio books. Then find a voiceover coach who knows the audio book business, and who offers a class in audio book narration. You’ll find additional information about the audio book industry at the Audiobook Publishers Association website,
www.audiopub.org
. Audio book work can be tiring and exhausting, but if you enjoy reading and storytelling, it can be very enjoyable and gratifying.
Hillary Huber is a successful voiceover talent based in Los Angeles. She has voiced thousands of commercials including national accounts for Toyota, Birds Eye, Boeing, Ford, and McDonalds. She is also a critically acclaimed audio book reader for titles including
A Light in the Piazza
, by Elizabeth Spencer,
A Field of Darkness
, by Cornelia Read,
A Map of Glass
by Jane Urquhart, and a six-book series titled
Southern Women
, by Elizabeth Spencer. Hillary is also an accomplished voice-acting coach and will often be found working with Pat Fraley as a co-instructor at his workshops. Here’s what she has to say about the field of audio books.
Reading audio books is the most rewarding voiceover work I have done. It offers me the opportunity to act, not just announce. I get to be multiple characters, wind a story, do it all on my own time AND I get to line my shelves with my finished work!
This fast-growing market is much easier to break into than other voiceover arenas such as commercial, promo, animation and looping. There are no agents. You forge a relationship with an audio book publisher and they funnel you work. It’s that easy.
How does one go about creating that relationship? There are a couple of ways. You might try the gun-for-hire route. In this case you make a demo (generally consisting of three
short
excerpts from books demonstrating your particular skills; the demo is no more than three minutes total.) Your demo is then sent to small- and medium-sized audio book publishers with the hope that they need your talents and hire you. The larger audio book publishers are a little harder to get to.
I think a better way is to become your own producer. Most audio book publishers farm out their work. Find a book that has not been previously recorded. Record yourself reading a few excerpts from the book. Then approach the appropriate audio book publisher with an offer. “This is how I can make you money,” is more attractive than “How can you make me money?”
You can research audio book publishers at
www.audiopub.org
. This is a terrific site loaded with current information about the state of the audio book market.
Reading audio books requires many of the same skills that this book teaches. You must be a good reader. You must be able to interpret themes and wind a story. Acting is critical, unless you want to read nonfiction—medical text, scientific works, self-help, and so on. The ability to change the sound of your voice to differentiate between characters is a big plus. Not all readers do this but I find a little vocal characterization enhances the read and makes the listening easier.
I record for only about four hours at a time. If you work as a gun-for-hire, and record at the audio book publisher’s studio, you can expect to read for six to eight hours.
This market is not as lucrative as the commercial world. But it’s so much more creative and ultimately, for me, more fulfilling. I produce all of my own work, so I am able to work around my schedule and never have to miss an audition or another job. I record in my home studio (many books are done this way) so I don’t have studio and engineer overhead costs. I highly suggest you look into this wonderful, fast-growing world of audio books. It’s a blast.
Voicing for video games falls within the Character and Animation category, but there are some unique differences for this type of work. For the most part, today’s video games have characters that must be presented as real people. Therefore, as a voice actor, you truly need to be able to create a believable and conversational delivery for the characters you create. You’ll also need to have a stable of at least several characters who sound completely different from one another—and from you.
When you get a script for a commercial, animation, or narration, the script is complete and you can read what comes before and after your lines. It’s in a very linear format, and you will sometimes have a sketch of your character. Video games are nonlinear! Your script will have only your lines, and you may or may not know what your character looks like. Each line will need to be recorded in a variety of ways to express different emotions, attitudes, energy, and so on. Also, your delivery for each line will need to be able to be attached before or after one or more other lines. This is because, when a game is played, the exact sequence of your lines will depend on how the player moves through the game. Regardless of the path a player takes, the continuity of the voiceover must be consistent and appropriate for the events taking place in the game.
Video games are usually action-oriented and often include scenes that depict violence or death. When you play a video game character you may find yourself being directed to “die” in a dozen different ways. How would your character sound if he died from being hit by a car? By being stabbed? Shot? Hit on the head? Blown up? Choking? Drowning? Each vocalization of your character’s “death” must sound different from the others.
Zach Hanks is a professional voice talent and creative director of SOUNDAWG, where he directs and casts voices for interactive games. His directing credits include the
Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War II
series, the
Company of Heroes
franchise, and
S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Shadow of Chernobyl.
As a voice talent, his credits include
Mass Effect 2, Dragon Age: Origins, Final Fantasy XIII, Aion,
and
Brütal Legend,
but he is best known as “Captain MacMillan,” the Scottish sniper captain from “All Ghillied Up” in
Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare.
Video game dialogue has unique demands and requires a special skill set that not every voice actor has. Contrary to popular assumption, voice acting for games and voice acting for
animation are very different. In general, western animation is character acting for
comedy
, is peopled by broad
caricature
character-types, and is geared toward a young audience. The performance style is usually more along the lines of sitcom, sketch comedy, melodrama, farce, clown, and vaudeville. Interactive, on the other hand, is character acting for
drama
, is peopled by realistic characters (cultural stereotypes and archetypes notwithstanding), and is often geared toward an adult or young adult demographic. The performance style is often realism, in the vein of film genres like action, war, horror, suspense thriller, high fantasy, space opera, etc.
Video games require actors. Voice talents who do not identify primarily as “actors,” such as audio book narrators, announcers, and radio personalities, are not likely to have the necessary foundational skills and training the medium requires. There are exceptions, but they are rare. Besides good acting, there are two essential qualities that all the most prolific game actors share:
endurance,
and
efficiency.
Video game dialogue recording sessions are usually rigorous at the very least. Often, they can be exhausting, painful, and injurious. Voice actors sometimes call these games “screamers” or “throat rippers.” Modern and historical war games, like the
Call of Duty, Company of Heroes,
and
Medal of Honor
franchises, can require hours of intense screaming. These sessions push the performer to the farthest limits of what even a vocally trained actor can endure. To be a commodity for video games, the actor must know the limits of their instrument and be able to perform near that limit for the duration of the session. This is a skill that comes with training and experience. Well-trained stage actors with vocal training for the stage and for singing have blown out their voices completely within just 10 lines, because they lacked game voice acting experience and pushed too hard. Even the best game voice actors routinely lose jobs because of vocal fatigue and injury. Risks include laryngitis, chorditis, burst blood vessels, fainting, soreness, and vocal nodules and polyps, to name a few. This is not a career for singers, unless you want to be the next Tom Waits.
Video games can require tens of thousands of lines of spoken dialogue. In game dialogue recording, time is money, and there’s never much to waste on slow actors. Audio budgets are a very small fraction of a game’s total development budget, and voice recording is a small sliver of the audio budget, so every minute counts. Actors who can deliver a keeper take in the first two reads become regulars in every casting person’s stable of talent. A decent game actor can get through over 400 lines of gameplay dialogue in a four-hour session (at two takes per line).
The best can get through over 600 lines. That kind of efficiency requires an actor with an “instantaneous process,” who can deliver reads at emotional extremes with only a few seconds of preparation. Many of the highest paid, Oscar-winning film actors in Hollywood can’t hit that kind of a mark on demand.
The financial rewards of working on a single title are modest compared to a national SAG television commercial. As of this writing, AFTRA scale for a session is a little over $800, SAG scale is just under $800, and there are no residuals. Double scale fees are rare. Nonunion session fees in Los Angeles generally are around $150 to $200 per hour with a two-hour guaranteed minimum, but some triple-A titles offer fees comparable to union scale rates for nonunion sessions. Almost no game actors can support themselves exclusively on video game work. Rarely, a winning-lottery-ticket booking happens where an actor books a character with 10,000 lines of dialogue
and
does the motion-capture for the animators, and he makes a year’s pay on a single game. Despite this, the busiest Los Angeles-based game actors can earn a five-figure bump to their annual income from video game session fees, and greatly increase their notoriety and fan base as character voice actors.
Because a career in game acting as a sole vocation is impossible at this time, game actors primarily pursue this work for the sheer joy of it. Actors get to play roles they’d never play on screen in larger-than-life epics. On-screen leading men and beautiful ingénues get to be character actors, and actors with a “face for radio” get to be romantic leads. The work demands a vast vocal and emotional range that your average primetime network guest star role does not. Games allow actors to inhabit skins that aren’t necessarily even human, fight for their lives, and save (or destroy) the galaxy. And when the writing is good, even the roughest sessions are still pure joy. I am a working video game voice actor, and I am grateful every day to have the greatest job in the world.