Read The Art of Voice Acting: the art and business of performing for voice over Online
Authors: James Alburger
My first recommendation as you begin studying the craft of voiceover is for you to record yourself reading copy every chance you get. I guarantee that you will likely not care for the way you sound, and what you hear as you listen to your recorded voice may surprise you—and for good reason. When you speak, you are not actually hearing your own voice in the same way others do. Much of what you hear is actually resonance of vibrations from your vocal cords traveling through your body and bones to your inner ear. When other people hear you, they don’t get the advantage of that nice resonance. The way your voice sounds to other people is what you hear when your voice is played back from a recording.
I suggest you find a way to record your voice. In this age of digital audio, there are new devices coming out every day for recording audio. Some offer extremely high-quality recordings, while others are marginal. What you need, at least to start, is a way to record a reasonably high quality voice recording so you can play it back to study what you are doing. For the purpose of rehearsal and mastering your technique, you don’t need to spend a lot of money on building a home studio. The time for that will come when you start marketing yourself as a professional voice talent. For now, an old tape recorder, handheld digital recorder, or some simple recording software and a microphone for your computer will do the job.
Practice reading out loud—the newspaper, magazine ads, pages from a novel—anything that tells a story. Record yourself reading a few short paragraphs with different styles of delivery and different emotions. Create different characters and read the copy with their attitudes. Allow the characters you create to discover how they breathe. Change the pitch of your voice—make your voice louder or softer—and vary the dynamics of pacing, rhythm, and emotion. Practice looking for, and giving value to, the key elements of the copy. Now, go back and read the same copy again— this time, read with an entirely different attitude, emotion, and character. All of these techniques are explained in detail later in this book.
One of the best ways to learn this craft is to listen to voiceover work at every opportunity. How do you compare? Adapt your style to imitate the delivery of someone you have heard on a national radio or TV commercial. Don’t try to be that other performer, but rather imitate the techniques and adapt them to your style. If you are still looking for your style, the exercises in this chapter will help you find it.
Listen to your recordings to evaluate what you are doing, but don’t be too hard on yourself. Don’t be concerned about what your voice sounds like. Focus on what it feels like as you work on your reading. Listen to where you are breathing and if your delivery conveys an understanding of the story. Listen for your pace, rhythm, and overall believability. Be as objective as you can and make notes about the things you hear that you would like to correct. Practice the exercises and techniques in this book that apply. Recording and listening to yourself can be an enjoyable process and a great learning experience that helps give you an awareness of what you are doing with your voice. Remember, it’s not about your voice, it’s about what you can do with your voice—and it might take some time before you really discover what you can do, especially if you’re doing it on your own.
One other tip: You might want to videotape yourself as you work on your vocal delivery. It may sound odd, but studying your physical movement will make a big difference in the way you sound.
Two things are essential when exercising your voice: (1) a deep breath with good breath control and (2) making a sound. Your vocal cords are muscles, and as with all other muscles in your body, proper exercise and maintenance will provide greater endurance and stronger performance. The vocal cord muscles are little more than flaps that vibrate as air passes over them. Sound is created by a conscious thought that tightens the vocal folds, enabling them to resonate as air passes by. Overexertion and stress can cause the vocal cords to tighten too much, resulting in hoarseness and an impaired speaking ability. A sore throat, cold, flu, or other illness can also injure these muscles. If injured, your vocal cords will heal more rapidly if they are allowed to stay relaxed. However, if you don’t correct the source of the vocal injury, the problem will reoccur.
The manner in which we speak, breathe, and use our vocal and facial muscles, can often be traced to our childhood. Cultural and regional speech patterns influence the way we speak, as do family attitudes and speaking habits. From the time we first began to talk, we developed speaking habits and attitudes that remain with us today. We became comfortable with these habits because they worked for us as we learned to communicate with others. Some of these habits might include a regional accent, rapid speech, slurred speech, not thinking thoughts through before speaking, a lack of confidence in our ability to communicate, and poor breathing. These and many other speech habits can be corrected through exercise and technique.
Changing a habit will take approximately 21 days and at least 200 or more repetitions. For most people, it takes about seven days of repetition of a new behavior pattern before the subconscious mind begins to accept the change. It takes another 14 days, more or less, for a new habit pattern to become established in the mind. This time frame is true for changing just about any habit and will vary from person to person. As much as we might wish otherwise, achieving the desired results of a changed habit will take a concentrated effort and constant awareness.
Discover which of the exercises in this chapter are most helpful and do them on a regular basis, setting aside a specific time each day for your voice exercises. A daily workout is especially important if you are correcting breath control or a specific speaking habit.
As you exercise your voice, awareness of what is happening physically is vital to improving your ability to experience yourself as you work on changing a habit. Observe what is happening with your voice, diaphragm, body, and facial muscles. Self-awareness helps you discover and correct problems with your speech. Without it, you will not be able to recognize the
characteristics you need to work on. As you develop self-awareness skills, you will also be developing instincts for delivery and interpretation that will be of tremendous benefit during a performance.
It is often helpful to have another set of ears listening to you as you work on correcting a problem or speaking habit. A speech therapist, voice coach, or a local voiceover professional can be invaluable to improving your speaking voice. You can also get constructive criticism designed to improve your communication skills from acting classes and workshops.
There are many common speech problems that can be corrected by simple exercise and technique. However, all these problems have an underlying cause that requires self-awareness to correct them. In her book
Voice and the Actor
(1973),
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Cicely Berry discusses the human voice and methods to improve a vocal performance in great detail. She also explains some of the following common speech problems and how to correct them.
Usually, unclear diction or lack of speech clarity is the result of not carrying a thought through into words. A lack of focus on the part of the performer or an incomplete character development can affect diction. This problem can be heard in the voice as a lack of clarity or understanding, often communicated through inappropriate inflection or attitude.
To correct this, you’ll need a clear understanding of each thought before you speak. Then, speak more slowly than what might feel comfortable to you. Speaking slowly forces you to focus on what you are saying.
Stuttering can be classified in this problem area. Although the actual cause of stuttering is still not known, research has shown that it may have different causes in different people and is generally a developmental disorder. Even though research has found three genes that appear to cause stuttering, there is no evidence that all stutterers have these genes or that stuttering is an inherited trait.
There are two traditional therapies to correct stuttering. The first is
stuttering modification therapy,
focusing on reducing fears and anxieties about talking. It can be done with a self-therapy book or with a speech pathologist. The second is
fluency shaping
. This therapy teaches the stutterer to talk all over again by beginning with extremely slow, fluent speech and gradually increasing the speaking rate until speech sounds normal. This therapy is normally done at a speech clinic.
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The source of overemphasis or overenunciation usually derives from the actor’s insecurity or lack of trust in his or her ability to communicate. As a result, the tendency is to push too hard to make sense and start to explain. The moment you begin to overemphasize, you lose the sense.
To correct this problem, don’t worry about the listener understanding what you are saying. Stay focused on your thought and just tell the story. Don’t explain it, just tell it. It may help to soften the tone of your voice, lower your volume, slow down, or simply to focus on talking to a single person. If you find yourself overemphasizing, you may be trying too hard to achieve good articulation.
Sibilance
, the overemphasis of the “s” sound, is often caused by not differentiating between the “s,” “sh,” and “z” sounds. It can also be the result of a clenched or tight jaw, dental problems, loose dentures, or missing teeth. Minor sibilance problems can be corrected in the studio with a “deesser,” but serious problems can only be corrected with the help of a speech therapist or perhaps a good dentist.
A habit common to many people who are just starting in voiceover and acting is to simply not pronounce the ends of words. Words ending in “b,” “d,” “g,” “p,” “t,” and “ing” are especially vulnerable.
One cause of this problem is simply not thinking through to the end of a thought. The brain is rushing from one thought to another without giving any thought an opportunity to be completed. This is usually due to a lack of trust in one’s abilities, but can also be the result of a lack of focus or concentration. Another cause of this problem is a condition known as “lazy mouth,” which is simply another way of saying poor articulation.
This problem can be corrected by forcing yourself to slow down— speaking each word clearly and concisely as you talk. Think each thought through completely before speaking, then speak slowly and clearly, making sure that the end of each word is spoken clearly. You may find this difficult at first, but stick with it and results will come. Awareness of this problem is critical to being able to correct it. Exercise #9,
The Cork
, on page 48 addresses this problem.
A person speaking with lack of mobility is one who speaks with only minimal movement of the mouth and face. This can be useful for certain types of characterizations, but is generally viewed as a performance problem. Lack of mobility can be due in part to insecurity or a reluctance to communicate; however, it can also be a habit.
To correct this problem, work on the facial stretching exercises described later. Practice reading out loud in front of a mirror. Watch your face as you speak and notice how much movement there is in your jaw, lips, forehead, and face. It may help to incorporate other body movement into your exercises. Body movement and gestures can help you discover the emotions associated with facial expressions, which will in turn, help you to be more expressive. Work on exaggerating facial expressions as you speak.
Raise your eyebrows, furrow your brow, put a smile on your face, or frown. Stretch your facial muscles. Go beyond what feels comfortable.
Many people think in a very logical sequence. Logical thinking can result in a speech pattern in which all parts of a word are treated equally. This often results in a monotone delivery with vowels being dropped or clipped. There is little emotion attached to the words being spoken even though an emotional concept may be the subject.
Vowels add character, emotion, and life to words. To correct the problem of monotony, search for the emotion in the words being spoken and commit to the feeling you get. Find the place in your body where you feel that emotion and speak from that center. Listen to your voice as you speak and strive to include emotional content and a variety of inflections in every sentence. For someone who is in the habit of speaking rapidly or in a monotone, this problem can be a challenge to overcome, but the rewards are well worth the effort. Once again, slowing down as you speak can help you overcome this problem.
Breathiness is the result of exhaling too quickly while speaking, or exhaling before starting to speak. Improper breath control, resulting from nervousness or an anxiety to please, is the ultimate cause. Consonants and ends of words are often dropped, or unspoken, and breaths are taken at awkward or inappropriate places within a sentence.
To correct this problem, work on breathing from your diaphragm. Take a good breath before speaking and maintain a supporting column of air as you speak. Also, be careful not to rush, and think each thought through completely.
This problem arises from an internal involvement with an emotion. It is usually the result of becoming more wrapped up in the emotion than understanding the reason for the emotion.
To correct this, you may need to learn how to look at things a bit more objectively. People who exhibit this problem are generally reactive and live life from an emotional center. For them life is drama. Work on looking at situations from a different angle. Try to be more objective and less reactive. When you feel yourself beginning to react, acknowledge the feeling and remind yourself to step back a bit from your emotional response.
Many people feel their natural accent or dialect is a problem when doing voiceover. This can certainly be true if you are unable to adapt your style of vocal delivery. In some cases, an accent or dialect can be used to your advantage to create a distinctive style for your performance, when you create a character, or when you are working in only a certain region. However, if you want to be well-received on a broad geographic level, you will need to develop the skill to modify your delivery style to one that is expected, and accepted, by the general population. In the United States, most people have come to expect a certain “sound” for a voiceover performance, commonly referred to as “nonaccented American English.” But even though there may be a generally accepted “standard,” different regions of a country may respond better when hearing a message in their regional accent. If you want to do voiceover, and have a foreign, or thick regional accent, you have two choices: 1) develop your acting skills to a high degree and create a niche for the sound of your voice, or 2) learn how to adapt your voice to create characters with an accent different from yours, and that includes the “expected” generic accent. This may require some time spent taking some training for accent modification or accent reduction.
Many famous actors have learned how to either use their accent to enhance their performance image, or have learned how to adapt their voice to create uniquely believable characters: Sean Connery, Mel Gibson, Patrick Stewart, Nicole Kidman, Meryl Streep, and Tracy Ullman to mention only a few. Mel Gibson has a thick native Australian accent, yet he can play a very believable American. Tracy Ullman has a native British accent, yet she creates dozens of characters from around the world. And Meryl Streep has developed a reputation for creating incredibly authentic and believable foreign accents, even though she is American.
When we first learn to speak, we imitate and mimic those around us as we develop our speaking skills. By the time we are two or three years old, the mannerisms and vocal styling that we adopt become the habit pattern for our speaking. Over the years, we become very comfortable with our speaking patterns to the point where it can be difficult to modify them.
Accent reduction, modification, or minimization is, in essence, a process of learning new habit patterns for speaking. For most adults, it is impossible to eliminate completely their native accent. However, reducing the accent or modifying the way words are formed is certainly possible. There are many good books and audio programs designed to help people speak with a more “natural” American, regional, or foreign accent. An Internet search for “accent reduction” will result in a wealth of resources.
The process of retraining your speaking habits can be lengthy, and may involve working with a dialect coach or speech pathologist. Contact your local University’s speech department for recommendations of a licensed speech pathologist, or look into an English as a Second Language (ESL)
program in your area. The time and energy required can be more than most people are willing to invest. But a basic level of accent reduction or modification can be achieved if you simply listen to someone with the desired accent, study the sound of their speech, mimic the sound of their words, and practice the speaking pattern until it feels comfortable. This is essentially how actors do it.
In the United States, most voiceover talent perform with the standard nonaccented American English. Regional inflections, dialects, and other tonalities are, for the most part, absent unless required for a character in the script, or unless the production is intended for a regional audience. Although this has become the generally accepted sound for American voiceover, it does not mean that someone who speaks with an accent or dialect cannot be successful. The most successful voice actors are those who are versatile with their speaking voice and who possess the ability to create a variety of believable characters. If you have an accent (foreign or domestic) there are several things you can do to make yourself more marketable as a voice actor: