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eLearning

The Secrets To E-learning Narration Lie in These 10 Skills

eLearning

My posts for the last month have all been performance-oriented. Today, I’d like to add another in that vein with one of my favorite genres. eLearning is a big wonderful market to play in for voice over actors. It has seen exponential growth over the last couple of decades and is on track to be worth an estimated $325 Billion by 2025. And this might be a low projection in the face of Covid-19, which has brought an uptick in the production of e-learning as much face-to-face instruction has been replaced with online education. To be hired consistently in this arena requires a certain skill set. I’ve been narrating eLearning weekly for the past 20+ years and believe the secrets to a successful career in eLearning narration lie in this list of 10 must-have voice over acting skills.

Skill Number 1 – Consistent Sound

When I started working in this genre of voice over twenty-odd years ago, I had the good fortune to work on a particularly difficult 100+ hour medical eLearning project. Needless to say, there were a lot of pickups. In these long narration marathons, energy needs to be smooth all the way through and I wasn’t quite nailing it. My sound engineer remarked that I always came in hot at the beginning of lines, settled down midway through and sometimes dropped off quite low at the end of lines (when I was running out of breath). Check your sound waveform to see if this is you too. It was a quick learning curve for me. Work on softening your in-cues and maintaining energy in your out-cues so your sound is consistent.

Skill Number 2 – Maintaining Flow

Flow in acting refers to being present and attentive in the moment. Related to maintaining consistent sound, staying in the flow helps you read in large (natural) phrases – not choppy little bits and pieces – and makes it sound conversational and avoid (the dreaded word) “robotic” and unnatural speech patterns. Performance tip? Learn to look longer in the phrase. Rather than seeing only 4-5 words at a time, see the whole 10-14 at once while concentrating on delivering that one that you’re speaking.

Flow is extremely important to performance and the transmission of the writer’s message to the listener’s ear.

Skill Number 3 – Expand Your Vocabulary

You’re going to read words for a living.  Having an expansive vocabulary is like saving money for a rainy day – you never know when it will come in handy.  So build your stockpile of words – read widely for enjoyment & research – play GRE vocabulary games – listen to Merriam Webster pronunciations. Pick an area you want to work in (IT, financial, medical, engineering, etc) and search industry terms. Make this part of your regular research work. You waste your time (and your client’s if it’s a live directed session) if you stumble repeatedly over vocabulary. So expand yours.

Skill(s) Number 4 – Stamina and Accuracy

This is a two-pack of skills needed for long-form narration projects.  Stamina and accuracy can be strengthened with cold reading – reading out loud for long periods of time. You need to sustain your energy through eLearning much in the same way as for audiobook work. (Even though the trend for eLearning has of late been broken up into shorter and shorter modules, there will likely still be many of them to accomplish in a session). And accuracy directly impacts your stamina.  The less stopping, rewinding and repeating you can do, and the quicker you can get through the information, the easier it will be to maintain your stamina.

Skill Number 5 – Emotional Intelligence

It is scientifically proven that we learn better when our emotions are engaged. Though it has been long thought that intellect had to be free of emotion, new, more multi-faceted theories suggest that emotional intelligence (in addition to interpersonal and intrapersonal intelligence) works in concert with cognition rather than in opposition.  Or in less geeky terms – how you feel about what you’re learning may contribute to learning it (or not learning it).  So, in order to effectively engage learners, you’re going to have to appeal to their better emotions, as well as their smarts. In order to achieve this, you have to apply your own emotional intelligence to tap into positive emotions in your learners that encourage excitement and attachment to the subject matter.

Good actors employ this on stage and screen by listening to the other actors in a scene, determining their wants/desires/emotions and then interacting with them (either positively or negatively) to propel them to action. Because you won’t have direct access to your learners, you will have to discern from the material what is exciting and interesting to keep the listener engaged.

Skill Number 6 – On The Fly Script Analysis

Unless you sit with a script and read it over a few times and analyze it before you deliver it (which is recommended for those new to eLearning voice work, and is definitely part of the work for film, theatre and tv roles, but much less so for VO industry vets), you likely won’t have the best delivery.  “But..!” you say, “analysis is time-consuming and I have to be in a session tomorrow!” This is why you want to be able to analyze the script on the fly (as you are narrating it) to best know where to emphasize certain words, phrases, and expressions. Where are your power words and anchor points? Where are your transitions, connections, and moments? In my experience, good on-the-fly analysis happens when it can function like a reflex.  When your first thought is to look for beats, or break down the scenes (or sections) of a script. This only becomes second nature with practice. The more you do, the better you get.

Skill Number 7 – Connection To The Text

The next 3 skills go hand-in-hand.  First, connect to the text. Do you understand it? Understanding comes from not only understanding the words on the surface level, but understanding the subtext. Especially if the subject matter is not one with which you are familiar…your listeners will disconnect if you don’t transmit the message with the correct nuance and meaning. 

Skill Number 8 – Connection To The Role

Next, connect to the role. Who are you? The teacher? The manager? A character? One of the reasons some eLearning content creators prefer hiring a prof or an SME (subject matter expert) is that they bring great authority about the subject to their reads…you must do that too. You have to connect to your role (and the subject matter) as much as an SME would – that’s where your acting comes in. If you’re uncomfortable or unfamiliar with this – read up on how actors connect with and prepare their roles. Good voice actors do the same with their “narrator” roles. 

Skill Number 9 – Connection To The Learner

The last of the three is, connect to the learner. Who are they? Why is it important that they learn this? What will it mean to them in the short term? Long term? They are your audience. Your audience of one at a time. Actors think about how to connect with audience(s) in plays and in film. 

Skill Number 10 – Passion

Remember your favorite teacher in school? Why were they so great? Did they inspire you? How? Passion. Passion for their subject, passion to share knowledge, passion to see and enjoy your aha moments. Channel their love for teaching and bring that same passion to your eLearning performance. Your learners will love you for it.

 

eLearning Project Flow and where you Come in as a VoiceOver Narrator

eLearning, Voiceover Styles

mystery box question markUnless you’ve come to voiceover from an online learning background, understanding how an eLearning project is put together is a mystery to most voice over narrators. I sat down with a good friend of mine who’s risen through the ranks in the industry and is now a department manager at an international e-learning content creation company, and asked him to help me to demystify the process. To better help we ‘talent’ see where we come in. Here is the result:

Analyze and Brainstorm

A project comes into a content development company and some sort of an analysis is done. Perhaps it’s with an analysis and research team. They will take an overall look at the material, try to make sure they understand the mandate, ask for more clarification if they don’t, and then develop a course outline and a budget. Very often the integrator or project manager or content manager or all three will also attend the analysis. They’ll be there to brainstorm ideas and add their expertise at this early stage and high-level look-see.

Start the Game

team of fists bumping
Credit: Pexels

At the project kickoff, the team presents the results of their analysis to the client and meet face-to-face or via zoom or Skype to make to make sure everyone is on the same page. At that point the team players assemble. There’s a Project manager assigned. This is the person who will manage deadlines and tasks and liaise with the client. The visual designer will create templates the course website (if that’s part of the package) and the look and feel of all the visuals. There is a QA person. This is the one who ensures that everything done is correct. There is a content strategist and/or instructional designer. This job may also go buy other titles but is essentially the person who will either write, order and take the content and design or create the course. Sometimes a SME (subject matter expert) writes the material and hands it off to the ID. There is someone who may coordinate the project between the administration of the company and the project and there is an IT department sometimes called technical or development department who will take care of plug-ins and other assorted computer technical stuff. Finally, there is an integrator, the person who takes everything and puts it all together.

Storyboard and Fill in Content

They make a story board template. And a website template if applicable. This will happen if the client has a website and their own LMS or learning management system. The company may provide hosting services of the content for the client, too. Then they get the story board template to the content department so they can write material to fit into those templates. A high level course outline is created along with learning objectives and capsules of what content will go where. This is sent for approval and if they get it, then they develop those storyboards.

Bring in the Narrator

Mic on floorThe integrator oversees and checks over all the story boards, sends the client static images either with talking points and animation cues and gets approval of the script. Then, they (or the project manager) send the script to the voiceover narrator to record. By the way, this particular friend works with both non-professional and professional elearning narrators and is vehement that pro narrators always bring in a stronger ROI. While the narrator is recording and editing the team animates and integrates the storyboards. The QA team then listens over to audio before they integrate and meanwhile the integrator purchases images, edits and prepares animation to sync. Any pickups in the narration are done, and then they integrate the audio to the animation and sync it slide by slide.

QA and Bugs

At this point, there may be a peer review. Some companies have this, some don’t. A peer review helps the team to learn things from each other they didn’t necessarily learn in school or on other projects. The QA team listens watches the full program and makes sure that everything works in different environments, for example in mobile platforms. They do something called a regression which fixes any bugs, but which may also create other bugs, do a final QA and send the Beta version to the client for review period.

Release the Gold

Once they get feedback from the client,  they integrate any changes and then launch the product. The product has gone from prototype to Beta to Gold. Some companies also do a postmortem to see what they can learn from experience. Sometimes an instructional designer may do all parts of the project from start to finish. But the outline I just sketched is the way one company I work with creates their content, and it’s fairly common. I hope this is has been helpful.

Kim Handysides is a successful Award winning voiceover artist. Studying the eLearning industry has made her a stronger eLearning narrator, and led her to become a speaker and coach on the subject as well. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

How to Win in the eLearning Industry as a Voiceover Actor

eLearning, Voiceover Business

The eLearning Industry is expanding rapidly and needs good (read: great) voiceover actors to help make their training projects achieve end goals and win results. Here are three things you can do to stake your claim in this booming industry.

 

Educate Yourself about the eLearning Industry

Kim Handysides eLearning
Credit: ActuarialLearning

By and large, the people who would hire voiceover talent in the e-Learning industry are a bright and bookish lot. That is to say, they are more comfortable with you going to play in their playground, rather than you asking them to come to yours. So, find out about their process. Creating content for eLearning is very different than creating an ad campaign or writing animation. The Instructional Designers usually author the projects, who then hand them to a Project Manager who assigns tasks to graphic designers, animators, IT (and the VO), who send everything to an Integrator who sends the project to QA and then it’s ready to send to the client. They have different goals (aka getting participants to learn something) and those goals are chiefly broken down into knowledge retention (as in the academic arena) or behavior change (like, getting employees to be safe or fill out the correct forms or do whatever they are doing now differently because it is costing the company time, money or a variant thereof, like reputation). Learn what their pain points are.

 

 

Reach Out to eLearning Employees

Kim Handysides Voiceover
Credit: SpectrumNet

You have something they want. Your storytelling ability. Your engaging, natural, passionate, professional audio, quick turn-around sound. They need that. Otherwise their projects fall flat. Not all of them know that yet. But, in any conversations you might have with them you can be confident of your ability to meet their goals (whether it’s info retention or behavior change) because there’ve been studies that prove people will tolerate poor quality video over poor quality (or less-than engaging) audio. People largely process information visually. Because the processing window is much smaller for audio, this translates into us being more picky about audio quality. Cool, right? You know this yourself. You will listen to a show while cooking or cleaning, without really checking on the video that much. But if the audio is off (on any show) you won’t watch it.

 

 

Help eLearning Freelancers & Other Voiceover Narrators Win

Helping
Credit: Vikiaviligban

Once you’ve learned about your eLearning market, and reached out to them with confidence (in your ability to help), do more. Help them out in other ways. Recommend other VOs for characters, for when you’re too busy or for variety. Recommend VOs in other languages than yours for jobs. Recommend them for eLearning jobs you hear about. This is especially helpful if the eLearning professionals you work with are freelance and are always looking for their next gig. In this way, you evolve from just another talent knocking at their door for narration gigs to a trusted partner in their work world.

 

What has your experience been working with the Elearning industry? I’d love to hear from you whether your encounters have been positive or otherwise.

 

Kim Handysides is a female voiceover artist who loves learning. 16/7  (‘Cause ya gotta sleep sometime)

How to Make Audio Demos that Get Voiceover Work

eLearning, Voiceover Business

Audio demo is a voiceover calling cardIn the voiceover world, your demo is your calling card. More important than your business card, or website, it’s a reflection of work you have done or are capable of doing. A demo becomes your audition to audition. It needs to be good. A poorly written, badly directed, over or under produced demo can kill opportunities and sabotage your efforts.

 

I have multiple demos on my website. Commercial, eLearning, explainer, audiobook, trailer, accents and characters just to name a few, but if I had to limit production to one demo only, it would be a commercial demo. Not only because commercials are the mainstay of what I do, but because to my mind, that is the demo type that shows the greatest range.

Within a commercial demo, you can lay down your baseline storytelling voice, get a little wacky, then a little serious, be inspired, confide in a friend. It’s an opportunity to showcase multiple aspects of your talent in short (hopefully) entertaining clips that make your client, casting director or agent reach out and want more.

What are the hallmarks of a good demo? A panel of demo producers at VO Atlanta 2018 agreed on several criteria.

 

Key qualities of a voice over demo

A demo shouldn’t be longer than 60 seconds. No one (in the industry) listens longer than a minute nowadays. Within that minute, your demo needs to sparkle with great production, great performance. It should be an excellent reflection of what you will be able to replicate if they decide to hire you. If you work remotely from your own home studio, then you also need to be able to ensure you can replicate the same production values in your own home studio you display on your demo. If you can’t, you create false expectations and risk your reputation and upsetting clients.

 

Casting off a voiceover demo

voiceover cast in 10 seconds Kim Handysides
Credit: iStock

Casting directors often don’t listen past the first ten seconds. It’s a fact, sad, but true. They don’t have time. You either make it into the shortlist in that limited window or you don’t. So what happens in that tight time frame? After the first couple of seconds, the listener gets an imprint of how a particular artist’s voice sounds. That’s the baseline. From two or three seconds in, the priority is to show your authentic storytelling capability. If they’re still with you six or seven seconds in, next give them a glimpse of your range. That’s it in a nutshell. That’s the best you can do. If you’ve kept them that long and were able to get shortlisted or make an impact or connection with the listener, you’ve done your job well.

How many voiceover demos should you have?

As many as you want. 😀  I have two commercial demos (a regular and an “International” one), two eLearning demos (generic and medical), and two audiobook demos (fiction and non fiction). Beyond that I have cut demos for explainers, telephony, trailers, characters, accents and several others. Sadly, people don’t always make the leap to applying your brilliant commercial read to their eLearning narration or animation. They need you to do the work for them. I suggest making a demo in every genre where you want to work, not just where you are working.

 

How often do you need to change your voiceover demo?

Demos should be refreshed often. When you get new, exciting or impactful work that would enhance your current reel, add in the new cut, or get your demo producer or sound engineer to do it for you. That said, you should either recut the demo to remove something or shorten the other clips to keep the length the same.

 

My voiceover demo experience

Kim Handysides plays radio
Credit: One Planet

The first audio demo I ever made was in 1982. Fresh out of university, I landed my first professional gig at a local radio station. I was doing the “Carling Summer Fun” reports. Little on the spot reports from fair grounds, community picnics and parties. It wasn’t much, but what came with the job was a key to the station, and permission to “play radio” in the production studio in the evenings when no one else was around. The demo I made from that gig landed me my first fulltime radio job. For the next twenty years or so I made my own demos. Usually from work that I had actually done. So, if there was a McDonald’s spot in there, (and there was) it was because I had voiced it.

I mixed national ads with local ones to show range and often slated them in a brief fun or entertaining way. I wish I could say I updated them regularly. I didn’t. Then, sometimes I kept the same demo for five years at a time, whereas now, I mix new demos every two years and refresh my demos at least annually.

Make sure your demo reflects the kind of voicework you are going for. If you showcase a highly produced demo with music and sound effects for a voiceover genre that typically buys based on dry voice, you will get passed by.

 

Do’s on your voice demo:

Keep it entertaining, keep it short, make it pop, show your range, reflect what is current in the market.

 

Voiceover demo don’ts:

Don’t make all the reads the same, make one before your acting skills are sharp, don’t put dialogue on them (current anti-trend), don’t under or over produce it

 

Demos and demo production has changed over the years. What are your thoughts? What works for you, what doesn’t? What do you think is absolutely necessary and what isn’t?

 

Kim Handysides is an Award winning female voiceover artist who, when not busy narrating and voicing scripts for her clients, coaches and creates eLearning, narration and commercial demos for other voice actors.

 

eLearning Fail: Why Profs Should NOT Narrate

eLearning

Photo:videoblocks

An educational eLearning client recently asked me for referrals for sound studios builders. They’ve decided to build a place for their professors to record. This got me, the professional voice actor thinking…

Both of my university aged daughters have complained about monotone, boring, bad narration in the online courses they have taken which were narrated by their profs. Why is this happening? Why would a prof  risk everything they have worked so hard to achieve and turn it into something inferior. Is it because they don’t realize that unprofessional narration is worse than no narration, at all? That a monotone delivery negatively affects the brand of both the university and the professor. It makes them look and sound bad.

SOUND SEPARATES THE PROS FROM THE SIDESHOWS

In our uber connected world, our expectations of quality in infotainment, including our eLearning university courses are high. Studies show we will tolerate less than perfect graphic images before we accept bad audio narration. Think of screen recorded YouTube how-to’s.

Often professors believe they are best equipped to narrate their lessons for podcast or eLearning programs. After all, they intimately know the subject matter, wrote or had a hand in creating the content for the course and generally have years of experience lecturing to classrooms. But not hiring a professional voice actor to narrate their eLearning program is a big mistake.

THE PROFESSOR IS THE BEST TEACHER

Photo: Wisegeek

Intelligent people do explain things very well, and when asked a question can roll off the most palatable succinct response. They can engage in one on one discussions or lecture to several hundred and entrance and inspire. But performing material they’re familiar with or even wrote themselves aloud from a page is not the same.

When lecturing to a class, they have visual cues giving immediate feedback. It’s clear when students are following the prof and when they are not. So the prof adjusts their delivery. They are in the moment. This is real time vs pre-recording. The prof may be multi-tasking through the lecture, referring to notes, slides or a whiteboard. These cues all help bring their lecture alive.

However, in a studio in front of a microphone all that is eliminated. The untrained narrator almost automatically falls into reading in a flat, non-inspiring way that distracts the listener from the lesson rather than enhances the message. Not to mention distracting audio. Unclear diction. Irritating mouth noises.

THE VOICE ACTOR IS THE BEST NARRATOR

Photo: Jason Dipper

There is an enormous difference between a good speaking voice and a professional voice actor. An adept voice over actor sounds like the professor should sound. Confident, knowledgeable and engaging. He or she is able to explain the content like an expert even if s/he isn’t one. For over twenty years I have narrated medical and pharma eLearning chiefly because I sound like I know what I’m talking about in those areas, even though my background is not in science.

A good voice actor is a partner in the project. Gliding through the script, captivating the listener’s attention and helping make the lesson stick.

One colleague suggested the reason professors want to record their own lectures rather than hire a narrator is because of ego. A chance to shine in a new spotlight. But at what price to the end user, the student? Professors may be good communicators. But they are not professional voice actors.

THE GOAL: MAXIMUM RETENTION

For twenty five years, I have crafted a way of engaging listeners with the sound of my voice. It’s been the focus of my career and I work on it every day. Of course I sound better delivering their lectures than profs do. My craft is using the right inflections, intonations at the right times to maximize interest and enhance the material. The difference is clear.

Each one, the professor and the voice actor has their place. The professor is the fount of wisdom, research and knowledge about the subject. S/he has created the structure and content of the material. Has spent their life researching, publishing and lecturing about their specialty. But transmitting that material for maximum retention? That’s my specialty. Give me call or drop me a line to talk further about it.

 

Health eLearning VoiceOver: Medical Background Required?

eLearning, Voiceover Styles

photo: BIGSTOCK

 

It takes a finessed approach to narrate to and essentially teach health care professionals. As a voice over actor with over twenty years of experience in medical eLearning-voice-over  I’ve worked on projects targeted to the general public and medical professionals alike. Although I have no formal medical background, I have found the key is to sound like I do.

Medical eLearning: An Adjusted Voiceover Delivery

Medical eLearning generally informs learners about latest techniques and important breakthroughs, clinical results and indications regarding medicine, nutrition, pharma and anything related. Projects for voice over artists vary widely, so using a single universal approach for health or medical eLearning is not the best idea. For instance, the professor of an online course for university student nutritionists I recently did wanted me to use a conversational, colloquial tone for her biology course. A series of medical training modules I narrated earlier in the year was essentially a how-to manual for a highly complex and technical radiation machine. It required something more informative and mature that could still engage throughout some fiercely dense material. Like form follows function, narration tone follows content.

The same goes for the target audience, or the intended listener. Health eLearning is for everyone. In schools, children learn about hygiene, nutrition and hand washing and often, especially with larger class sizes, teachers supplement learning with interactive eLearning software. Voice over scripts for these projects may not use of heavy vocabulary, but vocal delivery still requires a balance between educating and engaging today’s youth.

Acting in Medical Narration

A voice actor works to genuinely understand and connect with the script before recording anything. This may require research and questions. Understanding why the lessons are important helps them care about the material and form an emotional connection. Which is important, because as Dr Immordino-Yang in her book Emotions, Learning and the Brain says, “It is neurobiologically impossible to think deeply about things you don’t care about.” This has led some content production companies to assume hiring the subject matter expert will make their elearning project sound great. After all, most MEs are passionate about their subjects. The difference between a SME and a voiceover actor is that as the professional voice artist connects and understands the material, their training kicks in. They then find actual passion within themselves about the content to transmit to the listener.

Stethoscope, coffee cup, Kim Handysides Voiceover
Credit: Raw pixel

One of my regular life sciences clients paid me a great compliment recently. I happened to be doing some research for a blog and asked what was most important to her in an eLearning narrator reading material in the health sciences. To which she replied, “A medical background, like you have, Kim.” While I do have a graduate diploma in science, my undergrad is in communications with a minor in theatre. But I have a toolkit of important qualities that help my clients feel comfortable depending on me, their voice over talent, to speak science and medicine fluently. As well as journalist and theatrical training which I continue to hone annually, I have a keen, and I mean razor sharp interest in the life sciences. Combine that with a vigilant awareness of pronunciation, a Grey’s Anatomy vocabulary, and a deep empathy with both those trying to inform and those who receive the information. These elements help me not only speak like an expert with  medical background, they help me present the material in a winning way. It has also helped to have grown up with several doctors, nurses, pharmacists and researchers in the family.

As an eLearning voiceover coach , I tell my students only approach medical eLearning if they either have some background in it or a keen interest in the subject matter. If they’re new to the genre, they must take time with their scripts. Practice until those complex words roll off the tongue as easily as your own name. And think about both the listener and the company or institution who hired them and put the program together. The voiceover is the conduit, the bridge if you will, between sender and receiver for their message. All involved depend on the narrator to make certain that info gets where it needs to go.

What has your experience been in reading medical scripts or hiring medical narrators?