Being Award Announcer at the WTA Grand Slam of Voice Over One of the things I love about being a voice over announcer are the places and jobs it takes me vicariously or in person. This October, one of the biggest events in the female tennis world was held in Singapore. The Women’s Tennis Association (WTA) Finals Gala Evening. And though I wasn’t there myself, I was there in voice… performing the award announcements and spinning the stories behind each player. This high profile gig was ube...
Archive for category: Voiceover Styles
Say “animation” and most people think of series like The Simpsons or Family Guy. Both are definitely hilarious animated TV shows (and contain equally fun voice over characters). But the kind of animations that lengthen website visitor time and unlock your social media super powers are bite sized, often fun snippets that showcase you or your company. We’re talking about animated videos for your brand. The type of video that, once paired with a voice-over narrator, is shareable...
Aside from buying the odd lottery ticket (’cause a gal can dream!), I wouldn’t say I’m a gambler myself. But that doesn’t mean I can’t be part of the ever-growing iGaming industry. And yes, I’m talking about working as a voice-over talent for the one and only online gambling industry. This photo is actually of me backstage for a on-cam lottery commercial I worked on recently. As you can see, I totally milked it 😉 As a voice-over artist, I’ve worked across a whole bunch of in...
Unless 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 ...
To the average Jane or Joe, voice overs are ubiquitous. We hear them on the radio, on TV and in movies. We hear them in ads on YouTube or Spotify. Yet, how many of us stop to think about whether the voice artist is a man or a woman and whether it matters to us as consumers. A lot that can be said based on what type of voice you choose in your voice over and that includes whether you choose to go with a male or female voice. Sometimes gender matters a lot and sometimes it doesn’t. It all depend...
Sound is critical to making virtual reality realistic. We are more forgiving of visual elements, be it animation, CGI, even imperfect video. But sound orients us to place and space and directs and manipulates emotional input. Sound becomes the anchor to the real. Looking at expanding applications of virtual reality, one thing is emerging in terms of voiceover. Realism is the key. Break it Down – VR Sound Like in film, a soundscape in virtual reality has multiple layers. There’s...
Happily, most of my voiceover acting life has been supported by a steady stream of commercial work. In discussions with a student, I realized there were reasons for that beyond being able to deliver a great read. Yes, you have to know what the market wants, give your director what s/he wants and “bring it” (whatever it may be) on time and on target. But more than that it also takes a deft ability to read the room. The commercial sound studio is never the place to display any toxic or taboo b...
Applications for voice work are many and multiplying and every few months I’m delighted to discover another avenue within my field. A couple of months ago, I worked on a pitch for a large Audio Description project. You might have accidentally come across Described Audio, Described Video or Audio Description in your TV travels. It’s that separate narration track that describes what’s happening on screen during the natural pauses in the dialogue. I admit the first time I came a...
There are few things I love more in life than story. Nature, maybe. Water, but that’s a subset of nature. People aren’t things…well, not generally anyway. But the point of this big reveal into story at the head of my behind the scenes insights on audiobook narration is that the tales we tell and how we tell them, whether through aural or oral tradition, wrapped in celluloid, tramped across boards or lining the pages or screens of books has been my happy obsession for decades. Prep ...
Oh, the honeyed gravitas. Languid and relaxed. Soothing and warm. There’s that dominant, strong male sound, with a nice low pitch, but it’s grounded and non-threatening. When Morgan Freeman does voiceover you feel like you’re in good hands, er…tones. We can’t get enough. And neither can our clients. Ever wondered why? A STUDY Casey Klofstad did. He’s an associate professor of political science at the University of Miami. A year or so ago he conducted a study involving politica...
