NEWS and BLOG

How to Approach Voice Over for Family Friendly Commercials Summer time and the living is full of family friendly get-togethers and outings and commercials offering advice on what to do to keep everyone happy and how to save money doing it. To be able to serve Mom, Dad, the kids, Grandma and the clients as well, we as the voice over actors have a few things to keep in mind regarding how to approach these enticing little packets of advertising invitation and fun for all in 30 seconds or less.   Family Friendly Activity Ads   Whether roller coasters or science centers, museums or events, family friendly activity ads seek […]

Bridging the VO Gap – International Voice Work with Shelley Avellino I don’t know what percentage of VO work is done internationally in the current market, but it’s a lot. Personally, 80% of my voice work is for clients outside my home and native land, eh? Whether you’re an expat working for the US market back home, or live on here but are accessing work abroad, bridging the gap between home and away takes finesse. Shelley Avellino knows that more than most. A Brit from Wales who’s been living abroad (in the US and Hong Kong) most of her adult life, she’s just launched a new service to voice over […]

Voice Actors, Reasons You Need to Be at V.O. North   If you’re a voice actor, and live within driving distance of Toronto, you are in for a treat. The reasons you need to be at V.O. North are more than a chance to learn and grow at an industry specific conference in your own backyard; that you’ll get the biggest bang for your buck of any VO conference out there; that you’ll forge and cement friendships with voice over colleagues close by; and that you’ll get a better than bingo change at taking home craft, marketing or equipment prizes a voice actor at any level in their career would […]

Best Voice Over: Spotlight on Health Care Ads Health care ads are a mainstay in advertising and the best voice over chosen to present medical messages is a critical part of creative choice. Healthcare commercials achieve their goals through a few specific avenues in terms of vocal tone and direction: sentimental – those that tug at heart strings, inspirational – through sharing success stories or great track records, and solution – matter of fact – as in, you’ve got a problem? We’ve got the solution. Which one do you think is at the heart of this health care ad I voiced for the Texas Children’s Health Plan?   The hallmark […]

Voiceover Read Rate, and How Improving It Increases Your Bottom Line What the heck is a read rate? As a voiceover artist, your read rate is the difference between the length of your raw voiceover file and the length of your finished, edited one. And if you do any long form narration, it’s something to strive to ever improve. For example, if it takes you three hours to read one hour of finished text, your read rate is 3:1. Chatting with several colleagues recently – professional VO’s who’ve been in it for 5 or 6 years, I discovered that for the majority of them (all of them making a decent […]

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 uber fun. I worked with the WTA team both in the US and UK.  As it was an event highlighting the best of women in the […]

Why Voice Over is the Key to a Successful PSA Your craft, profession or career, presents opportunities to be of service. To give back. For a voice over artist, performing the VO on public service announcements (better known as PSAs) hits that sweet spot for me. I’m currently sitting in a friend’s living room in LA,  here this week nominated for an Award for my narration on a PSA, I’m also struck by the plights they serve. Top of mind now are the horrible wildfires devastating property and lives so close by. PSAs offer solutions. They prompt us to necessary action. The key to a successful PSA is connecting honestly […]

Unlock Social Media Super Powers with Voice Over in Animation 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 on social media. The reason behind their popularity is simple: we live in a world now where storytelling is everything. People don’t […]

Voice Over, An Insider Take on the Exploding iGaming Industry Aside from buying the odd lottery ticket (’cause a gal can dream!), I wouldn’t say I’m much of a gambler. But that doesn’t mean I can’t be part of the ever-growing iGaming industry. I work as a voice-over talent for many clients in the 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 for many types of video, I’ve worked across a whole bunch of industries, and my take on the iGaming industry is that it’s one […]

Determining Rates: A Formula for a Simple Voice Over Pricing Guide While eating cake in Uncle Roy Yokelson’s Jersey living room this past weekend at the 13th Annual VO Barbecue, I tossed out this blog idea to Dan Leonard, George Whitham, Brad Newman, and a few others and got a thumbs up. So here goes. I am about to stir the pot. Having been a full-time voiceover artist for over 25 years, I am very passionate about voiceover rates, have heaps of experience in what constitutes industry-standard voiceover rates and (obvi) a lot of opinions. What has been bothering me is a lack of clarity around where different talent price […]

How to Shoot Your Voiceover Career in the Foot – Worst Practices If you ever get a chance to help out in any casting project, take it. Whether you sign up as a reader for a day, get an summer internship at a casting house or even volunteer to answer phones, being on the other side of the proverbial casting couch gives you an unparalleled vantage point and insight into what separates the bookable from the floundering. As a voice over artist with a long, successful career, I’ve tracked my slow season. January and July are my quietest months. So when a panicked long-term client reached out to me this […]

My Voice Over Life: Notes from the Scene of a Shoot I choose not to do a lot of on camera work. At least that’s what I tell myself. (And my agent.) Being a woman of a certain age (and waist size) the opportunities are slim. (see what I did there?) But today I happen to be on set as a principal actor shooting a lottery commercial (Lotto Max for Sid Lee) and having more fun than I planned. The process is reminding me of everything that I love and everything that’s tedious about acting in front of a camera.   The Commercial Crew Is awesome. Everyone on set is […]

3 Ways Storytelling is King in Voiceover for Ads and Business So…what’s your story? Or rather what is your relationship with story? Chances are it’s tight. We humans love story. We swim in it, soak in it, eat it up daily. Hourly, even. But have you stopped to consider your relationship with story as a voiceover artist?     Levar Burton, (Reading Rainbow guy, Geordie from Star Trek:Next Generation, Kunta Kinte in Roots) as the key note speaker at DevLearn 2017, stated that story telling is our super power as human beings. Intrinsic to that power is the ability to project ourselves in a moment outside this one. Speaking to a […]

Is the Seth Rogan Controversy Good or Bad for Voiceover Industry? A reporter from the CBC (Canadian Broadcasting Corporation) called me yesterday to ask me (a female voice over artist) how I felt about Seth Rogan voicing prompts for the Vancouver Transit Authority. Matthew ____ (I don’t remember his last name) asked if I felt any animosity toward Seth for infringing on the territory of a regular voiceover artist. While I understand Matthew was doing his due diligence as a good reporter trying to dig up dirt on an otherwise fun fluff news piece, my reaction wasn’t what he was looking for. Hollywood A-Listers in Voice Over While it does get […]

How Copywriters and VoiceOver People Triumph over Disruption Sipping nectar of the bean and browsing my groups this morning, I was inspired by copywriter chieftain Steve Roller and how many similar cliffs of insanity people in the copywriting and voiceover narration fields have to scale to triumph lately. All because of the (anti) buzzword of the decade “disruption.” That concept we all rallied around. Even got excited about. At first. Kind of like the frog, happy in a pot of water, lulled into complacency even as the heat rises and slowly cooks it to death. Ad World Pre-Disruption Working old-school copywriters and voiceover artists shared a formula. Client meets ad agency, creative team […]

7 Hot Tips on How to Get Better as a Voice Actor Listening to Drake with my daughter Lisa as we drive on the 401 through north Toronto ticking off To Do and Don’t Forget Lists before I dive full on into family vacation mode…I’m struck by this thought: I get at least one call or email a day from people who seek advice on how to become better voice actors. And there’s quite a lot of advice I pass out that is similar. So, before I chill out on the beach, dominate in family games of dominoes (I hope), and spend evenings singing tunes around the campfire, here are […]

A Voice Actor’s Guide: How to Make your Voice Sound Better Amber speaks too quickly. Her words slam and stumble into each other and she comes across as alternately nervous or excited or uncomfortable in the situation or space she is in. Rose’s voice is thin, brittle and cracks. She sounds much older than she is. From her mid-twenties, strangers on the phone have mistaken her for a senior. Derek is too loud. People are always telling him to shush or backing away a foot or two from him. Kevin sounds nasally. He is very self-conscious about it and it makes him limit his social interactions. As a voice actor […]

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 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 […]

Laura sounds like she’s 17, but has teenage twins and a paid mortgage.  James is a millennial that sounds like he could be a retiree. One of the reasons I love voice acting is how it shatters the barriers of age. You can be an actress over 40 and still have a profitable career or a 19-year-old male neophyte with a great set of lungs an awesome performance capabilities and make a living. In many ways the microphone is much more merciful than the camera. In other ways it’s more revealing. Our pitch doesn’t change much as we age. Both men and women generally hold the same tone from the […]

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 depends on what you are trying to say.   Traditional […]

What’s the first question I’m asked along with how fast can you get this back to me? “What are the prices?” I, like most voiceover artists will answer with a clear as mud, “It depends.” So, let’s demystify this.  Professional voice over actors base their rates on three major parameters: use, population and time. Geography also sometimes enters the picture. But  other factors also weigh in heavily in on how we cost out the licensing of our work and determining voice over fees. Let’s break it down. Hourly Rate + 30 years A buyer trying to haggle with my friend Eileen Raucher-Sutton a brilliant watercolor painter in the art world, asked her, “Come one, […]

Virtual Reality Voiceover: where it’s going, how to do it Sound whether music, soundscape or voiceover narration, 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 the ambient sound, the rain, wind, reflective surfaces, crickets, even. Sometimes a […]

  Once in a while, hopefully once in a long while, you’re going to encounter someone who hates your work. It could be a critic, a competitor, a troll…hopefully it’s not your client, but occasionally that happens too. What do you do when that happens?   First off, acknowledge your pain. To yourself anyway. Let yourself feel the wtf, the hurt, the shock. It sucks when you’ve done your best and someone doesn’t get it. Or thinks it’s garbage. Honor the sting. Pause. Breathe. Then move to the next step.   You won’t be able to keep every client 100% happy 100% of the time. Much as you might try […]

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 blunders. Let me explain….     Toxic Voiceover Behavior in the Commercial  Studio   There is some studio […]

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 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 […]

In 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 […]

My love of my craft of voice over arts (and my family) are my motivating factors to be and stay organized. Thank Heavens for my people and VOICEOVERVIEW. ‘Cause left to my own devices, I would forget to invoice clients, wallow in stacks of empty coffee mugs, trip over piles of discarded clothes and keep missing the garbage truck.   I knew I needed a CRM (Customer Relationship Management) tool and forlornly attempted to adapt to Nimble and Zoho, but my voiceover business needs did not fit well with these one-size-fits-all off-the-rack CRMs. They were too cumbersome and clunky for me to work with and I never got far enough […]

Business. The word alone used to send icy shivers down my spine. But, to be a professional artist, as in be able to write “artist” or “musician” or “dancer” or “actor” on your annual tax forms (aka more money coming in than going out) you must understand your talent or product IS your business. Perhaps it was my childhood, growing up lean, but I’ve always had a healthy respect for money and when I began cashing checks, I thought of my voice work/acting as my business. But when I began running my voiceover gigs like a small business, I noticed a huge shift. And took it to the next level. […]

Breaking into the entertainment industry whether voiceover and acting or music and producing is not a clear-cut path. It’s not like medical school or studying for the bar. The road is circuitous and different for everyone. Like the traditional professions, it does take an investment of time and money and a coach or mentor that offers good advice. Good counsel.   When I was asked to be part of TheDreamCounsel.co I jumped at the chance. I’ve been in the entertainment industry and specifically as a voice actor for over thirty years. I’ve set and met goals and have carved out and kept a six-figure salary for over half that time […]

After sorting out how to find the right voice with top notch audio quality and a quick turnaround time, the big question for producers hiring voiceover professional is rates. How much does it cost to hire a voice actor to narrate your material? The simple answer:   Union   First let’s sneak a peek at the Union vs non-Union rates. If it’s a Union (Sag-AFTRA-ACTRA) gig, the minimum or “scale” rates are set and negotiated between representatives on behalf of the actors and the producers who are signatory to the union. The actor then may agree to do the job for scale, or ask for “scale and a half,” “double […]

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 across that (accidentally at a hotel where it had been accessed and left on by a previous viewer) I thought it was some new take on television. An odd […]

Got VR? You will.   Virtual, Augmented or Mixed Reality, 360…it’s known by several names and may morph into more before it takes over the world. Statista’s conservative prediction is that the market will grow from $3B now to $40B by 2020. Others in the industry think it’ll be much higher. Orders of magnitude higher. SO, have you been part of a virtual reality narration gig yet? Last year I did a voice over acting job for one. This year VR narrations under my belt number about 12. The applications for the technology are endless. Among the work I participated in was a game based on 50 Shades of Grey, […]

Hey, voice actors. Is your website limp, lifeless or barely there? Does it suffer from lengthy load times, apparent invisibility to Google or other seo struggles that could steer precious potential clients away from your online storefront? Well then, I’d like to direct your attention to a team I have come to consider partners in my success: Joe Davis, Karin Barth and Brian Fulsang of voice actor websites. When I came across Joe in May of this year, I was in a quasi-desperate state. I had invested a chunk of change in a marketing company that was doing-me-wrong. They demanded a contract, used secretive and sneaky seo practices, remained unaccountable […]

In Canada yesterday (aka the Great White North, aka Hollywood North) Netflix announced they’d be investing $500 million in original production here. Immediate thoughts: Woo-hoo! Happy days are here again! But then the cynic steps in. $500 million? That’s just 2 (count ‘em, two) Hollywood blockbusters. So…Chump change, you say? You’d be right. While the announcement may pacify our government, it inflamed fellow Canadian actors.   My water cooler round-up with esteemed actor colleagues   Tyrone Benskin, a (brilliant imho) actor with over 70 film and TV credits to his name and a former elected Member of Parliament to the Canadian government, was shooting in Shawinigan when I caught up […]

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 and Lead In   So with a lifetime drenched in a study of story, how it’s written and performed it was with great joy […]

Audio Dialogue Replacement, (ADR) or looping, has come Poor quality of ADR dubbing in old School kung fu movies a long way since the old-school Kung Fu movies where the mouth movements and dialogue didn’t match.  Dubbing is the unglamorous low man on the totem pole in the voice world. Not as prestigious as cartoons or videogames, not as lucrative as commercials or TV narration, it still requires a very specific talent. Matching and timing what comes out of your mouth with what shows up on screen. And if you nail it, you’ll find yourself invited into this weird world of post-production work and vehemently asked to stay. And what […]

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 political ads.  He found kind of what you instinctively already knew. Lower-voiced individuals (like Morgan Freeman but this apparently applies to both male and female voices) give us the impression of integrity, competence […]

Apart from the fact that they provide me, a professional narrator, with about 20% of my voiceover income, I must confess. I am obsessed with explainer videos. They’re nifty-swifty cool little bites of “Hello, My name is____” and “this is what I do.” I was surprised at an in-studio commercial voice over session the other day, when neither the brilliant copywriter nor the other (truly gifted) actor with whom I was dialoguing for the spot, knew much about them. So, voila! Animated, or drawn on a whiteboard, these 30 second to 3 minute snippets do what their name implies: explain something about a product or service or what a business […]