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The Best Voiceover Coaches still Polish their Craft

You know the old saying “those who can, do and those who can’t, teach.” This doesn’t apply to voiceover. Or it shouldn’t. In voiceover, those who can, sometimes coach. Of those that do, the best voiceover coaches still polish their craft.

Don’t Trust Your Voice Over Career to Just Anyone – Make Sure You’re Choosing Coaches With Experience

A word of caution – the voice over world is large and just getting larger. As with any growing industry, there are many choices for coaches to work with. It’s important to make sure you don’t trust your voice over career to just anyone with a teaching shingle on their website. Make sure you’re looking to work with people in the industry who have the know-how to guide you. Choose coaches with experience.

Take the time to do a bit of research to find out how long the coach has been in the industry, what area of voice over they work in, if they’re experienced with casting or highly successful and know themselves what is booking. Make sure they’ve had some directing experience. They must be able to help you take it where it needs to go. Have their students gone on to further success of their own? Are they actively involved in the community and keeping up with the latest trends, technology and challenges?

No matter who you end up choosing to work with, make sure you are compatible – does their instruction make sense to you, are you “on the same” page when communicating? An amazing coach with a lot to offer isn’t going to be the right choice for you if the two of you can’t speak the same language (figuratively and literally, obvi.). Sometimes people really click and that connection improves the learning experience.
Sometimes they don’t – no fault of either of you – so finding the right match and getting the best ROI with a coach is just smart business.

A Successful 25+ Year Career in Voice Over

I have a looooong history of working in voiceover – a successful 25+ year career. I’ve worked in many different genres of voice over including radio, tv, commercials, elearning, narration of various flavors and degrees of technicality and audiobooks to name a few. I’ve spent a lot of time and money over the years polishing my craft. I am proud to note that thousands of creatives and producers have trusted me to tell their stories. I feel like I can safely say I’ve seen if not all, most of it anyway.

So when I made the choice to start teaching it was from a mindset of giving back to the community and industry that has given me so much. I bring to my coaching the benefit of having “been there and done that” and love being able to help guide new voice over entrepreneurs.

I coach voiceover for:
● Narration
● Elearning
● Commercials
● General VO Entrepreneurship – including marketing & business best practices
● Improving your read rate – specifically for long form narration

I’ve been excited to have also coached and been a guest speaker here:
● Worked with ACTRA on Commercial Performance Delivery at AGM
● Worked with ACTRA & L’INIS (L’Institut National de l’Image et du Son) on annual
workshop on voiceover
● Coach/Guest speaker at Dawson College Theatre Department on voiceover
● Coach/Guest speaker at National Theatre School on voiceover
● Demo Director at Les Syllabes in Montreal
● Coach/Guest speaker for Black Theatre Workshop Montreal on voiceover
● Speaker/coach at VO Atlanta 2018, 2019
● Speaker/coach at VO North
● Coach at Elley Ray Hennesey’s Open Mic workshops on Narration and Commercials

The Art of Voice Acting Is Always Changing And Growing – Never Stop Studying It

As a fellow voice actor, I firmly believe the essence of our work is a craft. Voice acting is always changing and growing – and one can always improve and learn from the successes of others. In fact, learning from each other is one of the best ways to gain insight to be better. If this is your calling, never stop studying it.

Here is a short list of some of the coaches
I’ve worked with in the last few years. Many are colleagues as well as teachers and have all brought meaningful new insights to our work together and have given me fresh perspectives to bring to my performance and business:
● Dave Walsh
● MaryLyn Wissner
● Cliff Zellman
● J Michael Collins
● David Tyler
● Pat Fraley
● Scott Brick
●Marc Graue

Every year, as part of my annual business plan, I carve out time and set aside money to reinvest in improving my skills as a voice over artist and to make my business more streamlined. If you’re not already doing so, I encourage you to do the same.

Best Voice Over: Spotlight on Health Care Ads

Voiceover Styles

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?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K6HhSwtfyCQ

Texas Children’s Health Plan TV Commercial (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K6HhSwtfyCQ)

The hallmark of healthcare ads no matter the end-goal is motivating people to take action toward taking good care of themselves. Easier said than done. Consumers aren’t generally interested in healthcare messages and place their own health at the lower end of their list of priorities unless they or a loved one is embroiled in the middle of a health problem. Challenging people to make connections between behavior change and well-being is not easy. Done well, it’s presented through stories that resonate with target markets. But many healthcare ads have the added constriction of tight FDA controls over what can and cannot be said about procedures, methods and the places and people we turn to for ideas of where to go to and what to do when we want to improve or take care of our health.

Behind the Message in Voicing Health Care Ads

Voice actors can get clues on how to better deliver the messages behind health care ads by gaining insight into how consumers react to certain word choices that may be in the healthcare script. Becker’s Hospital Review had some interesting insights into power words to lean in to in terms of performance. Words like “knowledgeable” “trust-worthy” and “cost-effective” gained top marks in terms of inspiring customer loyalty. “Sincere,” “authentic,” and “safe” are other words that resonated well with the consumers surveyed in this report. For voice actors, keeping these ideal messaging words uppermost in our minds when we approach how to perform our voice over narrations for these ads, whether they appear in the copy or not, enhances our delivery.

Personal Approach in Voicing Health Care Ads

To break past the vast divide of anonymity and reams of red tape people may feel when thinking about hospitals and health insurance, the actor voicing health care ads needs to remember to take a personal approach. Health care is ultimately very personal. Our interactions whether on the giving or receiving end are one person to one person at a time. Remembering that and bringing our voice over delivery to the one-on-one level helps humanize the message. Health care ad agencies know the best way to reach their audience is through creating an emotional connection. One that garners trust. In order to vocalize that, we voice actors have to be as authentic and genuine as possible in delivering the copy. Our ability to be sincere on behalf of our clients (i.e. the hospitals, health insurance companies for which we speak) can mean the difference between their client making a decision in their favor or not.

Voice Over on Behalf of Doctors and Clinics

Smiling Doctor holding Healthcare Ads sign — Source: Koeppel Direct

Though smaller than hospitals and insurance companies, commercial voice over on behalf of doctors and health care clinics are another important part of the mix of health care commercials. Showcasing physicians may be a choice made by some hospitals, like how Mount Sinai made their docs (and themselves as a result) seem more interesting and accomplished in promoting their musical side. Whether the marketing venture has a bigger or smaller lens, the successful voice over for doctor and clinic ads will be one that’s compelling and relatable. We need to spark emotion and curiosity and not forget the most important tool in our voice actor’s toolkit: the ability to storytell.

DTC Pharmaceutical Ad Voice Overs

Now, I can hear you saying, Kim, this is all well and good for branding messages but how can a voice actor riff away at a DTC (direct-to-consumer) pharmaceutical ad in a conversational, storytelling voice over manner? Especially when most of them are chock full of medical and legal terminology longer than Apollo’s journey to the moon and back. In a word, finesse. You work those $50 words until they roll off your tongue as easily as your grocery list and you imagine you’re sharing that info with your best friend – who’s life could just happen to become a whole lot better by taking said medication. I once had a client ask me to read a product monograph in a conversational way. A product monograph! That’s the little insert full of clinical trials and p values inside the medication box. Yup, it took a lot of imagining and world building, but I’m happy to say, it can be done. Happily, in spite of all the legalise and FDA restrictions put upon pharma ads, they do help people solve problems. They invite consumers to start conversations with doctors. So the artful voice over artist must self-direct to spin the words in, you guessed it, a compelling, authentic and genuine manner by focusing on the people, the pain of the problem and the hope and joy of the solution.

The Huge Role of Emotion in Health Care Ads

Whether voice over or action on screen, the myriad of emotions played in a health care ad are what ultimately make them successful, because our health is inextricably linked with our emotional state. Unwell, we are unable to interact socially with friends, family and loved ones at the same level. The stress of ill health unleashes a storm of emotional burden, whether we or a member of our close circle are the ones affected. Docs, HCPs and other health care providers also bring in incredible emotion in their passion for healing and finding cures and compassion for patients and caregivers. How do we as actors and voice artists pay tribute to the huge role emotion plays in health care ads in an honest, engaging way? We do it by breaking the fourth wall. By interacting directly (in our artist mind’s eye) with the person who could most benefit from the message we deliver.

Where Health Care Ads are Going in the Future

Health care and related industries are highly competitive and to succeed must stay on top of marketing trends. This not only includes pre-roll ads, banners and social media spots, it includes updating websites with patient portals and other tools to make it easier for patients to connect with docs and their services online. Mobile marketing, digital marketing and social media advertising has seen massive growth and will continue to grow. However offline advertising such as TV, radio, cable and print will continue to hold its own for years to come.

3 Ways Storytelling is King in Voiceover for Ads and Business

Voiceover 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?

actor LeVar Burton speaks Kim Handysides Voice over — Source:Craig Barritt/Getty Images for AOL Inc.)

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 few thousand eLearning developers and creators, he recommended habituating the gateway to story, using the ubiquitous chestnut “What if” to better engage their users and learners.

How voiceover artists use “What if”?

By bringing it to everything you read. If you’re trained in acting, you recognize this as incorporating Meisner technique or Practical Aesthetics. If your background is broadcasting, think of it as finding that personal angle to hook the 6 o’clock supper hour news story on. But make it personal to you. The copy is a retail radio spot for a weekly special about cheap chicken and toilet paper? Use “what if” to imagine those prices really making a difference in your life. Maybe you’re a millennial who’s just left home, you’ve got a new family and all your money is going toward diapers, or you’re on a fixed pension. If the copy doesn’t provide it, build your backstory to better present it. Your “what if” world-building will help your message connect on an emotional level.

Emotion Amps Up VoiceOver Storytelling

brightly lit scan of brain & head — Source: Fine Art America

Settled around the crackling fireplace, the smells of Sunday pot roast lingering in the air and your grandfather tap, tap, tapping the tobacco in his pipe as he launches into a story about his youth. How did you feel? Lit up like a Christmas tree? Our brains are actually wired to process info best through storytelling. We have an eons old history of passing everything on aurally. Whether legend, cautionary tale or recipe on how to live life, we figured out over millennia the kids would get it faster, deeper, better if sewn together in story. In fact, three times more areas of our brains light up when we bake info in a story cake than if we just slice it up into naked factoids.

Persuasive Voiceover and Influencing Action

Your story (i.e. commercial ad, corporate narration, explainer video, etc.) if told well (i.e. with emotion, with enough world building and an appropriate “what if”) will prompt your listener to action (which is what your client wants) and fill out their time cards appropriately or sign up for the corporate baseball team or go and put that brand of frozen pizza in their shopping cart next time they need groceries. What we do is powerful stuff (when done well). Our clients entrust us to tell their stories to their clients. It’s a big responsibility. We are the Hermes of humanity. The messengers. To ply our trade well, we need to understand both the needs of the message maker and message receiver.

Morphing a Memorable Message

Matthew McConaughey in Lincoln ad Kim Handysides Voiceover — Source: MLive.com

A story told well stays with you. Romeo and Juliet. A Christmas Carol. Harry Potter. Yes, these are all written stories which we’ve read at one time or another, but the same holds true for stories told in spoken word. Morgan Freeman in Shawshank Redemption, Tom Hanks in Forrest Gump, Kate Winslet in Titanic. Great stories, but also, really great voiceover narrators. Those voices, telling those stories stick with you. Same with ads. The Alka Selzter man from the 70’s moaning “I can’t believe I ate the whoooole thing,” the tiny grandma from the 80’s shouting “Where’s the beef?” or more recently, Matthew McConaughey rubbing his fingers and musing, “That’s a big bull” in the Lincoln ads. Story makes the message stick.

Tell Your Voiceover Story

Back at the DevLearn conference, LeVar Burton wrapped up his speech on storytelling to the eLearning crowd by telling us what we imagine and what we create are inextricably linked. So true. Everything man has ever created existed first as an imagining, shared with another in, most probably, story. It begs the question, whether copywriter, voiceover artist, producer or “other” creative, what will your unique contribution be? What are your stories? And how will you tell them from your singular perspective?

How Copywriters and VoiceOver People Triumph over Disruption

blogs, Voiceover Business

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 whips up with a concept, copy writer and art department, realize the concept and possibly come up with fresh ideas that client hadn’t thought of, embedded in his script and the production team would make it so. Typically this was when the voiceover artist was called, cast and invited to bring their expertise in enlivening that script and message. (In a perfect world) the client would sign off and approve. The message was delivered. It was a beautiful system. A simple system. And worked for over half a century. Then poof. Disruption. The tried and true took a quick trip to Hades in a hamper.

What happened? You could say it began with tremors in media buys. The Internet morphed into a true marketplace and spending on advertising splintered. No longer limited to billboards, print, TV and radio constructs, disruption in our industry included events and new media like pre-roll ads, YouTube, facebook, Instagram, etc. The problem? That same client advertising budget no longer enjoyed a 2:1:1 split between TV, radio and print, but flatlined into a ratio more like 1:1:1:1:1:1. Plus, many platforms with ground-level entry accessibility meant much greater competition for the traditional crafters of the message, (wordsmiths and voice vendors) to cut through the proverbial clutter.

Writers and Actors Scramble Mid-Disruption

So now we have a situation where we not only have to be more clever, more artful, more disruptive (sorry, not sorry) to abduct attention and help make messages heard, but we have to do it with lower budgets in shorter time frames, and without the dear old system in place that, frustrating as it may have seemed then, made our lives soooo much easier. Thanks Joni Mitchell. Never know what you’ve got till it’s gone.

Copywriters and voiceover actors are fumbling through these new frontiers concurrently. The work rarely walks through the door on its own anymore. We both have to seek and secure it.

Happily (for me), I have always been a pretty good small business marketer (for an actress). Perhaps because I played “ads” instead of “house” as a toddler and my first job out of school was in radio copywriting. But the universe more strongly steered me toward voice over work, and like water (or a bad smell) I followed the path of least resistance. So, VO. But, I took the time to build relationships along the way and did great work, and as an adjunct to my agent (which never brought more than 50% of my work), I annually updated and applied my own marketing scheme. Booyah. But gang? The last four years of my voice acting life I have never worked harder in sales and marketing to keep my salary constant. I guess it’s a bleep good thing I spent so many years perfecting my acting craft early on. If I hadn’t, I’d be even more frazzled, divided and disrupted than I am in this fun crazy new market. Ya feel?

floating city in sky Kim Handysides Voice Over — Source: Howard Fox

There is so much more work out there than there used to be, but not through the usual channels, so how the heck do you find it? And yeah, grumble, grumble, the bulk of it is in the lower price range. Whereas in the days of yore, salaries for both copywriters and voiceover actors emulated the floating island of Laputa (hard to access, but once you were there, the salary was high) the now-market has shifted to more of a pyramid. Lots of piddly-paying grunt jobs on the bottom, with fewer middle and upper plums for the career copywriter or voice actor to chew on as you climb up the obelisk. Although, I heard the ad market metaphor recently referred to as a flat pancake with a couple pimples, namely New York, Chicago and Los Angeles. I try not to dwell on the disheartening.

Mastering the Disruption

The answer, as Steve Roller suggested, is in marketing and sales. Isn’t it Alanis Morrisette-y that ad writers, creatives and commercial voice artists have been swimming in the center of marketing and sales, yet we haven’t had to actually do it for ourselves? In this brave New World, we need scramble hard, scale and mount the learning curve in B2B marketing, SEO, spreadsheets and lists, pay to play platforms, industry conferences, exploring and exploiting social media platforms… and sales (it’s not a dirty word). Actually getting up the gumption to ask for work directly instead of hinting, cajoling, suggesting or ”just putting it out there.” And you know what? It’s tough. It’s exhausting. It totally challenges your work-life balance. But when it clicks? It’s also exhilarating, freaking exciting, and imminently rewarding.

And there are new sideways opportunities. In my 20+ years of largely commercial voiceover work, I would never have occasion to recommend work to a copywriter friend. But post-disruption, it’s becoming my new normal. How weird is that? And that feels great. Because we all want to help out the good people we work with. We all want to get referrals and give them. To swim in these new waters it’s no more go-with-the-flow, but jump in, ride it, splash around, divert it, and most importantly be part of it.

No lies. I’m tired. It’s a poop ton of work. But dang, I love this part of my career. My own marketing and sales has led to really exciting unusual voiceover stuff. Like a Pepper Potts inspired AI promotion, poetry slam ads, lots of quirky (think: Flo from Progressive) long form story spots, Virtual Reality, apps… I’m sure you have a jambalaya of beautiful inspiring fun work you’ve been party to as well.

My least favorite part in all of this newness, is the paperwork. K2 sized mounds of NDA’s, invoice & PO numbers and ways to receive payment to track. Yuck. Not my métier. But I can’t afford to be a whiner. No spoiled babies in this economic transformation. I’m curious to further explore the intersection between the pain points of copywriters and voice actors within the new reality. Could we be closer? And possibly get work with and for each other? What else might be fun and profitable partnerings within our work world. If you’ve got any ideas please post them in the comments below. K, enough rambling for today, I’ve got to slide back into my sound booth and bang out a couple of jobs. Ciao bella!

Kim Handysides is addicted to kombucha, her kids and Kiwi, her delightful Dachshund. Alliteration too, apparently.

How Professional Voice Actors Break Down their Prices

Voiceover Business

Hands in mud Kim Handysides Voiceover — Credit: Karen Maes

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, how long did it take to paint that?” She glibly answered, “Oh, about two weeks. And 30 years.” Voice over, like other art is rarely bought by the actual time it takes us to do it. Like athletes, we work long and hard for decades to be able to tickle the ears of a target audience. To be able to make written words flow, sound conversational, upbeat, or however else you might want them delivered. To be able to roll out two or three different characters in one job or imitate Jennifer Lawrence or George Clooney. To rattle off 10K eLearning words before lunch, a directed commercial session and 25 prompts for an award ceremony before quittin’ time, because it never rains but pours and Mama’s bills are piling up.

athlete running up stairs Kim Handysides Voice over — Credit: Clique Images

80/20 rule in VoiceOver

Most professional voice actors only get to narrate twenty percent of the time. The rest is spent chasing down the next gig. Like pro athletes, there is a lot of time between games. There’s auditioning, filling out NDA’s, drawing up specs and (shudder) paperwork like invoicing. There’s collecting, oh, and marketing. There’s the constant care and upkeep of craft, updates to software and sound booths so we can improve and hopefully be in demand. Most who hear how much we make per job for the relatively short amount of time put into it don’t take these factors into consideration. And of course, unless the job is a Union gig (in which the rates are non-negotiable) the voice actor is not getting any contributions to their insurance or retirement with that job. Flat in, flat out.

Voice Acting is My Day Job

A professional voice actor, doesn’t moonlight on the side. Or work anywhere else. This is their main source of income. Day after day. Decade upon decade. We will be there if you need pickups in a week, a year or ten years from now.

Voiceover Rates Per Use

Voice acting has tons of applications. Well, maybe a hundred anyway. Apps, toys, and events, games, eLearning and commercials, VR, audiobooks and inflight announcements, corporate explainers, web shows and medical animations. The list goes on and on. Curiously, some of the most difficult and technical work (gaming, audiobooks and dubbing) is paid less. Broadcast has always landed the biggest dollar, although its market is sliding away to a growth in digital ads.

Crowd in city Kim Handysides Voice Over — Credit: Meric Dagli

Voiceover Fees Per Population

Simply put, the more eyes and ears exposed to your project, the higher the voice over prices. In the Unions, this parameter is cut into population units. A city of 3 million might have 7 units. A city of one million would have 2 or 3. Each unit brings a certain amount of money. A college campus program, awards ceremony, or local play are on one end of the spectrum, a national commercial or TV narration are on the other.

Voiceover Prices Per Unit of Time

How long will the voice over be used? Typically an ad runs 13 weeks. That’s the Union model definition of one cycle. A year is four cycles. If you need to license the voice over in perpetuity (aka forever), you need to purchase a buy-out. In Union world, buy-outs are 1-5 years and then residuals kick in. That’s another consideration. I collect a few bucks a year for a cartoon series I did in the ‘90’s. Another time consideration is the length of the session in which you do the work. A commercial session may be 2 hours whereas narration on a television series may last 8 hours. VO’s who work from their home studio often offer a free one hour session included in their price.

Voiceover Production Costs

Who will be editing and mastering the recorded voice tracks? Is that voiceover service included? A voice actor who works remotely from their house already comes with built in savings in not charging you studio costs. Studios range from $100 per hour to thousands in the big cities. Some voice talents offer post production themselves, but busier ones subcontract that. Which means that cost ($20-30/hour on a 1:3 clean to unedited ratio) comes out of their pay. Most voice actors amortize the costs associated with their sound studios into the regular cost of doing business.

I’m a female voiceover artist who’s happy to work in either my studio or yours. Although I get to take my dog to my studio, so there’s that. I hope this outline has helped.

Toxic & Taboo Blunders in the Commercial Voiceover Studio

Voiceover Business, Voiceover Styles

Kim Handysides Voiceover — Credit: Pixabay

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 behavior I simply take as inappropriate and you may find this obvious (if so, bravo to you) but I have seen a lot of shady stuff over the years. Some of which will lock you out of future work. Here’s a little list:

Don’t waste time. So be on time for your call. Perform your best and try your best to do so quickly. When you’re done, and signed your contract, don’t dawdle on the way out of the studio. Studio hours are expensive and you are not paying for them. Be mindful of the people who are.

Don’t be rude. Everyone in studio (or on set) is a person, a co-worker, part of your team and deserving of your respect. From the receptionist who shows you in and beyond.

Be friendly, but not too familiar. Worlds mingle in a commercial studio. The writer, the client, the account manager, and you the actor, Miss/r Merry Sunshine. It is expected that you will be fun, friendly. Actors are generally a warm, fuzzy bunch. Your energy and verve will lighten the room. Just be sensitive to others. If they are buried in their computers, keying furiously, on the phone and sounding tense, now is not the time to break out into your Bo Jangles routine.

Don’t go on your phone. Put it on silent, and leave it in your purse/coat/manbag, outside of the booth you work in. You are getting a high price for an hour of your time. Why get distracted? You want to give your best performance. Bringing your phone into the sound booth makes you look dis respectful of your client.

Be sensitive to the other actors. The actor you’re working with may not want to catch up on the latest gossip in between takes. They may need to focus to explore their choices more fully. If you haven’t seen each other in months, plan to grab a coffee together after your session. Don’t kibbitz around during it.

Don’t try to do someone else’s job. Just like every other part of production, it’s a team effort and everyone has been brought on to do a specific job. Don’t adjust your mic. That’s the sound engineer’s job. Don’t correct someone’s accent. That’s the dialect coach’s job. If the copy needs an obvious re-write, there will be a writer on hand who will take care of that. If the team seems to be have a problem & ask your opinion, then by all means, offer it. Otherwise, don’t.

Don’t apologize all the time. Apparently, this happens to more than just Canadians and Brits. Sound engineer & director colleagues of mine in LA also report actors over-apologizing for takes that aren’t quite right. It’s ok. It’s expected. That’s why they’re called “takes” and there’s often a few of them. It’s self-deprecating, time wasting and not necessary.

Watch your swear words. I love juicy Anglo Saxon expletives as much as the next WASP, but the studio is not the place for them. I remember recommending a talented actress to replace me while I was on vacation and the client reported back yes, she did a good job, but he’d had to calm down a nervous client and wash his own ears out with bleach after their session.

Don’t moonlight on the job. This seems like a no-brainer to me, but I’ve witnessed a couple of actors try to sell their vitamins or makeup products or whatever other sideline scheme they had going to the other actors, writers, (heaven forbid) their client’s client while in a commercial session. No. Just, no! It’s not appropriate. You will not make a sale of your new online book while in the sound studio and you will not get asked back for any more work with them.

Don’t come into the studio drunk or high. (I’m not even going to dignify this with an explanation)

Taboo Voiceover Performance in the Commercial Studio

Performance no-no’s are more complicated and I’ve seen them either occur because of a lack of experience, an over-abundance of nerves or a skill deficit.

Be careful not to get stuck in one note. This happens when you get locked into one way of thinking about the role. Don’t get attached to your performance before you begin. Developing your improv skills helps you stay fresh and respond well to suggestion/direction.

Poor cold reading skills. Words, specifically other people’s words, are your tools. There is no excuse for not being able to cold read without stumbling. If you can’t read a 30 or a 60 without stumbling, read out loud for 30 minutes every day until you can.

Deliver what the director wants. The best actors are directable and adaptable. Whether you’re working with a good director or a bad director, you need to sort out what they want. If the director isn’t fluent in actor-speak and insist on giving you line reads, think of his direction as a mystery, and you my friend are the Benelock Cumberholmes who’s going to solve it.

In Between Commercial Voiceover Gigs

Behavior-wise, do keep in touch with your clients. Gently. Occasionally. Connect with them on social media. Like or comment on some (not all) of their posts. If you have something to share that might be useful to them, share it. Don’t pester, hound, stalk or be annoying to them. That will blacklist you from their re-hire list. But be present and available.

Performance-wise, well that your upkeep and development of that has little to do with your client, correct? So continue to improve your performance, your craft. Paint the masters. Keep working. And if you have something you’re proud of that your client might think is cool, share it with them. Otherwise, shhhhh.

Kim is a female commercial voiceover artist whose first Union spot was for a yogurt ad the year Mike Tyson won his first ever boxing title. What has your experience been in commercial sound studios?

514-803-2296

kim@kimhandysidesvoiceover.com