Kim Handysides-Award Winning Female Voice Over Artist-Logo

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elearning narration

The Best Voiceover Coaches still Polish their Craft

Voiceover Coach


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. I​n​ 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 d​on’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.

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)

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?

 

How to Voice Over ELearning for Kids

eLearning

eLearning for kids Kim Handysides
Photo: theweddingwardrobist – blogger

Just like this Porifera named Bob, children are like sponges. Sometimes we forget how quickly and how much they pick up and next thing we know, they’re repeating words we may not think they should incorporate into their vocabularies just yet. They absorb more information than we realize, and their education doesn’t stop when the school bell rings.

 

And of course, they are extremely comfortable with electronic environments. This plus the fact that schools are overcrowded and underfunded, is it any wonder close to 50% of the growth in eLearning in the US in the last couple of years

has been in the K-12 market. Ergo the profusion of ELearning courses for kids.  Whether you as the narrator or a character within a course is helping kids stay on track with their studies or relaying new and exciting subjects, there are a few things voice over actors need to remember when speaking to a younger audience.

Teaching One-on-One, Not Talking Down

Voice over narration for kid’s eLearning is about finding the correct delivery to ensure the young learner is keeping up, but doesn’t feel talked down to. Kids are super sensitive not only to what we say, but how we say it. Speaking too slowly can sound condescending to little Izzy or potentially boring to young Jake. When it comes to educating the next generation our mission is to help keep them interested in and excited about the subjects they’re learning, by staying engaged with the material ourselves. Here’s where your imagination comes into play. Picture Izzy or Jake by your side. They will be super excited and feel great when they understand what you’re saying. Making it real for you, makes it real for them. Your client will read this as a student that is engaged with his or her eLearning is more likely to score better and retain the information.

The Tone, Inevitably, Sets the Tone

 

Photo: i.imgur.com

Your tone of voice also dictates how the learner receives the information. Kids react well to an upbeat, lively, conversational tone, but the most important thing is to keep it real. Kids are very perceptive and are used to being highly entertained (tv, social media, gaming). You may know the declaration of Independence so well it may be snore city to you, but beware of sliding into a soporific, meditative voice. Take it as a challenge. This is new info to them, make it new to you too. Bring a light undercurrent of energy to your tone. It will help you stay present. Also take the age of your audience into account. Very young children respond better to bubbly or friendly voiceovers, while older kids respond to a broader range of styles from the hip or cool, to quirky or matter of fact. (i.e. Bill Nye the Science Guy) Another possibility is hiring an adult who sounds like a kid. Friend and talented voiceover artist Lisa Biggs has done eLearning for kids with the boy voice she created, “Liam.” She also offers an excellent course on how to discover your boy voice. Many talented female voiceover artists have a couple of those in their tool kit. (Think Nancy Cartwright, a.k.a. Bart Simpson)

 

The thing to remember for  eLearning voice over project directed to kids or any age, is that your work is a major part of the listener’s overall understanding and education. As they say in the modules, key takeaway? It’s: important.

Voice Over Work for eLearning Courses Promises Steady Income

eLearning

Narration jobs for eLearning courses are a great source of income for voice over artists looking for steady work. This is no surprise considering that online or distance learning is becoming a mainstream and accepted form of education. People can receive entire degrees from the comfort of their home, and further careers in their field of study.

 

Voice over actors can benefit from this growing trend in modern education, by bringing their talent to course curriculums. If you’re considering a career in voice acting, or you’re thinking about adding eLearning to your voice actor’s toolkit, here are a few reasons to take advantage of this steady demand.

 

Factor in the Student’s Education & Learn Something New Yourself

The beauty of eLearning is that it’s in a—wait for it—learning environment. Your audience isn’t a consumer, but a student. Your voice over work helps inform, underline, and focus on important topics and highlight the most relevant bits while guiding the student through their course material. Your voice acts as the timekeeper and sets the pace for the curriculum. You are partly responsible for teaching the pupil and ensuring they retain the subject matter (no pressure!).

Super cool bonus point: you learn something along the way, too; as voice over artists follow the course work right alongside the student, receiving an education is a pleasant perk.

Follow the Money

photo cred: tnooz.com
Ever since the invention of radio, voice over actors have been in business. Our profession evolves with technology. From radio to television to the web, our livelihood depends on communications technology, which reaches audiences best with a human touch. ELearning represents an expanding vehicle for voice over actors. Radio may have dominated the first half of the 20th century, but in this era digital forms of entertainment and education prevail. It only makes sense to hop on board this vehicle and follow the technology wherever it goes —keeping in mind, how much it is enhanced when given a human touch via your voice.

Also learn about Kim Handysides e learning Work