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Virtual Reality Voiceover: where it’s going, how to do it

Technology, Voiceover Styles

shadow girl in nature Virtual realtity Kim Handysides voiceover
Credit: Catalyst music

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 music score used to build tension and provide relief, give emotional cues to the one engaging with the VR. Orientation is also very important. Where is the noise coming from? Behind you? To the left on the ground? Speech, whether in the form of a scene the user participates in or a guide or narrator works best when it is compelling, convincing and enhances the realism the piece is trying to portray.

 

Voiceover in VR

 

mouth whisper in ear Virtual reality sound Kim Handysides voiceover
Credit: canddi.com

Narration and voiceover in virtual reality is the antithesis of announcer-speak. Because the sound is at furthest a surround sound system in a room, and more often coming through headphones tucked less than an inch away from an eardrum, the voice has to respect that proximity. The two positions we encounter most in narration are the immediate scene laid out before the player/user. A film type of vocal reference is most used for these dramatizations. The other voiceover position is the guide, friend, comrade at arms or occasionally, the intimate foe. The proximity and intimacy makes the voiceover very powerful. A light touch and a soft approach is an incredibly effective counterpoint to the rest of the stimulus being fed to the user. And with everything on the leading edge, conversational narration and a storytelling voiceover delivery is key

 

Voiceover Supported VR Applications

 

As costs decrease and technology becomes more accessible, VR is being envisioned in a myriad of applications. Here is a sampling of areas where VR is being produced. All of which feature voiceover.

 

Directories & guides to stores – marine, grocery, catalogues

 

Games – entertainment

 

Tour guides – Museums, cities

 

Education – recreating historical civilizations, science microscopic-astronomic explorations

 

Real Estate – sales, proposals, development

 

Surgery – simulation

 

Physical therapy – simulations

 

Flight & aerospace simulators

 

Military – safely replicate dangerous training situations

 

Car – engineers test safety applications in VR setting & sales letting customers test drive vehicles

 

Sports – training to streaming

 

Mental health – primary method for treating PTSD and phobias

 

Awareness – National Autistic Society made film on what it feels like to be autistic

 

Geography – Google Expeditions for kids or Marriot’s Travel Brilliantly i.e. to Hawaii

 

Language skills – Imperial College in China for Mandarin

 

Woman wearing VR glasses pixel fragmentation Kim Handysides voiceover
Credit: Dude Solutions

VR is still new, but expanding rapidly. Even though gaming is still a huge arm of its production, it’s fascinating to watch its early evolution unfold. What VR productions have you been part of? What style voiceover did you use? Do you see another area it’s being used that I haven’t mentioned here?

 

 

Kim Handysides is a female voiceover artist who has played character or narrators in over 3 dozen virtual reality productions in the last year.

 

 

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 voiceover demo then, becomes your audition to audition. It needs to be good. It needs to reflect your skills and your range. It needs to be current and it needs to fit the current market and genre you’re targeting. 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. A commercial demo is also historically the type that agents expect above all others.

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? I produce demos for voiceover artists myself, so I am always interested in what the experts (aka the casting directors and agents) have to say about key criteria for an excellent voiceover demo.

 

Key qualities of a voice over demo

Except for audiobook demos, a voiceover 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 are 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 full-time 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.

A few years ago, I began directing demos (commercial, narration, explainer and eLearning voiceover demos) for a local production company. As I also coach voice acting privately and in groups, this branched into creating a demo production team of my own with a cream of the crop copywriter and an awesome audio engineer.

Make sure your demo reflects the kind of voice work 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.

 

How VOICEOVERVIEW is the Best CRM for my Voice Over Business

Voiceover Business

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 in either of them to be useful to me.

 

Kim Handysides VoiceoverEnter VOICEOVERVIEW (or VOV) the brainchild of two voiceover industry dynamos: Dani States and Joe Davis. This CRM was created by voice over people for voice over people. It took me a while to get in the habit of opening up the program every day and just leave it there, but doing so has helped me immensely in three areas:

 

Tracking Voice Job Progression

 

Juggling several jobs at once, plus auditions, plus pickups, plus the follow-up paperwork is sometimes too intense for my grey cells. My system of writing where I was in my jobs in a notebook was not foolproof, especially for jobs that extended over days or weeks, or for jobs that would come in just before I was about to close shop for the night. So, one of the features I like the most in VOV is the way you can flag your jobs either “Booked” “Delivered” “Invoiced” and “Paid. This has saved my bottom (and my bottom line) many times.

 

Invoicing & Collections

 

The tracking feature also helps me sort out who I’ve invoiced and who I haven’t. (I’m still not quite as organized as Dani who invoices a few days – not weeks – after delivering a job. It’s a goal to which I aspire). Then when payments come in, I have a way of checking that against who has paid and who I need to send reminders to. (yippee)

 

Tracking my Monthly Income

 

Kim Handysides Voiceover
Credit: William White, Unsplash

My third fav feature is seeing where I am in my monthly (and annual) financial goals. Interestingly, the software also shows where I am compared to the community at large. Personally, I prefer not to focus on that as I survive by being competitive with myself. However, it is an interesting reference to see if others are finding the month slow or booming. The VOV rationale for the comparative part of the chart is so when there’s a downturn we can check and feel comforted that we’re not alone.

 

Other Cool Components

 

I’ve found the VOV tracking of what genres I’m making money in and how much to be really insightful. Ask me where I made most of my money before this CRM and I would have said it’s about 30% commercials, 40% eLearning and 30% a mix of everything else. But seeing what I actually did the past six months gave me a different skew. I had two large jobs, a trilogy audiobook in the fall and a TV series narration in the winter that shifted those numbers around.

 

The Jobs Status By Month tab gives me a quick glance at my cash flow. Telling me how much I have in receivables, something my partner (i.e. husband) always asks before agreeing to purchases. Nudge, wink.

 

I can see my Top Ten Customers by how much I made with them and by the number of jobs we did together. I can also see where my jobs are coming from, whether through agents, online sources, marketing or referrals. From this I can also see what’s working in my marketing mix, what’s not and areas I might want to focus on next.

 

The Reminders section pops up suggestions for clients to contact that I haven’t heard from in a while, reminds me of unpaid jobs in case I skipped or missed something in my collections. I can also set custom reminders if I want to, for example, make sure I stay in touch with a client on a regular basis. You can also create custom tags to further differentiate your workflow.

 

Digging Deeper into VOV

 

Other features I know are useful, but I haven’t spent much time on (yet!) are the ability to create reports, better manage the contacts/clients I have through the Contact Listing capability (including inputting their social media info and other groovy stuff).

 

Credit: Stefan Cosma

My relationship with the Audition Tracking feature has been on again-off again. I audition goals for myself daily. Sometimes I track them, sometimes I don’t. This feature would help me track that. I guess I haven’t yet built that habit. But within that function is not only the possibility to track how many auditions you’re doing per day/week/month, but also what your hit rate is. I don’t know about you, but that interests me greatly. And I am promising myself to put more time into that so I can bring that elusive ratio into better focus.

 

As I grow more accustomed to the software, I’ve become open to learning more about what it can do for me. This year in January, I also began inputting my expenses into VOV with a view to helping me BIG time keep tracks of outgoing as well as ingoing money. Being in Canada, I submit quarterly sales taxes (GST & PST) to the federal & provincial governments. Something I have done myself since I began making enough money in my business to become a tax collector for the government. I anticipate VOV is going to make this much quicker.

 

My VOV Wish List

 

What would I like to see next? VOV has links with popular accounting software like Quickbooks, Freshbooks, Wave & PayPal. I haven’t yet sorted out how to integrate them when I reconcile my accounts. So, currently, I have to double the entries, one in Quick Books and one in the VOV CRM. But Dani has said that is coming. She also suggested trying exporting expenses from VOV & importing them into QB, which I haven’t tried yet, but will attempt.

 

Also to I’d love to have the option of entering the money in different currencies. Currently about 40% of my work is in Canadian, 55% in US and 5% in Euro. That may be wishing on a star though, because fluctuating exchange rates would probably make this too difficult to incorporate. But coming soon, they will add a link to an exchange rate site, so we can make calculations and then keep everything in one currency.

 

Kim Handysides Voiceover
Credit: Jude Beck

In all, I love this program and give it a giant thumbs up and a hearty endorsement. It’s helped me become more organized, waste less time searching for things, and has probably saved me at least $500 in collections that would have previously fallen off my radar. It’s helped me serve my customers better, because I rely on it to track the progression of my jobs instead of my (sometimes overwhelmed and occasionally forgetful) brain. It’s definitely a time saver during tax season. Plus, I get a kick out of seeing the bar charts and percentages. It helps motivate me and further solidify the notion that my business is a bonafide success.

 

How do you track your business? Have you used VOICEOVERVIEW? Or are you still stuck using an abacus & quill? Tell me your thoughts.

 

 

 

 

Voice Over Rates: How to Find the Razor Sharp Edge of Pricing your Professional

Voiceover Business

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:

Voice over Rates
Credit: Election Academy

 

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 scale,” etc. This is more common for experienced or in-demand actors.

 

Rates are a hot topic among artists who make their living with their vocal chords. Sometimes a contentious one. Whether those artists are union, non-union or both (i.e. Fi-core, for financial core – SAG AFTRA members who pay their union dues, but rescind voting rights to be able to work both sides of the lot).

Voice over Rates How to Find
Credit: Nick Maillet

Union folk walk the tight line between anxiously guarding hard-fought for rates and keeping rates competitive in the rising tide of non-union work. Being organized, they are also the loudest complainant that rates for the most strenuous types of voice work are the often the lowest. And, it’s true. Genres, like gaming, audiobook work and dubbing are all low-men on the totem pole. Long-form audiobook narration is a rewarding, but slogging marathon and dubbing while exhilarating, requires tight precision in timing and delivery. Gaming demands intense energy and characterization of life and death situations, where the stakes are always high and the pace to perform is wickedly fast. (At a studio where I often direct commercials, narration & demos, I was invited to audition as a gaming director. I was told my direction was spot on, excellent even, but the time I took to get the actor to deliver the performance was just too long for the gaming world.)

 

Non-Union

 

If you have not signed an agreement with the actor’s union(s), or your project is being produced virtually (with input from various contributors around the globe), then your project is non-union. Rates for non-union jobs generally depend on two variables: the project and the actor. More specifically, the length, use and intended/projected audience of your project, and the quality of the voice actor (and occasionally both how busy that actor is and the depth of your relationship).

 

Voice over Rates
Credit: Free in Society

Professional voice actors who work non-union jobs most often charge prices in line with union gigs. Most producers who are not Union signatory, still want great talent, they just don’t want to either be locked in to residuals and buy-outs on every production or have the flexibility to pick up both union and nonunion work themselves.

 

Use, Population & Time

 

How a voice performance is used is the most important identifier in determining price. Commercial advertising (broadcast, theatrical, web, etc.) commands the highest fee structure and is also based on population. How many eyes/ears will see/hear it? The sliding scale works from local, regional to national ads. And there are differences in price for different countries. A national ad in the USA has 5 times the potential viewership of a national ad in the UK and 10 times that of Canada. The prices reflect that. When you take international ads and audiences into account, international economies also come into play. The average weekly salary in Jamaica is 1/3 of an average American weekly wage, and people in India make less than 1/10 of what those in the US make.  Commercial rates may be negotiated as a lump sum or follow the Union model and be broken down into a rate for the session (the time during which the ad is recorded), the use (where it will be seen), population (by how many) and for how long (for 13 weeks, generally called “one cycle” or longer, up to a full buy-out – all uses for all perpetuity, in which case, you are looking at a big-ticket item).

 

There is also quite a difference between commercial and narration rates. Typically, we think of narration as corporate or business videos, and training or eLearning programs. Narration rates are often set in either 10 minute increments (which follows the format of the union rates) or by number of cents per word. For example, the lion’s share of voice artists will say any narration up to the first 10 minutes will be around $300 US (give or take $100) or approximately 0.20 per word (give or take 0.10). Rates for subsequent increments of 10 minutes are generally lower on a sliding scale to a fixed rate (eg. no lower than $100 per 10 mins).

 

Voice over rates
Credit: Professionally Speaking

Until you get the hang of it, it can be confusing. Whether you are a producer or a voice over artist. In fact, on our side of the negotiating table, the majority of vetted professional voice over artists discuss our rates amongst each other to keep our prices within what is fair to us, to producers and to respect what the market will bear.

The best way to sort out pricing is have an open discussion with the voice talent you want to hire. Just as you often have a budget range, in most cases, they will have a rate range. The ideal is when your budget range and their rate range find common ground.

If you’re looking for a female voice over artist and want to discuss rates for a project you’re casting, contact me. If I can be of any assistance, I’d love to help.

Voice Over Insights: A Behind the Scenes Look at Audio Description

Voiceover Business, Voiceover Styles

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 artistic choice, like reality TV, or the double narrators in Jane the Virgin. But no. “Bill put down his glass” and “Sally stamped out her cigarette” are actually post production narration tracks for the visually impaired.

 

Described Audio is different from narration. DA lists details that help one visualize the story, whereas a narrator is implicated in the story and actively gives an account of it.

 

My voice over friend Bev Standing has done Described Audio for Canadian TV networks. I asked about her experience with this type of narration.

 

Kim: Bev, is this work that you did from your home studio?

 

Bev: No, it was at AMI Accessible Media Inc in Toronto. I started volunteering there as a voice for “Described Video,” they called it.

Kim: How did you find them?

Bev: Through my agent.

Kim: Did you have to do anything special to prepare? Like, did they send you anything beforehand or was it more like ADR, you just show up and jump in?

Bev: The first time they asked me to audition, they sent a script, but it’s not like a normal script. It’s completely broken up by time down to the millisecond. With the words you’re going to hear on screen, then your words come in…then it skips to the next millisecond.

Kim: At this point, is it just the script or do you get a link to a video as well?

Bev: They send you the video to watch, so you can make your notes, when to be happy, scared, that sort of thing.

Kim: Should the DA Narrator have the same emotion as the on-screen characters?.

Bev: It’s storytelling, but you don’t have a lot to say. Like the line might be: “May 5th,” or, ”Walter Kronkite.” So, it’s hard to have an emotion with that.

Kim: But it’s not like a newscaster read?

Bev: Not exactly. You switch back and forth between factual and mood, and that switch it happens close together a lot.

Kim: Any other preparation?

Bev: If I had to prepare for like a 1 hour long documentary, I’d watch the doc, and check my words. If I didn’t know the pronunciation, I’d do my research. And I’d try to fit the words in ahead of time, to practice.

Kim: Are you directed?

Bev: When you go into record, there’s a producer/director and a sound tech in your headphones. a lot of the sound techs are visually impaired or blind. If you make a click or a mistake, they pick it out, they’re so tuned in, it’s amazing.

Kim: What was your favorite thing to describe?

Bev: I did 3 seasons of Matlock. That was fun to be part of a series, and it was more descriptive. Like, ”As Matlock walks down the steps of the court house.”

Kim: What else did you enjoy?

Bev: I liked the variety. There were PSAs commercials, very much in the story-telling vein. We did news, too. Alongside the visuals, they threw in facts at the same time.

Kim: Technically, is it like dubbing? Where there’s a white stripe or a rhythm band along with your script written out?

Bev: Yeah, they roll the video with the time code on top. If you have an in-cue at 6:16, you jump in at 6:16.

Kim: How long were your sessions? And what kind of content would you record in a typical session?

Bev: They were three-hour sessions. We might do one or two hour long shows in one hour. If we were recording PSAs, they might line up ten of those in a row.  It’s very, very different from anything else I’ve ever done. And you never know what they’re going to send you.

Kim: Is it fun?

Bev:  It is fun – a little nerve wracking – but the sound guys are phenomenal, they can adjust you. It comes out sounding great.

 

Bev Standing is a talented voice over actor with a heart big enough and warm enough to melt the polar ice caps. Kim Handysides (moi) also hails from the Great White North & (like Bev) traffics her own voice for a living.

My List of 7 Behind the Scenes Insights in VR Narration

My Voiceovers, Voiceover Business

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.

Virtual Reality Voice over Narrator

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, two company tours to live on home websites, a grocery store application and a watch-and-learn surgery, as well as a number of conference booths and other business videos. I expect/hope to do 50 VR narrations next year. I, and others working in the medium have come up with sharable insights to think about when approaching VR and its voice over narration. Here is my list of 7 of these:

 

  1. From Outside In to Inside Out

The medium is different than a movie, video game or theatrical production, but has things in common with all of those. So says Rafael Pavon, creative director at Future Lighthouse. Virtual Reality has the capacity to immerse you more fully into the story, feel moments more intensely, be closer to the characters involved. You are no longer outside, looking in. You are inside.

 

  1. Empathy

VR makes the participant feel things at a deeper level. If you’ve ever laughed, teared up or shouted in reaction to a movie, you’ve displayed your EQ of empathy for other people. 360 immersion into experiencing other realities, will sharpen that aspect, making the participant feel what it would be like to be in places they otherwise would never be able to be. This not only requires acceptance – the saying yes so often purported in improvisation work actors undertake– but it requires respect for your audience.

 

  1. Special POV

To date, the point of view VR writers have fashioned their stories around are from privileged observer, no one sees you, and you cannot change anything. You can be an observer who can change things. You can also be a character without impact or even a character with impact. With each special point of view an adjustment in approach is required of the actor or narrator. In essence, it is getting closer and closer to embodying the participant themselves.

 

  1. Vulnerability

The fall of the fourth wall in VR makes users vulnerable in ways that are unprecedented. With VR, we step beyond empathizing with a character who acts as our representative in the world – we become characters inhabiting the space. Meeting this requires vulnerability on the part of the actor or narrator, as well. Astrid Kahmke of the Bavarian Film Center says virtual reality involves a shift from time-based narration of beginning-middle-end storytelling to spatial narration. It’s not storytelling, per se, it’s world-building. It’s not narrating, it’s creating. It’s not linear, it’s nonlinear.

 

  1. Beyond suspending Disbelief

Immersive media causes a strong visceral reaction and cognitive belief in what is experienced. Belief puts the real into virtual reality. Books, theatrical productions, movies, all of these require us to enter a complicit contract. One where we must suspend our disbelief: that what we are reading/hearing/watching is real, when we know in fact it is not. VR gives our sensory input a push off the deep end. We perceive the unreal to be real. The power of the resulting visceral reactions and cognitive belief is profound.

 

  1. First to market opportunities

Companies and institutions that capitalize on virtual reality’s novelty and use it on their websites, in learning opportunities and other forms of engagement, provide their customers/users a more intense experience than traditional media, making them and their brand more memorable.

 

  1. Where the Voices and Narrator Sit

To paraphrase Pink Floyd, in Virtual Reality, the narrator is in my head. There is little distance in the case of characters and no distance between you as the narrator and the user. As such, your voice over performance needs to be better than best. Authentic, genuine, real, natural. Soft, I have found. You’re the angel sitting on the shoulder, the little bird who told them. More than any other medium, your facility in making the written word sound like your very own will ensure you continued voice work in VR.

What have your experiences been in virtual reality?

 

Though most days, Kim Handysides is found narrating from within a 4×6 padded cell, her virtual reality today is from the cold pristine Canadian mountains, on the edge of a lake with sifted snow dusting the ground and a pale blue sky overhead.