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 ...
Tag Archive for: narrator
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...
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 ...
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 ...
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 specific...
Applications for voice work are many and multiplying and every few months I’m delighted to discover another avenue within my field. A couple of months ago, I worked on a pitch for a large Audio Description project. You might have accidentally come across Described Audio, Described Video or Audio Description in your TV travels. It’s that separate narration track that describes what’s happening on screen during the natural pauses in the dialogue. I admit the first time I came a...
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. Th...
There are few things I love more in life than story. Nature, maybe. Water, but that’s a subset of nature. People aren’t things…well, not generally anyway. But the point of this big reveal into story at the head of my behind the scenes insights on audiobook narration is that the tales we tell and how we tell them, whether through aural or oral tradition, wrapped in celluloid, tramped across boards or lining the pages or screens of books has been my happy obsession for decades. Prep ...
Oh, the honeyed gravitas. Languid and relaxed. Soothing and warm. There’s that dominant, strong male sound, with a nice low pitch, but it’s grounded and non-threatening. When Morgan Freeman does voiceover you feel like you’re in good hands, er…tones. We can’t get enough. And neither can our clients. Ever wondered why? A STUDY Casey Klofstad did. He’s an associate professor of political science at the University of Miami. A year or so ago he conducted a study involving politica...
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 dra...
