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performance

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

 

Kim Handysides VoiceoverPerformance 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? 

 

 

 

Filed Under: Voiceover Business, Voiceover Styles Tagged With: actor, cold read, commercial, commercial session, commercial work, director, performance, sound studio, studio, voiceover

My Fresh Insights Behind the Scenes in Audiobook Narration

My Voiceovers, Voiceover Styles

Audiobook Narration Kim Handysides
(Shutterstock)

There are few things I love more in life than story. Nature, maybe. Water, but that’s a subset of nature. People aren’t things…well, not generally anyway. But the point of this big reveal into story at the head of my behind the scenes insights on audiobook narration is that the tales we tell and how we tell them, whether through aural or oral tradition, wrapped in celluloid, tramped across boards or lining the pages or screens of books has been my happy obsession for decades.

 

Prep and Lead In

 

So with a lifetime drenched in a study of story, how it’s written and performed it was with great joy I sauntered into my first audiobook trilogy this month. A fictional biography to be recorded in a local studio over the next few weeks. I poured over (absorbed, really) the first book on Labour Day weekend and we began the following Wednesday.

 

Day 1 Oh my gosh, what fun! Breathing life into the characters, massaging vocal choices into form, hearing the story unfold like a film through the instrument of my chosen art. I really, really like this. The book is so lovely. So wonderfully spun. I must do it justice. I will. I am so exhausted after today’s session. You expend a different kind of performance energy. I have to take a nap. Two hours later – whew – that’s better. Now to the booth. A job came through while I was away. I need to clear it off my plate so I can concentrate on tomorrow’s work.

 

Day 2 Oh, hurray. The studio sent the first chapter to the author yesterday. She had a couple of notes, but overall, liked it very much. Huzzah! Still loving this process, but I’m not happy with my unfinished to finished read rate. (That is how many hours it takes to complete one edited, “finished” hour) When I quoted my rate for the trilogy, I assumed that I could apply my very tight read ratio to an audiobook read. But I seem to be taking an inordinate amount of time. Only 36 pages in almost 5 hours! Wait a minute. Hmm. Ok. There are 720 on an average page in this format. That’s 26K. 9000 words in an hour. So, almost 3 finished hours. I guess that’s not bad. I’m exhausted again. I need another nap. I never nap!

 

Kim Handysides Audio Book Narration
(Big Think)

Day 3 Pearl Hewitt, an audiobook narrator friend of mine messaged me I should not worry about the read rate. I am reading at an respectable rate. Darn my ego. Making me think my skill at speed was transferable to this medium. Reading news, narration and eLearning even for a couple of decades is not the same as reading an audiobook. This adjustment requires time. Time to world build. Time to mete out the appropriate emotional weight and pause. Plus, I am going back and forth in French and English. Many French names in an English book. Plus, there are so many characters.  I feel duly shamed. I am going to complete this at more like a 2:1 or maybe even a 3:1 rate. This brings my pay per hour down. I care, but I also don’t care. I am happy to be on this project.

 

Day 4 A crazy busy weekend. I worked up a few more voices for upcoming main characters. I need to anchor phrases and lock them into place. Johan, the sound engineer is making samples for me to refer to when I forget how this or that one sounded. Smart!

 

Day 5 What a great day! I am seriously loving this book. Enjoying the characters SO much and feeling of nailing their voice and how they would deliver a line is invigorating. I pushed hard to summon the necessary energy and so was dismayed at the end to discover we’d only gotten through about 34 pages (21K words) in almost 5 hours. I had 56 minutes (finished) of medical eLearning to record later in the afternoon and was again distressed when I didn’t read as smoothly or quickly as I normally would. And took a 2:1 read ratio on text I would normally chew off at a rate of 1.3:1 when fresh in the morning. I guess I’ll chalk that up to fatigue.

 

Kim Handysides Audio Book Narration
(Premium Beat)

Day 6 I’m still unsettled about my read ratio. I am going to convert this pdf into a word doc. I want to try a few new things. Changing the font to something I’m more used to working in (like Calibri) and at a size of 14. I’m going to do something Hilary Huber –at least I think it was Hilary- told me to do. Use highlighters in different colors for various characters.

 

Day 7 A fresh insight today: it’s not about how long the audiobook takes. It’s about the performance. The tension of pushing to get a certain amount of word done per day threatens to take me away from delivering my best performance. Or at least enjoying that process. My ears were sore at the end of today’s session. I wonder if I should bring in my own headphones. We used to do that when I worked in radio. The station headphones got seriously mangled and then there was hygiene.

 

Day 8 Today I figured out that Audiobook Narration is like Theatre in the voiceover world. Most actors love theatre. Above film and television. Above voice work. It’s immediate. Instantaneous. The connection with a live audience is exhilarating. The work is intense and profound. It pays the least (except for Broadway) and often demands the most. In voice acting, gaming and dubbing also require energy and intensity, both highly technical and exacting and ironically and unfortunately on the lower end of the pay grade. The marathon that is a good fiction audiobook performance is similar, albeit less technical in terms of dubbing and less exhausting in terms of sustained gaming energy requirements. A book is this beautiful play that one gets to act out solo, but embodying many characters, including the narrator. Sorting and accessing all those voices, anchoring and locking them in place is the technical aspect. Alex, another audio engineer I’m working with, created a grid of voice samples for quick access today. I also spoke with Serge about perhaps recording remotely with my home studio and using Source Connect or an ISDN bridge. I could save parking fees ($15/day x 10 days) and 90 minutes on the road. That would free up a studio for them to rent out as well. We will experiment with this between book 1 and 2. Not a good idea to change studios/mics etc., in the midst of a recording. Ears ached at the end of today’s session again. Must remember to bring in my own headphones on Monday.

 

Kim Handysides Audio Book Narration
(Squarespace)

Day 9 Today’s session went by so fast! Am I perhaps getting the hang of it? Sliding into the characters more easily? Making the adjustment from one to another with fluidity? I am very conscious of helping to unfold the story in the best way possible. Imbuing the characters with light and life as well as maintaining variety, especially in scenes where five or more converse. Only fifteen pages left for tomorrow’s session and then we wrap. I am sad it’s coming to a close. Yes, this is the theatre of voice work.

 

Day 10 Ok. The voice over narration marathon is over. The book is complete. I feel good. By the end of this intense run I am happy with my performance and understand and have such a greater respect for the energy and creativity required to perform a book. And I am thrilled this is a trilogy. Because I don’t think I got enough of the experience. I definitely still enjoy shorter voice projects. Simply because of all the reasons I’ve always loved them: variety, the challenge of working well within the limitations of a construct and frequency. But the audiobook? Ha. This is a dance I might just become addicted to.

 

Need a narrator for your audiobook? Or want to talk story? Drop me a note in the comments & let’s chat.

 

Filed Under: My Voiceovers, Voiceover Styles Tagged With: actor, audio, audiobook, author, character, delivery, eLearning, narration, narration marathon, narrator, natural, performance, read rate, story, voice actor, voiceover, voiceover talent

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