story

3 Ways Storytelling is King in Voiceover for Ads and 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?

7 Hot Tips on How to Get Better as a Voice Actor

Voiceover Coaching

Roasting marshmallows Kim Handysides Voiceover — Source: Leon Contreras

Listening to Drake with my daughter Lisa as we drive on the 401 through north Toronto ticking off To Do and Don’t Forget Lists before I dive full on into family vacation mode…I’m struck by this thought: I get at least one call or email a day from people who seek advice on how to become better voice actors. And there’s quite a lot of advice I pass out that is similar. So, before I chill out on the beach, dominate in family games of dominoes (I hope), and spend evenings singing tunes around the campfire, here are a lucky number seven hot tips for voiceover artists to roast their marshmallows over.

1.Listen

As actors who work with our voices, the wellspring from which we draw is aural. It’s the speech patterns, lyricism, and rhythm of other people. Breathy speech, tight lipped or clipped phrases. Non-verbal sounds. Animal sounds. Inanimate objects. Musical instruments. So listen to the world around you. Last week among all sorts of human roles, I played a wind chime, a plastic flamingo and a frog. I am constantly fascinated with sound and daily I consciously bank aural treasure in my actor tool kit.

2.Be Mindful of Voiceover Trends

Imagine if theatre and film actors still sounded like those indelibly captured on celluloid in the 1940s and 1950s. We wouldn’t find that acceptable at all. The greatest demand for actors today is that audiences and directors want dialogue to sound as natural as it does whether on stage in film, television or the web. By and large, I believe we do achieve that. But it takes an enormous amount of skill to be authentically modern and yet theatrically clear.

3.Research Voiceover and Read

Books, blogs, podcasts, you tube videos. There’s a gold mine of info on whatever is lacking in your sound chain, craft, marketing, or life-work balance needs. Yeah, read the top sellers on Amazon if you want, but read for your art too. Personally my reading ration is 3 books that help me in my job somehow to one for pleasure. Ask colleagues for suggestions. What’s inspired them recently? My beach-ready iPad is currently full of marketing books and a couple romance novels written by my dear friend Sarah Hegger.

4.Keep up your Voiceover Training

Voice training involves relaxation, posture, breath, muscular support, articulation, tone, resonance, vibration, tune, listening, rhythm, movement of the body, thought, storytelling, the study of language, singing, dialects, phonetics, speech and sight reading. The texts we look at are varied: poetry, prose, political speeches, representative language and plays from every era. Acting is at the heart of what we do. In all technical work there can be imagination and artistic purpose, and when a text is involved or a story, it is the actor’s job to bring the situation, historical period, relationships, given circumstances, intentions etc, to the work. As in life, emotions generally come from thoughts, and the study of voice may move from the simplest technical exercises to the most complex ideas and emotional discoveries. The actor’s body and posture may be the focus one moment, and an intellectual or philosophical idea in the writing may be in focus the next.

5.Practice, practice , practice…Perfectly

Hands on piano Kim Handysides Voiceover — Source: Joao Silas

Lisa, my road trip & voiceover daughter buddy, took piano lessons from the age of six from Elizabeth Neufeld, one of the best teachers in Montreal. Elizabeth would tell her for every time she played a note wrong she had to play the note right twice as many times to correct it. This is a great philosophy to adopt. Especially if you are working on an accent, a sound-alike or a piece of comedy. Practice (as) perfectly (as you can), or you will have to work even harder to undo mistakes you ingrain. Ever talk to someone who went through accent reduction? That’s a tough row to hoe.

6.Use your own brain

Or more accurately, your own ideas. Your own observations, mixed with your great instrument (voice), colored and flavored with your experiences, ideas and emotional responses. You can draw media and materials from others, but there is NO one like you and no one will tell the story (script) like you will. Be confidently you.

7.Be discerning. (i.e. call out the B.S.)

There is bull poopy out there. Some of it may try to take your faith and your money. Don’t let that fact get you down. Expect it. And don’t get stuck in it. Seriously. It’s everywhere. My dear departed Dad used to expound about the importance of a good B.S. detector. Find yours. Sharpen it. Use it.

Kim Handysides loves Dachshunds, the great outdoors & awesome people (you are definitely on that list). When not on a beach or climbing a mountain, she spends can be found in her 4-6 padded cell (aka Whisperroom) mainlining the message between sender & receiver.

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.

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.

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.

514-803-2296

kim@kimhandysidesvoiceover.com