- How to find and use scripts.
- Show them all of your abilities.
- Tricks of the trade.
- Recording in home is usually the best long-term option.
1. The Script
Practice with real commercial scripts, because companies want to hear that. You can choose scripts for commercials, narration, telephony, videogames, etc.
Places to find voice over scripts:
- The website Edge Studio is a great script source.
- Transcribe a commercial or some narration you really like.
- Look for PSAs from real organizations.
You want to demonstrate variety. So pick scripts that will show off different styles and different abilities of your voice. You want to have different tones, like humor, drama, or a character voice.
Most people have a commercial demo and a narration demo. The commercial demo has more of a range. For narration it’s just straight-narration, even though are also different styles, like storybook or medical.
Narration includes things like narrating a training module for doctors that might be full of medical terminology or narrating a children’s story. Unlike commercials, narration is usually for information or entertainment and does not “sell” anything.
2. Make It Professional
I record a 30-60 second piece, and put the best 10 seconds on the reel, which is a total of three to five minutes. Along with each ten-second piece you’ll also want some music and sound effects. You want it to sound professional.
You can find good royalty-free music and sound effects online: (Shockwave-Sound.com has great stuff, and it’s affordable.)
If you're going to edit your demo yourself, you'll need basic audio editing software.
- Studio for Mac costs only $30.
- Audacity is available as freeware.
- Do a search for “free digital audio editors” and you’ll see a lot of good choices.
You just need something that allows multiple tracks. Learn to use it then edit your demo to sound professional.
If you don’t want to edit the reel, you can find an audio engineer who will do it. You can find one at a local recording studio or through professional audio organizations like AES. If you know any musicians, ask them for help because they’re often well-versed in sound recording. An audio engineer costs $50-150 an hour. Be efficient with your time: have your decisions made before the editing session, so that you know what music you want under each VO clip and where to put the sound effects.
3. Mix It Up
In the reel, they may hear this single voice of yours and think, “Ahh, perfect.” In your first three clips what they want might not be there, but in your 5th or 6th clip they may find it and start to think you can be the voice for them. You never know the style they want, so you should include as much variety as possible so they can fully appreciate your voice.
Variety - show a range of vocal ability, which can include (not in any order):
- A solid narration piece (documentary scripts work well).
- A commercial/promotion piece with a “conversational” tone.
- A character voice with good accent and attitude (finding the right script is key).
- A dramatic script with serious tone (domestic abuse PSA).
- A humorous script with comedic tone (funny commercial - good to end the demo with it if it gets a laugh).
- Optional: Dialogue/Multi-voice. (If you do this, it’s best to do a script with someone of the opposite gender so that your voice is distinct from the other. Some voice artists do not put any other voices on their demo at all, but it’s your choice.)
4. Voice Over Demos Take Time
If you’re doing it on your own, I would say break it up into a couple sessions so your voice won’t get tired. If you’ve hired an audio engineer, get it all done in one session so you won’t have to pay as much!
It takes a couple of sessions to choose which are the best clips and to decide the music and sound effects. It can take a few hours to record and then several more hours for editing and publishing.
5. Helpful Tips
Choose ten different scripts, and read them with different emotions, pacing, and styles. One rule of thumb: the distance from your thumb to your pinky is a good distance to hold the microphone.
When you make p or s sounds, they make a little poof air and the mike hears it. In order to avoid those you should face the microphone and turn your head just a little bit so you’re not blowing on it.
6. Time To Record:
A.) At Home Recording
If you have your own home studio, you can do more work. And you can get really good, at-home digital audio recording nowadays. Half of voiceover artists have their own studio.
Equipment:
- Microphone ($400-500) A condenser microphone is usually the best: most common and affordable.
- A mixing board ($200-400) There is the Mbox, Mackie 140, and I have a Behringer. You only really need one channel for output.
- Cable headphones ($25-75).
- Mike stand ($25-75).
Altogether it’s under a thousand dollars. You could probably do it under a $100 for simple audition. You can buy these at any music store. There are also retailers, and production suppliers online, like B&H Photo Video.
Software:
Options:
- Sound Studio (cheap and good)
- Audacity (free)
- Adobe Audition
- ProTools (high-end and expensive)
You don’t really need ProTools, you just need really basic software like Adobe Audition. Most programs will show you all the highs and the lows and the pauses of your voice. You start to see patterns, i.e. you see at the end of every sentence you inflect downwards.
Finding A Sound Booth:You can build an audio booth, or an isolation booth. However, most pieces are probably recorded in that voice talent’s closet, so you don’t really need to worry about it: they can be quite expensive.
B.) In Studio Recording
You can hire a demo producer, but you should listen to previous work. Some places may just slap something together, others may help train you. You have to be careful because a lot of places really overcharge. I usually go for around $100/hr. BAVC Bay Area Video Coalition is pretty good and reasonably priced.
One plus is that you know you’re going to get high quality audio—it’s going to sound really good. You can also form an ongoing relationship with a studio, so that it’s agreed you’ll bring all your work there and there might be reduced costs. But generally, if you can do it at home, do it.
