Tips

 (For those not too familiar working with the best)

Don’t get too personal; your taste might not be everyone’s. A voice with character is memorable and desirable, even better if no one knows who he or she is. You are looking for end product credibility, not necessarily a ‘well known’ name or recognized voice for the sake of it.

If you know your stuff, it will be apparent to a professional in less than 10 seconds into the session, if you don’t, don’t pretend, they know! Be good with the voice, they are there to please and professionals will go out of their way to make sure you have what you want.  They can help in most cases too, if you are not sure of the delivery yourself.  Some can initially be a little dubious about taking direction.  That is because ‘they don’t trust you until you prove otherwise’.  This is often the difference between actors doing voice overs and voice overs acting.  The latter can be easier to work with.  Having said that, if you know your stuff, the talent loves and wants your experience.

Listen to demos, note the delivery, if you think you heard something in line with what you envisaged, they will probably be able to do again and again for you.

Heavy accents are fun, but really a waste of time on serious commercials.  You will find however, that most of our voices can accurately mimic just about any accent and do it much better than the real thing.  Remember, more than three quarters of the world wouldn’t know the difference between an American Accent and a British, particularly regional dialects.  This applies to any language.  Put a German and a French Man together, speaking English, neither recognizes that each has an accent. Besides, watch pronunciations, regional dialects especially. The listener/public will focus on the dialect or accent rather than what is being read or indeed the product. What is your target market?  If outside of the UK for example, there would be nothing wrong with a lovely clear, Scottish lilt.  To most, it would sound general English. All this so-called, get real to the people accents and aggressive deliveries, we so frequently hear on local radio and national TV in Britain, is just that, crass!  Amateurs, who think they know everything, do it!  The public hears it as bad!  They won’t be told and the client is more often than not so pleased to be hearing their name broadcast they too are white washed by the hype. Accents and unclear delivery should be left to comical scripts or perhaps well delivered endorsements.

Many so-called copywriters endlessly come up with conversation scripts. Why we don’t know, because they are just naff and carry no credibility whatsoever, but we hear so many, particularly financial commercials for some reason. Who wants to listen to someone else’s conversation, often badly acted,  coming out your radio or TV, plus the content is always so unbelievable, unless it is comedy.  Radio in particular is a voice to ear medium; it should be direct, one to one in most cases. Another big mistake is the use of ‘us’, ‘we’ or ‘our’ in scripts.  Most professionals will decline the offer of the job, simply because they are effectively endorsing the product and besides, the voice does NOT work for that company.  Again, it is down to credibility, so avoid at all costs the use of possessive pronouns (Unless as stated; comedy for example).