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Don't be fooled, voice acting takes work. VO is more than just reading words on a page in your walk-in closet. It's not an easy job you can just master after watching a series of tutorials. It takes practice, hard work, and dedication.
You know what? Voice acting is hard. Yeah, it really is. There's a lot of reasons for that. There are so many people to think we're just talking into microphones and that is super simple. But if you think about what we actually have to do...
We have to take a piece of paper and read the copy that's on the paper, read those words, and make it sound organic. Make it sound like we just thought of it and it's coming out of our mouths all-natural and organic. The issue with that is that traditionally when we read, we read words from left to right and it's enough for us to think about the words and sound them out from left to right. But now you've got to actually process those words and understand what is the context of what you're saying. What's the emotion, what's the point of your words, and you have to do that kind of instantaneously while you're looking at those words. So there's a lot of stuff that's happening up here in the noggin and a lot of things that you're thinking about.
It's a little bit different than let's say acting on stage because acting on stage we can memorize our words and then we have all the time in the world to actually see the audience make a connection with them. On stage, you can also have an emotion tied to that. However, with voiceover we're behind the mic, it's an imaginary audience and so we have to make up that scene. So that's on top of everything else. We are making up a scene we're imagining that we're talking to somebody and we're actually having to have a conversation without actually having a physical person or a physical audience out there. We can't actually look out and kind of bounce those ideas off or bounce that feeling that emotion.
So we've got an awful lot of stuff that we're doing when we are just reading copy and we're voicing so it's a whole lot more than just using your voice. So yeah, voice acting is hard and anybody trying to tell do you anything different is probably trying to sell you something.
Much love and Keep on rockin' your biz!
XOXO,
Anne
About the Author: Anne Ganguzza is a full-time voice talent and award-winning director and producer who works with students to develop their voice over and business skills - including VO demo training and production. She specializes in Conversational Commercial and Narration styles, including Corporate, E-Learning, Technology, Healthcare - Medical, Telephony, and On-Hold. Located in Orange County, CA, Anne offers private coaching and mentoring services to students in person and via Skype, ipDTL or Zoom.