Thank Goodness for Voiceover!

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I’m sure many of you are actors in addition to being voice over talent. The two can go hand in hand. Your acting abilities affect your voiceover work by helping you to «get into character» for a 30 or 60 second radio or television commercial, vignettes for e-learning or corporate narrations, and as the voice of authority or guy or gal next door in narrations of all kinds. Have you ever thought of how your experience with voiceover work can actually help your acting – especially, your audition skills?

You have to be a great reader to do voiceover work, especially, long form narration. You’re constantly «reading ahead» in order to keep from being caught off guard as to where that sentence is actually going. You don’t usually have time to study your script and would never have time to memorize it in order to «make it your own.» At most, you may just have time at the beginning of a session to quickly read through, get a sense of who you are – with a little help from your director, if you’re lucky – and take off! Yes, you can stop or just restart if you make a mistake while recording, but you have to maintain your character, your momentum, and stay present in the scene.

In the best case (and most cases) with on camera auditioning for film, you are given a side or sides to prepare for an audition and access to the whole script if you are very lucky! You usually have at least some time to prepare your character’s point of view, relationships, intentions, etc. However, often times, you might be given another scene to read or even another character to read during an audition which cuts down dramatically on the time you have to prepare. In these cases, your voice over experience of creating «instant characters» can help immensely. As a voiceover talent, your ability to read unfamiliar material and make sense of it, or even paraphrase it almost immediately can make a huge difference between floundering and taking charge in an audition.

Consider this scenario: You’ve received a call from your agent with an audition for a film. You are given the name of your character and the sides (the scenes) you are to prepare. You read everything carefully, prepare your character and do all of your homework. Yet, when you walk into the audition room with your prepared scene or scenes, the director suddenly decides that he doesn’t want to hear those. He wants you to read a completely different scene as a completely different character. And, even though you should be given time to go back out and prepare this scene, there is no time, and he wants you to do it on the spot. You have two choices: refuse to work under those circumstances (within your rights) or just go for it (which most actors would do rather than cause a problem). Because you’re used to creating characters in your voiceover work when receiving scripts at sessions without time to prepare, you are able to give a very cold reading, with a credible character, and even manage to look up from the script from time to time so that your eyes can be seen on the video that they’re taking of your audition! These are not ideal circumstances for an audition, but strange, unexpected things often happen in auditions even when dealing with directors and casting directors who should know better. At times like these, your skills in the world of voiceover may be your saving grace in on camera acting giving you another reason to say, «Thank goodness for voiceover!»

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Source by Melanie Haynes