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8 Tips for Directing Voice Over Talent – What You Can Do BEFORE the Session

For Voice Over Clients

8 Tips for Directing Voice Over Talent

Have you ever felt “over your head” in a VO session while trying to direct voice over talent? Or perhaps you’ve underwhelmed with the final recording from your selected talent, even though you thought you gave them proper direction.

Getting exactly what you want from a voice over performance starts even before your VO talent sits down at the microphone. Here are a few easy things you can do before you get into the session that will help to guide you and your voice talent to the best possible end result.

Experienced voice over talent may not require much directing at all, although it never hurts to cover your bases to ensure your end result is exactly what you’re looking for. Even with more than 20 years in the industry, I typically prefer to do a phone patch with new clients (and repeat clients when they have requests that are outside the norm), just to make sure we’re both on the same page. And getting on that page is easy when clients provide some essential information before the session.

As a bonus, use this one-page checklist to help you remember everything mentioned in this post.

Before Directing Voice Over Talent, Provide This Info

1. Identify the Talent’s Role: Is your talent playing the bold announcer? The knowledgeable educator? The gentle best friend? Let them know the role the voice is playing. Experienced voice over actors will create their own personal back story to get into that role and execute it with conviction.

2. Give a Clear Rundown on Your Audience: What will the VO be used for? Where will it be played? Who are we talking to?  Although these might seem obvious to you, they may not be obvious to the voice over talent. Certainly, announcing speakers at a conference of toy manufacturers would have a different feel versus narrating a video for buyers of a luxury car.  These questions also play a part in pricing, so they need to be discussed before the session and even before the price is set. Share specific details about your target audience to ensure the talent knows to whom he or she is speaking.

3. Describe Your Desired Sound: Use highly specific descriptive words to indicate how you want a script to sound. Good choices are words like warm, friendly, concerned, emotionless, comic, serious, quirky, hip, brassy, sassy, movie-trailer big. Not-so-good choices are words like nice, flat, conversational. These tend to be much too general and open to many differing interpretations.

Another ideal way to dial in on what you want your script to sound like is to fill in three blanks with one-word answers:

This read should sound ____ (ex: uplifting).8 Tips for Directing Voice Over Talent Before the Session
This read should not sound ____ (ex: serious).
The listener should feel ___ (ex: inspired).

4. Cite Some Specific Examples: Review the voice over talent’s audio and video portfolio so you can reference a specific voice over demo or sample that your talent has already created. Or, you could provide a link to an audio or video of someone else who has the desired sound. I get scripts sent to me all the time that have minimal direction but reference a particular demo on my website for the vocal delivery they want. That always makes it very easy for me to know exactly how to nail their desired delivery.

5. Video, Slide Show or Music: It helps immensely when the talent knows the visuals and music that will be paired with his or her voice. If a picture is worth 1,000 words, then a video is worth 100,000 words and the music is worth about 50,000 (give or take a thousand). I’ve even recorded VO with the background music in my headset, to get me in the proper mood during the session. It’s a great trick, if you can make that available to your chosen talent before or during the session.

6. Provide a Script That’s Really Ready: Read your script out loud, noting any tricky words, uncommon names or desired pronunciations. Phonetic spelling is good, and showing rhymes for a specific word or syllable is even better. You might even catch grammatical errors, which will save time during the session. Outline direction for:

  • Numbers, including phone numbers (5500 = five-five-zero-zero OR fifty-five hundred OR five-five-oh-oh)?
  • Words with multiple pronunciations, such as “either” or “neither”
  • Pronunciation of people’s names if the name is difficult, unusual or strays from typical pronunciation
  • Unfamiliar words, foreign phrases or other items that could benefit from clarification

Get additional tips for readying your script from my blog on Voice Over Mistakes to Avoid.

7. Be Clear on Timing Specs: If the voice track needs to be timed to a video or fit a specific timeframe, make sure you give the talent a head’s up in advance. Most pros work with stopwatch in hand and are extremely aware of how to fit copy into the desired timeframe. But also, make sure that the copy can fit into the timeline.  It can be frustrating to talent when they get a :30 spot, that’s way over-written.  Do your best to provide an accurately timed script.

8. Use Brackets for Direction: If certain parts of the script require voice over acting moments, use brackets to outline specific emotions and tones to hit at those points. Remember to keep those emotions and tones very specific, avoiding the too-general terms like “nice” or “conversational.” Try terms like “happily surprised,” “shocked and angry” or “unemotional and stoic” instead.

Regardless of the type of direction you’re providing, it’s important to be clear, specific and concise. Ambiguity, contradictions or way too much direction can only lead to frustration and confusion on both sides of the fence. Our goal as voice-over actors is to deliver the best possible performance in the shortest amount of time.

Proper direction ensures that “best performance” happens in every session!

Download: “The Voice Over Talent Director’s Checklist”

Be sure to also read Part 1 of this series: “How to Get the Best Voice Over Talent Performance: Choosing Talent“

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Filed Under: For Voice Over Clients Tagged With: voice over talent

Reader Interactions

Comments

  1. DPN Talent says

    February 17, 2021 at 12:27 am

    Nice blog, It is more valuable information. If you have any query you can visit our website today!

    Reply
  2. sup vastav says

    September 12, 2020 at 11:45 am

    I really like your blog presentation. It is informative too, at the same time. I have gone through a few of the blog links which you have shared. This has helped in clarifying some of my doubts.

    Reply
  3. Neha Rastogi says

    May 2, 2019 at 4:59 am

    Good post!! thanks for updating this information! Keep posting with more such blog!

    Reply
  4. Debbie Grattan says

    February 14, 2019 at 9:14 am

    Hi Greg,
    Thanks for reading and commenting! You’ll have to do some searching to find more on directing animation and the question you mentioned. That’s not really in my wheelhouse, and I’m not sure exactly where one would go to study that in depth. I expect there are good programs and professionals in the business out there you could talk to, just not sure where or how to find them. I personally don’t do a whole lot of animation VO so I’m not in a lot of contact with those types of directors. Good luck!

    Reply
  5. Greg says

    February 14, 2019 at 9:04 am

    Hi Debbie,

    Is there a specific read found online that outlines in detail and clearly all one needs to consider taking on the task of a voice over director for an animated series? Your points are gold and much appreciated. I’m just looking for more details and points; kind of a how, as a VO director runs the show best from the point of accepting employment and all in between until the last episode is in the can.

    G

    Reply
  6. Tina Maloney says

    May 14, 2015 at 4:57 pm

    Very helpful tips! If every producer was this prepared for sessions they would surely go much much smoother and produce a better product…as well as making life much easier on the talent.

    Reply
    • Debbie Grattan says

      May 14, 2015 at 5:03 pm

      Tina – with your experience in the biz, I appreciate you sharing your perspective. As you point out, the idea is if everyone is well prepared, it makes the whole thing fun, and the end product that much better. Thanks for chiming in!

      Reply
  7. Debby Barnes says

    May 14, 2015 at 4:41 pm

    What an informative, crystal-clear and uber helpful outline this is, Debbie. It’s a real press print! 🙂

    Reply
    • Debbie Grattan says

      May 14, 2015 at 4:56 pm

      Debby – you are too kind. I hope it’s helpful for talent and producers alike! If we all work together, the product will benefit.

      Reply

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Debbie Grattan is a top-rated professional female voice over talent with more than 22 years of experience delivering voice over services worldwide. She regularly records commercial voice overs for radio and tv as well as infomercial voice overs and direct response marketing for children’s toys, health, fitness and beauty products. Other specialties include female narration voice overs for corporate narration, web videos, tutorials, explainer videos and technical medical narration. Debbie also provides phone-related voice over services including phone prompts, messages-on-hold and outbound phone marketing for companies in the United States and Canada.

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