https://youtube.com/shorts/HADWh0ohAgc?feature=share What does it mean to be happy? If I ask that question to 10 different people, I will get 10 different nuanced answers. So when I'm told that I need to smile and be happy in my performance, there's a good chance my interpretation and your vision aren't going to be completely aligned. First of all, happiness is a very superficial way of describing a state of being. You may be happy for different reasons: 1. You just got unemp

https://youtu.be/nbM1RWAg84A Voice overs are often at the end of a production chain. The video is recorded. The music has been decided. Many things have already been put together. What will often happen is a client will come to you and be in a rush. So how can you make their life easier? 1. Answer emails quickly. 1. Nobody wants to be waiting around for an email, so I make sure I answer as quickly as I can. This is why I also have an email client on my phone, so if I'm out a

https://youtube.com/shorts/_b7yZNSXSZU When you write a piece of content, be it a video, a voice over, a documentary narration. Who are you writing for, a listener or a reader? What I mean is, a lot of content out there is not actually written to be spoken out loud. A lot of of it is almost written like an academic piece of paper. It provides a lot of detail, but it doesn't give the listener space to take that information in. Take for example of documentary. If the visuals in

https://youtube.com/shorts/vQDOlu3oYZg I've done many live directed sessions as a voice actor and I've had my fair share of good directors and... "directors". Let's talk about why it helps to have a good director. A good director understands what a performance needs and helps create the conditions that enable the right performance. An experienced director will focus on how to get that result - they will help the performer with context and use techniques to give us something t

https://youtube.com/shorts/AB8okNQAqQY?feature=share Technically, you can give a script to a voice actor and that'll be enough. We just need words, and we can speak them. Only issue is, we can speak these words in many, many different ways. There's a good chance you like every interpretation I come up with, but maybe you need something specific. If I don't know why I'm saying this, who I'm speaking to, or if there's a story here, I have to create my own context which may be g

https://youtube.com/shorts/19WDoEbVCdQ?feature=share I just got off the phone with a producer, and we were talking about the fact that, unfortunately, a lot of freelancers have this tendency to just disappear in the middle of a project. Remember, if you are a freelancer you need to be on top of these things. You need to be on top of these projects because, as far as anyone else is concerned, if you don't answer an email in a reasonable amount of time, as far as they're aware,

https://youtu.be/HRIXJOeACO0 Many European studios would prefer it if remote talent have a Neumann TLM103 or U87ai. Why? It's true there are lots of great microphones out there like the Austrian Audio OC818 or the Soyuz 017 FET, and great work has been done on cheaper microphones like the Rode NT1A. However, an unfamiliar microphone means more risk. Consider this: Before the pandemic, many audio engineers worked exclusively in-person with talent that physically entered the st

In my years voicing different projects, from commercials to museum audio guides, one issue has certainly remained constant - not every script is written with the listener in mind. These can make listeners confused, embarrassed, and potentially disrespected. These listeners can become a lost sale, lost follower, or just lost! I wanted to list three issues I've noticed over the years, and suggest a solution for each one. TOO MANY WORDS There’s only so much information a listene

With recent advancements in machine learning, "synthetic voices" or "AI voices" are undoubtedly starting to sound better. You might have...