Do your voiceover clients give you room to breathe?
By Chris Tester - British Male Voiceover Artist
Many people come to me knowing exactly what they want.
- They’ve written the words.
- Chosen the music.
- They might even have recorded a temp voiceover to signal pace, tone an inflection.
The more of these things in place, the clearer the brief, the quicker the job.
All things for which I’m sincerely grateful
But it’s almost always leaving something on the table.
My most interesting work?
That’s done when all the information has been processed - then we forget it.
Leaving room for instinct to play.
Rather than plotting how a project will go line by line, I’m allowed to focus purely on the moment, the audience, the emotion - and then I play from there.
Unexpected things happen.
Inflections, pace and emphasis might not always go where they were ‘designed’ to be.
But an audience doesn’t respond to design - they respond to emotion.
And when every little detail is micro-managed, that can be the first thing squashed in a creative project.
I’m not advocating dispensing with briefs at all - quite the opposite.
But I love those clients who allow time for just one take with the handbrake off during a session.
It shows a willingness to be open, to engage creatively, to be surprised.
It makes me feel seen as a creative, not just a nice voice.
So how do you carve out a creative space?
#creativity #videoproduction #creativeservices #voiceoverartist #clientrelationships