The Five Best Voiceover Tips for Beginners

The 5 Best Voiceover Tips for Beginners

By Chris Tester - British Male Voiceover

Since first embarking on my voice-over journey, I've learned quite a few profound lessons about what not to do that you shouldn't waste time. Arguing with people on Facebook groups about which microphone they like that the voice-over rail might not necessarily be the most reputable platform out there and that German dubbing porn might not necessarily be that good for your reputation in general, but apart from these profound takeaways, what other tips might I give myself?

The decision can be debilitating when starting any new career. There can be so much new information out there. It's difficult to know where to begin or what to prioritize, and I know that I definitely wasted a lot of time going along dead ends or making very obvious mistakes that really wasted a lot of time, money, and energy as a result. And I grant that failure is definitely an essential part of the process.

Let’s dig in!

Five Key Lessons for Beginners

As I've already covered in this video here, there are five key lessons that I would definitely go back in time and tell myself if I could when starting out and so in the absence of having a time machine. I'm going to tell you them instead!

Tip #1:

My first tip is a pretty essential performance-related one, and that is always to make sure that you're talking to one specific person regardless of what type of voice-over project you're actually working on. If you make your voice-over delivery specific and rooted in one person's reaction. Then it's going to make it more personal and go alongside that as well. I would say practicing doing voice over with a smile and seeing how that warm quality basically goes from the outside in can be essential in being able to establish a real connection with the listener as with any form of acting, really being specific in who your audience member is and what they want and what kind of um reaction that you want to get from them is incredibly crucial and something that I wish I prioritized more rather than sounding good at the beginning of my career.

Tip #2:

My second tip is also performance-related, and that would always be worked out what the subtext is. So, a car commercial is never really about the car that you're selling. It's about the lifestyle you'll want to portray that gives access to the person who wants to buy it. Go on an adventure of a lifetime on the road to discovery. The same would go if you're working for an explainer video. You're not just imparting information, but it's because you want to make a difference to the person who's listening in terms of their lives, what do they need to know, and why and again, understanding the importance of the subtext; running underneath why? What you're saying is important in the first place is really crucial in terms of giving the best voice-over that you can.

Tip #3:

My third tip would be to work from a place of relaxation, and this really comes down to the fact that when we're starting out especially, we want to get things right, and when we want to get things right in a career, that prizes speech. Generally, we want to speak very clearly, and in a career that focuses on the spoken word, that usually results in us speaking very clearly and sometimes over-enunciating, and I certainly found that coming from stage work where I did a lot of articulation exercises, so there were a lot of plosives going on and everything like that meant.

As a result, I sounded quite ready when I started out because I was pronouncing every single word, which is not what we do in real life and in speech, of course. The other thing coming from a trained actor that's been drummed into me for years is that your best performance comes from a state of relaxation. You have to be prepared. Still, then you need to let everything go and that I think is really the crucial aspect. Do your warm-ups work on technical aspects that you personally need to address but then when it actually comes to stepping up to the performance. You need to try and come from a process of relaxation. So, again focusing on the message, the connection, and the audience is not on your physical your technical execution.

Tip #4:

My fourth tip is a pretty inevitable one which is don't record your demos too soon. I know I certainly did, and I would say probably the first three commercial demos that I recorded in the early-mid-2000s were absolute and utter trash, while most voice actors are a bit more streetwise in doing their due diligence with demo producers. Now it's still something to be mindful of. You really need to focus on your coaching and your mastery of a particular genre first before you go and actually pay the money for a demo because otherwise, you'll be like me, someone who has to constantly re-record their demos because they're not good enough and you can't really salvage much from them.

You need to have a clear understanding of the genre in question. You need to know where your voice fits within that genre, and you need to know the extremes what is your range within that genre, not so that you display range for range's sake but so that you can set very clear parameters about what reads are going to serve you best as marketing too.

Tip #5:

My final tip would be you can do it yourself. When I started out on my voice acting career, I came very much from an actor's perspective that there were certain gatekeepers, i.e., agents and casting directors, that I needed to get on board with in order to properly make progress and to a certain extent that is true but as well as cultivating those very important relationships. There are many other ways that you can actually source voice-over work, and you don't even need to have a demo in order to be able to do that.

Now with things like Fiverr and freelancing websites, there's a way of being able to cultivate and monetize voice-over work from an early stage and actually build yourself up, or alternatively, you can go through the whole pay-to-play route and also, of course, most crucially you can use direct marketing to really create one-to-one relationships with clients that nobody else owns in terms of the relationships. So, they're yours, and it's a relationship that you can build progressively.

Final Thoughts

As a result, obviously, there's a laundry list of different things that I wish I could tell my former self when starting, but these were the five that I think would have probably made the biggest and quickest difference in getting my voice-over career up and running. I hope you've enjoyed this video and found it useful. If so, please do like, subscribe, please do comment below if there was something specific that you found particularly useful when starting out or that you wish. You had a time machine to tell yourself when you were starting out in the first place. Thank you for watching so much as ever, and I look forward to seeing you next time!

How to Direct Voice Actors in Video Games

Video games are continuing to boom as an industry. And as a result of that greater popularity, the expectation for voice acting is only getting higher and higher. Gone are the days of getting your friends to do it for free and hoping that would work out. 

Voiceover: I'm fully aware of what I'm doing. Can you see? Man committed a sin, disturbing the lifecycle of nature. The original sin that man is responsible to, to protect the life cycle. 

This is the second of three videos about the best ways of working with actors for video games. The first cover the casting process, and if you haven't watched it already, you can check it out here. In this video, we're going to look at how you can make your actual recording session with a voice actor as creatively stimulating and productive as possible. This is intended to apply to all forms of voice acting and video games. But for something as specialized as performance capture or motion capture, those are subjects that I would really like to approach in another video in the future. There is also an important distinction I would like to make between a voice actor and a voice over. And there is a distinction. 

Of course, both require acting skills. But with voiceover, there's a particular style to it, there is a pattern, a formula that's actually at work. With voice actors where the emphasis is on the second word, then there's more process of using our imaginations, engaging emotionally with a character and actually putting ourselves in another person's shoes. Now performer can be both a voiceover and a voice actor simultaneously. You just need to be aware of the distinction, to be aware of the different skill sets that are associated with each. It's quite a confusing topic because different people brand themselves in different ways at different times. So for my commercial and corporate work, I will brand myself as a voice over but when I'm talking about games, I'll emphasize the acting part. Actually hiring a voice director to work with the actors on your behalf is probably the best solution. And it also allows you the opportunity to learn through observation, but you may not be in a position to hire them. And either way, some of the points that’ll raised in this video may be useful for your future learning. So to start, let's talk preparation. 

If you can discuss the character with the actor before the actual session. Talk about their characteristics, their background, their relationships, and the world of the game. If you have time, be open to a dialogue and make the actual creation of the character as collaborative as possible. Provide the scripts which are often called sides as quickly as possible. Most voice actors can actually be very good side readers but the more time we have with the script, the better the end product will be. If the game has a lot of conversations between different actors, then try and organize a table read of some sort, even if it is only through zoom. It means that everyone will get a whole sense of what the world is like, what the interactions are like and that's something that can feed through even into individual sessions. And then if you have a discussion at the end, where people can ask questions, it means that you only have to answer them once rather than repeating yourself time after time. 

Looking to the script itself, if there are any unusual pronunciations, then make sure that you have a guide so that everybody is on the same page. And try to resist the temptation to actor proof your script by throwing in objectives all the time telling them how they should say something, the odd direction of angry or whispered can be very good in terms of providing context to why someone is saying something in a particular way. But if it's every line or every other line, then it just limits the potential options open to the actor, which stifles their creativity and will probably be deleted anyway. Essentially as performers, we can only perform to the size of the space that you actually grant us. And finally, whenever possible, budget for more session time than you think you'll need. When a session begins, make the process clear for everyone. Make it clear how many scenes that you're covering, what different emotional states are required in each and where they come from in the game. 

Obviously, that could just be you and the actor, that could be a director but there could also be a producer or writer or any other number of people on the line. Regardless of how many there are ensure that only one person is actually giving direction to the actor, so that they're not lost in a cacophony of voices. Spend the first five to 10 minutes of the session, just checking in with the other actor, seeing where they are, how their days been, and what they're going to be like to direct. Obviously, in all cases, time is money. And if you've got 5000, as opposed to 500 words to do in a three hour session, then you want to be getting on with things. But still having that chat at the start is useful for gauging the tone for the whole session. Ask the actor if they have any questions about the character about the background about the sides, whatever. But obviously, if you've been able to build in some pre session time, this will be less of an issue. 

One crucial aspect to bear in mind is the order in which you approach material. If there's a particularly emotional scene or a lot of shouting involved, then it's usually better to place that towards the end of the session, but each actor may work differently. For some they may warm up with shouting first and foremost, different actors voices work in different ways. So check in with them before coming to a mutual decision. And one final thing before starting make sure that a break schedule has been agreed. Make sure that you enforce it, not the actor. Actors will tend to want to keep going and sometimes that's absolutely great because they're in the moment, they're feeling something, but they're still not necessarily the best objective judge of their vocal health, especially if they're inexperienced. Small breaks are important, both to replenish the mind and the body. When you finally get to the recording, you need to tell your actor at every scene, the where, the what and the why. 

The where, where does the scene take place? Is it a battlefield? Is it a council chamber? Is it a bedroom? How big is the space? Are there other people there? And how far away am I from the person that I'm talking to? The what is the essential physical action. Am I running away? Am I in the middle of the battle? Or am I working in an office. And the why is what is the objective behind the characters actions? Of course, all of this information combines with the Greater Life of the character, and also the world of the game. And again, if you've done all of that prep work in advance, then it means you can be a lot more succinct when you're actually recording. But it's crucial to focus on these essentials rather than getting distracted by any extraneous information. It's also very useful to think in terms of the characters emotional state, and generally they break down into being either mad, sad or glad. 

Obviously, there's a whole spectrum of choices lying across those three distinctions, but it's still useful to have one in mind as a starting point at each scene. It could also be useful to think of a character's driving forces coming from either their head, their heart or their groin. Just saying the same line with the same logical objective but those three different things in mind will give you different results. When at all possible, be flexible with the actual words themselves be open to the idea of aligning words or changing them if they don't feel quite natural. For theatre actors, especially the can sometimes be a reverence for the word on the page. So sometimes you need to actively give permission to mess things up and make things more believable. Hesitations, gasps, half said words and repetitions are all little things that can give texture to language in a whole new way. Think of encouraging these improvisations even before the actual words begin. 

Adele Cutting, a voice director suggests using them as springboards into an actual line itself, which you can cut afterwards. Different actors work in different ways. And if you try and enforce some one size fits all process for everyone, then it's probably going to end up limiting the results that you actually get. But try to describe the stakes in a given scene as vividly as possible using the right transitive verb. The more vivid a transitive verb is, the more stimulating it is to play as an actor. There is the difference between telling an actor to ask for forgiveness and telling them to beg or plead for forgiveness. You want to use language that is going to ignite an actor's imagination, not stifle it. So familiarizing yourself with a book like Actions, The Actors Thesaurus, would be a really great stuff to that process. Boiling down a scene to what it's essentially about is always important, but can be particularly important when we're thinking in terms of genre.

To give a personal example, I was recently working on a scene with a video game director, in which one of my companions was killed. My initial response was to take the subsequent scene very literally, like it was therefore going to be a fight to the death. But after I'd gone in horribly wrong a couple of times, the director actually pointed out that in the context of the game, which was set in a post-apocalyptic world, with lots of zombies being killed all the time, the actual essential of the scene was actually about confronting a bullet, not about a fight to the death. It was a subtle changing of the stakes, as opposed to a lessening of them, which completely changed my playing of the scene as a result. 

I think the final thing I want to say is that you should be thinking in terms of how you want the character to make you feel, as opposed to how you want them to actually sound. If you start a session with a very preconceived idea of how things should go, then it's going to be very stifling, and collaborative and also very uninspired. Sometimes lines have to be spoken in a particular way for a particular reason. And if necessary, alone reading can be justifiable if an actor really isn't getting it. But it really should be a very selective approach. You want to be part of an exciting, collaborative, creative experience. And by approaching it with the right preparation, and the right attitude all the way through, it can really be achievable. 

Next time I'll be looking at your relationship with the actor after the recording process, which is typically the part most overlooked. If you enjoyed this video, please do like subscribe and turn on notifications and I look forward to seeing you next time.

What Gender Should Your Voiceover Be

By British Male Voice Actor Chris Tester

Voiceover used to be male dominated, but if trends continue as they have been in the last few years, it's predicted that female voice over jobs will actually overtake male voice over jobs by around 2025. The received wisdom has always been to go with someone who sounds like the audience. Voice over typically uses the rule of PLU. We most readily listen to people like us. And then we have quite stereotypical notions of what a male or female voice may offer. A deep male voice has power, aggression and authority and that's the reason why Mark Strong, the man who normally tells you to turn your phone off in the cinema in the UK, is also the man who fronts the UK COVID announcements. 

Voice over: This is a message from the government's Chief Medical Officer about Coronavirus. 

By contrast, female voices are typically considered more reassuring and soothing. A poll conducted by Harris international found that 46% of people found female voices more soothing than male voices. Soothing voices make people more comfortable. And when people feel more comfortable, then they're more likely to trust the person that they're listening to. That's one of the very good reasons why many Satnavs, computer systems and travel directions are delivered by female voices. Now this is partly scientific study by the Journal of advertising found that products that were aimed at neutral audiences or once towards men, the gender of the voice didn't really matter. But the same certainly wasn't true for female oriented products. Psychologist Phil Maclear at the University of Glasgow found that male voices with a lower pitch were usually perceived as least trustworthy, while higher pitched female voices were perceived as most trustworthy. Female voices and not just perceived as more melodic, but also clearer to by where they're processed in the brain. A study conducted at the University of Sheffield found that female voices were processed in the auditory part of the brain where music is processed, while male voices were processed at the back of the brain in what's called the mind's eye. So how does this all relate to the voiceover that you should choose? Well, Nancy Wilson, one of the foremost voiceover coaches in the world in commercial copy, talks about how copy is generally structured in terms of align, escalate and solve. 

The voiceover aligns themselves with the listeners problem, then they escalate it so the listener is compelled to act and then you offer the solution with the product. Taking the listener on an emotional journey throughout from crisis to resolution. The female voice seen as softer and chattier most readily fits the aligned part of that equation. Women now drive between 70 and 80% of consumer spending, and the greater perceived emotional intent in their voices helps with that alignment. Demographics are also changing. We're seeing women make inroads, pardon the pun, in a traditionally male sphere like cars with Mercedes. 

Voice over: The new A-class range with Mercedes me. 

And Alfa Romeo
Voice over: NaVi is no longer blind, Alfa Romeo Giulia and Stelvio. 

With 80% of car purchases now being directly influenced by women. Similarly, in entertainment, we're seeing the rise of female protagonists to mirror the fact that more women are getting involved in games as players and as developers as well. But the taste in male voices is also expanding and diversifying too. Often a male voice will simply suit a certain product best. And sometimes you need a Mark Strong to tell you to turn off your phone and wash your hands. But we're starting to explore a more three dimensional concept of masculinity beyond the alpha male. One which possibly even started with the marketing towards stay at home dads. As copy texts in many genres have moved from telling the audience to aligning with them, there are greater opportunities to explore emotional availability, vulnerability, and nurturing tones rather than just being strong and stoic. We're seeing advertisers take a voice which may be considered alpha, like, for example, Tom Hardy, and then disrupting that by making the delivery more ponderous and introspective than you would normally expect. 

Voice over: Greatness is no more unique to us than breathing. We're all capable of it. All of us. 

You can't even say that makeup is still the preserve of female voices when there's a whole new industry marketing makeup to young men. So as media consumption continues to develop and change and diversify, it's more and more difficult to make any kind of blanket statements about the importance of the gender. The content we consume is becoming more targeted, more personalized, and less binary. 

Voice over: This is about more than just keeping a card safe. It's about keeping us safe. True name by MasterCard. 

There are more and more brands looking to use non binary voices because it associates them with a more considerate and thoughtful approach to living and workplace culture. So in conclusion, surprise, there's no simple answer. Think about your product in terms of the wider industry and the target audience. Make the emotion that you want the listener to feel be of central importance. Always be aware of gender stereotypes so you can then play to them or convert them. And remember that tone, pace and inflection are going to have the most influence over your voiceovers effectiveness, which is why you should hire a professional. Why not try demoing a variety of talent not just going with what you think it should be, and then seeing what the results are like. I hope this video has been of interest to you. 

And thanks so much for joining me. Please do like subscribe and turn on notifications and I look forward to seeing you next time.

How To Cast Voice Actors For Games

By British Male Voiceover Artist Chris Tester

Whether your game is part of a huge Triple A billion franchise, or it's just you as a single developer, getting the right voice actors to be part of your game is particularly crucial. Especially with gamers expecting more believable, authentic performances as standard. In this video, I'm going to talk about how to cast voice actors. The when, the where, the how, and the what. This will be the first of three videos on the subject, with a second looking at how you actually work with the voice actor during a directed session itself. And the third looking at your relationship with the voice actor after the game is released. How they can help with marketing and promotion, and expand your broader network. So let's get started with the where. Where you cast your voice actors will depend on what you're looking for, your budget, and how many roles you need to fill. Recommendations and referrals from other game developers, voice actors or voice directors is a great way to start. It's a way of being introduced to a whole variety of talent that you might not be familiar with, but which has been vetted, been proven in some way. Of course, a pretty standard route is to contact agents, either voice agents and acting agents and ask them about the talent on their books. 

If you have a particular talent in mind, then just google their name and an agency and it'll probably pop up. Or alternatively, just google any major city name and voice agent or acting agent and lots of options will come up to. You could collaborate with specialist audio production companies who have their own talent database. You can look on social media, and especially Twitter, where a lot of voice actors are particularly active. And either put a casting call out there directly yourself, or alternatively, reach out to a company or an individual that specializes in casting indie games. You can google search voice actors and find out more about them from their website, which might be quite a long winded way if you don't know exactly what you're looking for. But if you like an actor's previous work, then you may be able to reach out directly. Or of course, you could put a casting call out on a pay to play site or voiceover casting site, inviting lots of voice actors that you may not be familiar with at all to audition for your roles and seeing what the results are. Now there is no best or worst source of where you can actually get hold of the actors that you want to audition in the first place. 

But I would say be wary of making your casting call too broad or open. Some of these avenues will result in you receiving hundreds of applications which you'll have to trawl through in order to find what you want, which can be exhausting. So the more selective you are at the front end, the more seamless the whole process will be afterwards. When do you cast your voice actors? Again, it depends on a project by project basis. But typically, if it's a more character based game than the earlier, the better. If you cast early, then it allows your writers to become more familiar with the voice that they're actually writing for, which will result in a greater degree of authenticity. It means you can have less time sensitive meetings with your actors to discuss the role and you can be a sounding board for each other's ideas. These sorts of creative discussions in the early stages could mean that your time actually in the booth recording with the voice actor is much lower as a result. But if the role is more functional than that's not necessary. 

[Voiceover: Now, you will suffer our wrath.]

In which case casting closer to the actual recording time may be more suitable, because it ensures an actor's availability. How do you cast your voice actors? The wisest thing to do to start off with is to delegate if you can afford to. Voice directors will often already be familiar with talent, how to direct talent, and it will allow you to pick up experience along the way through observation. Each actor may need a slightly different approach depending on the material. A professional director can save you time and get creative results that you never might have expected.

Voice over[Troy Baker on Director Neil Druckmann]: We start shooting the scene action and I go straight into it. And it feels weird and it feels false. And we do it three or four times and Neil walks up to me in between takes and I'll never forget this and he says I'm picking up on some resistance. And I said yeah, you're damn right, you're picking up on some resistance because we've got it. It's in the can it was take one. And he said let me tell you what I have. I have a man broken, I said guy his fucking daughter just died. He goes, No, I have a man broken what I don't have is what's happening, this is happening. I can fix it. It's not working. She's going she's gone, I’m broken. And that is when I realized that Neil Druckmann was the greatest director I've ever worked with.

It can be argued that not all voice directors are created equal. But the majority may provide a level of expertise that can prove invaluable. But if it is only you and you can't afford a voice director, then I do suggest that you check out a couple of acting books. 

Something like Stanislavski’s, An Actor Prepares and David Mamet's True And False. A crucial part of the casting process is creating an actual character breakdown with imagery of the character, their age, their physicality, their accent, their voice description and biography, ideally. When casting you'll be asking actors to read lines for the character that you might want to actually cast them as. These lines are typically called sides, audition sides. And when you write them, it's important to provide as much context as possible. An actor will say a line completely differently depending on who they're speaking to, why they're speaking to them, and where they're speaking to them as well. Try to resist the temptation to copy and paste some of your actual script for the audition sides. You want to hear as many different facets of the character as possible as quickly as possible. So if that's possible in existing lines from the actual game itself, that's great. But if not, then write a scene or an exchange that actually serves that purpose, so that every single different part of the audition is actually helping you to make a choice. 

Depending on how in depth you want the process to be, I would recommend having a first and then a second round of auditions. In the first round, have them a sample based auditions, where you provide direction the actor records them, and then you review them. And then you could have a second round, which would be a live directed session. So either you or the voice director would be working with the actor through a set script, and you could see what your relationship is like and how free and open they are to actual direction. If you have reference points to the type of game that you want to make, then share them. If you tell a voice actor that the game is in the style of The Last of Us or in the style of Zelda or in the style of Doom, then we immediately get an impression of what that world is like and how those characters would interact. Even if we don't, if we're not gamers, then we can go on to YouTube, see some of that game footage and get an impression very quickly as well. Above all else, look for people who are voice actors as opposed to voiceovers. If that makes sense. Many voiceovers may have a beautiful voice and it does also require acting, but it's a different kind of skill set. Appreciate that Screen Actors might give very detailed realistic performances, but they also might struggle in being able to communicate verbally what they would normally Express physically, facially.

Voice over: It has been amusing watching your sea-wracked corpses stumble and doddder as you tracked the prey

Some stage actors may be particularly good at bigger characterizations or multi character parts, but some of them could be a little bit too big or performative. And again, depending on experience, some might have quite a lot of mic technique, and others may have none. All of these things will have a greater or lesser importance depending on the type of game that you want to make. So for example, if you put a filmic Actor in a performance capture context, where they're also going to have their face mapped as well, then all of those issues might not be an issue at all. And similarly, if your voice actor is working with an audio engineer during the session, then then being on or off mic is going to be less of a practical concern rather than if they're recording from a home studio and are responsible themselves for gauging their distance from a mic. 

If your project is going to involve home studio talent, then ensure that all of their auditions take place using the setup that they'd actually use. Have the recordings vetted by an audio engineer. Because even if something sounds possible, there may be issues with it. Also bear in mind that you're looking for acoustic continuity, you want to ensure that all these voices sound as if they've come from the same place with a minimum of fuss. And also cast as authentically as possible. It's 2020 and there's enough talent out there. It's not an excuse to say that you can't find it. And finally, for what, how much would you actually pay your voice actors. Actors fees typically break down into two things; a per hour fee, called the basic studio fee, which covers their actual recording time. And a buyout that actually licenses their voice for your game, which is normally the basic studio fee again, or a multiple of it. Obviously, as the demands of a project expands, so will the fee. 

How to Sound Conversational in Voiceover

In this video, I provide an overview of ten things that can be adjusted to make a voiceover sound more conversational.

My name is Chris and today I'm going to look at why so many people are asking for voiceovers to be conversational. And how this can best be achieved. It's probably easiest to start by what isn't meant by conversational voiceover. And that's typically known as the announcer voiceover. This is when someone is talking at you, as opposed to, to you. Like this. 

Voice over: And claim free notice this week in an American fight over thousands truckloads of living room furniture, seven piece living room groups that include a sofa, loveseat, coffee table to end tables and two designer lamps. 

Over the last decade especially, there's been a clear shift from talking at someone from a place of authority to talking to them from a place of authenticity. Essentially, it's about being a real person, about sharing your personal testimony. And this is why the analogy of talking to a best friend is often given when trying to direct a voiceover to be more conversational. Because those friend conversations that we have with our friends are most trustworthy, most authentic and most credible. It is a personal offering of experience and advice, not a transaction. Check out this advert for right move. 

Voice over 1: This is the place we are happy. This is where we, and you..

Voice over 2: This is where we bring home. 

Voice over 1: And where we bring home. 

Voice over 2: This is where we grow up. 

Voice over 1: And where we go. 

Voice over 2: This is where she.. and where we are at. 

Voice over 1: This is where we are at.

Now I'm currently in the process of actually searching for a house myself. So this probably did strike a particular chord for me. But essentially what I'm talking about is completely borne out by this advert. There is no authorial voice telling you how great the platform is, instead, it's understated, it's almost confessional, it’s heartfelt and it's real. If you think of voiceover as a spectrum, with the hard sell being on one side then the other extreme isn't conversational. The other extreme is completely flat without any intonation or emotion whatsoever. So it's a balancing act, but you have to navigate from project to project. So rather than asking a question is a script conversational or not, you've got to place it somewhere on that spectrum to some degree. So let's start by ten tips on how to get a more conversational delivery. Tip one, don't get too loud. If you're talking to loads of people, then obviously you're going to be projecting to a certain degree. But if you're actually having a conversation with a friend in a pub, or any kind of similar scenario, then you're rarely going to get too loud unless you're particularly angry with them. 

So if you find yourself getting loud or projecting too much during a conversational read, you know that it's something that you'll need to adjust. The essence of a conversational read is sharing information with someone, engaging their reaction and responding organically. Then if you're being very loud, then you're not really monitoring their response to what you're saying in the first place. So if you find yourself getting loud and you're not supposed to be angry, then it probably means that you're pushing too much. Tip two make a clear choice about who you're actually speaking to and I don't just mean a friend. Quite often a voiceover will be told to imagine they're talking to their best friend about a particular subject. But the problem with that is that the voiceover’s best friend might not actually be interested in the subject of the project. Instead, it is much more useful to imagine that the person that you're speaking to has a vested interest in the subject that you're talking about. Tip three, have an emotional state. And I don't mean a heightened emotion, but have an opinion about what you're talking about and how that makes you feel. The vast majority of scripts, set up a problem, and then introduce the product or service or brand as the solution. And you need to have a very clear idea about how each one of those stages makes you feel, you might start frustrated, and then feel relief, you might start angry, and then feel ecstatic. The important thing is to be clear about those emotional stakes and invest in them. 

Tip four, speak from your throat rather than from your diaphragm. Especially if you're a trained actor, you quite often want to get on voice and start projecting. And that's fine if you're actually acting on stage. But generally, and this combined with what I was originally saying about volume, it'll end up being too much on a microphone. Instead, you really need to imagine that you're speaking very, very close to the other person next to you, like you're in a pub, for example, in real life heartfelt conversations, we tend to speak from our throat, because otherwise really resonating from the diaphragm becomes a bit too forceful. It essentially goes back to projecting at someone rather than talking to them. Tip five, if you're listening through headphones, then take them off, or at least take one of them off so that you can actually hear your own voice. Listening to our own voice through our headphones, as we're speaking makes us even more conscious of the sounds that we're making. 

So conversely, if you take the headphones off, you'll have more energy and focus to spend on the person that you're actually talking to, rather than how you sound. Obviously, during directed live sessions, you can't completely take your headphones off because you're going to be getting feedback live from the person on the other end of the line. So rather than being dependent on taking the headphones completely off, just try taking the one headphone off during your day to day recording. Tip six play with Elisions and contractions. Sometimes the script really does need to be incredibly clear and specific and that's absolutely fine. But sometimes that runs the risk of sounding a bit robotic. And that's not how we sound in real life. That's not how we sound in real life. So it's always worth checking with a client in advance if you can make little adjustments like changing as you are into you’re to make it all flow a little bit better. 

Tip seven, play with rhythm. If the authoritative voice the announcer a voice is generally quite consistent in tone and rhythm because it knows exactly where it wants to go. Conversational voice has a lot more ebb and flow to it, generally. Sometimes we know exactly where we want to go to make a point but often we're searching so you have all of these suspensions and stumbles. I wouldn't recommend just inserting lots of uhms, and aah to try and represent a form of authenticity. But I would say be aware of the ebbs and flows of normal speech and try and replicate that rather than just being consistent and definite. Tip eight, think in terms of thoughts rather than words. Quite often, especially in announcer reads, we're thinking about the how rather than about the why. In other words, how we're sounding rather than why specifically, we're speaking. In more conversational reads, the focus is really on the why, why we're sharing this with our friend? It's not about the exact words that we choose the how.

So having a clear understanding about the actual ideas that you're trying to communicate is much more important for a conversational read. Tip nine, try a lead in. Sometimes you can be so concerned about sounding right from the very first word that you can barely even speak when you get to the microphone. So try improvising a bit of the conversation that you might actually be having with the person that you're speaking to, so that the copy comes organically from that exchange, rather than just starting. And Tip ten, physicality. When we're talking to our friends, then we gesture we express ourselves through our hands and our physicality, as well as with our words. Essentially, you're sharing your emotional state, and therefore you need to be expressive both physically and vocally, rather than instructive or objective. Going back to Tip three about having an emotional state, this must be reflected in how you are whilst actually delivering the text. Even if it's a very simple imagined activity, like the frustration of putting on a watch that doesn't quite fasten, or the relaxation of lying back and having a cigarette. These will all subtly change the way you actually engage with the listener without you having to focus on how you're sounding. Even thinking in terms of the different clothes that you might be wearing could influence your physicality in a useful way. For example, if you're wearing something quite formal and restrictive, then that could give you a certain sense of status and authority as opposed to just sitting in a T shirt. All of these things might adjust your performance only fractionally, but they're useful to be aware of. Just to give us an example, I'd like to share two different readings of the same script, one which has a bit more weight to it, and one which is closer to a more conversational tone. First, let's try a quite standard corporate read.

Chris Voice over: Work. Life. Balance. Three tiny words. An impossible a question that humankind is trying to solve for centuries. What would it mean to your life if you could achieve all of your goals? If family, fitness and personal finance could come together with career progression and big promotions? introducing Wequilibrium, a productivity app that seamlessly brings together your personal and professional goals into a streamlined schedule that puts your dreams within reach. Download it for free at wequilibrium.com today. 

So physically, I'm going to think about being less on voice, taking one of my headphones off speaking from the throat rather than going down into my chest resonance. Rather than speaking to a generalized audience, I'm going to imagine that I'm speaking to someone who shares exactly the same problems as me, that they're struggling to get the work life balance, right. As a result, maybe the physicality is going to be a little bit more fidgety to begin with. 

I'll try and play with the rhythm a little bit more as if I'm discovering these thoughts as I'm actually having them. And I might also try a couple of lead ins, which can then be cut out in editing. 

Chris Voice over: I’ll tell you. Work. Life. Balance. My God, they're just three tiny words. An impossible equation that humankind has tried to solve for centuries. What would it mean to your life, if you could achieve all of your goals? If family fitness and personal finance to come together with career progression and big promotions? Well, there is something that work for me. Introducing Wequilibrium, a productivity app that seamlessly brings together your personal and professional goals into a streamlined schedule that puts your dreams within reach. You can even download it for free at wequilibrium.com today. 

Okay, so I'm not saying that one right is better than the other. But I am saying that there are some very clear variables that we can adjust, depending on how conversational we actually want the script to sound. Thanks so much for watching. If you did find this video useful, then please do like and subscribe, and I'll bring you something new next week.