by Gary Terzza.
It is one of the most common issues when people start out in voice overs. Their voices sound flat and lifeless.
This is one of the main reasons casting agents reject demos too!
So what do you need to do to help add vigour and vitality to your voice?
This week I am looking at the practical steps you can take to add life to a dull performance.
Transcript of Video
Hello. A lot of people say,
"Oh I can do voice overs. I can do an audio book or children's book,
something like that because it sounds a bit easier. But what I can't do is a
hard sell commercial. I couldn't be energetic. My voice just isn't like that!"
Well I'm about to show you how you can put energy into your performance.
Titles
(Gary drinks coffee)
That
was a lovely cup of coffee. Hang on a minute though. What if I said, "That
was a lovely cup of coffee." I think the first one is far, far more
energetic isn't it? More convincing and sounds like I'm actually selling the
thought that it was a lovely cup of coffee, whereas the second one, it's a bit
more downbeat and probably at the end of the day means I didn't enjoy it
really, but I don't want to insult you. Now what I've done there is just what
we do in normal life anyway. If I met a friend off the train, it'd be,
"Hey! Joe! Great to see you!" Be all that sort of business, wouldn't
it? It's just kind of part of life, isn't it? When you get excited about
something, you're pleased to see someone, you get excited. You start to put in
that energy automatically.
Now
in voice overs, it's a case of tapping into that in real life in the studio,
either in your own studio or in an external one. So if you're presented with a
script that the direction says, "Be energetic," or "Add energy
and enthusiasm," what you then have to do is to tap into your natural
enthusiasm, you're excitability, if you like, that is really there and you
switch on for various occasions. You've just got to switch it on for your
script. Now if you're saying, "Well, but I can't do that," I would
say, "But you can do that! Because you do it in real life anyway!"
It's not that you're learning anything new. You're just bringing something to
that script and you're switching that enthusiasm and that energy on.
The
other thing is, in energy, and certainly in terms of performance, is about
being very physical. Now I've got a sort of constrained box here, but if I was
recording a voice over, speaking into the mic, I would be using my hands and my
body language. So if I was to say, "Prices are down, down, down!" I'd
be doing all that sort of business and I'd be throwing my body into it. So you
can make the energy come out of you by getting that physicality behind it,
getting that body language behind it to reflect the energy and the excitement
that you're trying to get across.
Now
there is a third element, which is the confidence thing. You've got to have the
confidence to do it. You've got to break through that self consciousness
membrane, which we've all got. You've got to kind of break through it and just
say, "Right, to hell with that. For this 30 seconds, I'm
enthusiastic." You may not want to be enthusiastic, but you're paid to be
enthusiastic in this particular case or this particular script.
So
tap into the reservoir. That's one of the main things to do -that excitement
reservoir you have. Learn to switch that on on command. That's what you've got
to do. Break through that membrane and also use your body language as much as
you can to get that performance across, and remember the golden rule in voice
overs: You never get back what you put in, so you can afford to push it that
extra mile.
Well
that's it for today. That's it about energy and I'll see you next time. Thanks
very much for watching. Bye.
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