FREE “Voiceover Success Mini Course” By Email

What you’ll learn:

  • The top 10 mistakes new actors make when getting started
  • How to get into the writer’s mind and book voiceover jobs
  • The counter-intuitive “Secret” to voiceovers
    … and more! 

Your tight and loose voice over

by | Feb 12, 2016 | 1 comment

A highly talented actor friend recently shared with me some new concepts related to the physicality of the voice, and how to use your body to conspire in your voice over success. I have always been aware of the body/voice connection and have often instructed students to pay careful attention to it. A guy reading with his hands in his pockets is going to a be a bit more challenged than the arm-waver in terms of expressiveness. The woman concentrating so hard on saying everything “perfectly” is going to forget to smile, and the absence of this most basic of human expressions is going to lose her the job. Our voice is part of the manifestation of the story our bodies are telling, and if we are careful to tell the story properly in our bodies, then our voice will follow…. to some degree. Yes, our minds must cooperate as well to balance out the proper understanding of emotional motivation and context of message from the writing. But one thing at a time, and today that thing is the body, and how to use it to your advantage in your next voiceover audition.

When you’re reading your next script, try an experiment. First, read it while sitting down in a straight chair, with your arms still at your sides or on your lap. Keep your face non-animated as you read. Try to not bob your head around and just allow your eyes to follow the words on the page. Make sure you are recording this take. This is your tight read. For your second recording you will stand up. Find a place to rest your script (a script stand or other creative solution) and allow for your hands to do some of the talking. Maybe walk in place a little bit or shift hips from side to side. Let there be a smile on your face and let your head be gently moving as you talk, tilting it from side to side at times as you speak. You can even pay close attention to whether your eyes are opening wide, or crinkling a bit, or otherwise, based on whatever it is you are feeling in each moment that you are communicating something. Most importantly, just let it happen. Let yourself, your body, your mind, your voice, be uncensored. This is your loose read. Your “free voice.” Unless you’re Siri, this is the voice you will use for almost everything, and it will book you jobs.

When you think about it, we are all attracted to “loose” personalities as opposed to (up)”tight” ones. The looser and more freely someone is speaking, the more interesting and animated and authentic they feel to us, which in turn makes us free to be our own truest selves. The “tight” person leaves us wanting, wondering what’s behind the wall, but also too intimidated to want to try and break it down. We just walk away.

If you feel yourself needing to access your “loose” voice, try sounding out your vowels one at a time while walking around the house, jumping up and down, shaking your shoulders, or doing any mundane activity such as putting away the dishes. When we speak to each other, we are never standing in front of a microphone. We are engaged. So until you can “fake it” – trying engaging yourself in life activities. Let the body be first, and the voice be second. If it works for real life, it can work for the voice over.

FREE “Voiceover Success Mini Course” By Email

What you’ll learn:

  • The top 10 mistakes new actors make when getting started
  • How to get into the writer’s mind and book voiceover jobs
  • The counter-intuitive “Secret” to voiceovers
    … and more! 

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