Once I went down to Madison Avenue to audition for a candy bar voice over.
There were several women auditioning but there was no script and no mic.
The casting director stood us in a line and asked us to say “Oooo!” “Ahhh ” –separately and in unison
Then they shuffled the line and had us do it again. This wackiness went on for quite some time.
I didn’t get the job.
And although I was a failure at expressions of delight, I managed to build a successful voice over career anyway.
As you grow your voice over business, one thing you can count on is that you will rarely, if ever work without a script (also known as copy).
But scripts can be frustrating little buggers.
Sometimes they are formatted weirdly or the punctuation doesn’t make sense.
Other times the English is just plain bad. But before you re-write a single word (I’ll explain why you should NEVER do this in the video)…
Watch this week’s short training video Here Now
After you watch the video be sure to leave a comment. I always love to hear from you so I can support you as you grow your voice over career.
To your voice over success,
Susan Berkley,
Founder, The Great Voice Company
PS
We’ve still got one or two seats left for our next Voice Over Accelerator Bootcamp March 24-26 at the Great Voice Studios . People tell us this weekend was the best investment they ever made in their career. Interested? Click www.voaccelerator.com or contact us at 800-333-8108 or talent@greatvoice.com.
Great advise, love your videos.
Thanks, Dee! Great to hear from you- Susan
Helpful advice. Thanks.
My pleasure, Michelle. Thanks for checking in 🙂
Susan
Good Morning Susan, I am just getting started on exploring this field, and this video was a very pleasant surprise to find in my inbox just now ! I am getting ready to begin reading the e-book you’ve written ( How To Make Big Money With Your Voice )…
I read the first two or three pages in the past day, and everything I’ve seen of your work in this as far as an instructor, and the way you begin telling your story in this book,along my experience of speaking with Mark when I called your office number, gives me a lot of comfort and a real sense of confidence, that I may actually be seeing a new sun come up in my life’s path. As I told Mark, I was only days into exploring this as a possibility for me, and I’d already dealt with another company offering training in the voice over profession…
Mark was familiar with this other company, and told me that you and your staff have differing views and approaches to this…. this is even more reassuring to me…My feelings and observation of how this other outfit operates were already putting me in a defensive mode by so many points that were adding up rather quickly, but even in the past 24 hours, it’s risen to levels that are hard not to see as great material for a comic parody…
I am going to keep some notes on this one, because just like another experience I had with another company posing as ( the inventor’s friend ) their lack in offering honest integrity was so blatant, that my very brief experience with them also was great material for parody.. I know, I’ve told that one to many people in the past few months, and it’s always sure to get an animated grin and response… Thank you again Susan !! Sincerely… Brian J.
Hi Brian,
Thank you for sharing all this! We do everything we can to make sure our students feel comfortable with our training and to help them choose a path that is right for them. I’m so glad you are enjoying my book 🙂 Susan
Great Audiobook class last night! Both you and the guest host spoke about your script markups, and with the copy all of us had a chance to read, it was clear to me that the markups would have been needed to be done ahead of time. In addition to the coaching I received, two examples of markups I would have done would be in the case of the woman listening to the radio in Poland, there are two spots where she yelled to her daughter – but the readers pretty much voiced the quote and said she yelled rather than indicating it with their voice in addition. Prep mark ups likely would have caught that. The other was one where I would have gone back to the author with a question, as I thought it was an awkward transition from Sarah’s internal dialog to the narrator and back the way the copy was punctuated.
I don’t know if there are any standards / recommendations / listings of pre-recording markups available or even if there are examples you could share with your students as they develop their skills. I’ll carry this question over to the member’s section for comments from last night.
Hey JJ, I’m so glad you enjoyed the class. You sounded great! I’m also glad the report on How To Mark A Script I sent you afterwards was helpful. Its a pleasure to work with you- Susan
Great Tips! As always very much appreciated. Good to know I am doing some of those things as we speak. There is a line in a poem that read;
“it nice to know he stands by me” All I wanted to do was make it “It’s” instead of it, but the client wanted it read as IT!
And that is the way it was read, even if my brain just did not want to conform, I read it the way it was written! Good Advice!
Yes, Tom. You did the right thing. The last thing we want to do is argue with a client (they have their reasons for saying it the way they ask and they’re the boss) but astoundingly, some people do. I know of one talent who argued with a client about the correct pronunciation of ‘artisanal’ even though he (the talent) was saying it wrong! Thanks for writing, Susan
Susan, I truly appreciate these small yet helpful insights to help us become the best voiceover artist we can be. Thank you for taking the time to create these for the little people.