Hey, I’m Susan Berkley with the inside voice of our video training bug and this week we’re going to talk about how to practice so you can get better at what you do. So I’ve got a method that I have fine tuned over the years and many of my students have done this and really gotten better quickly. So here’s what you do. It starts with a professionally voiced commercial. Now don’t pick something that’s done by the local radio station. Pick one that’s for a big national brand and choose a voice talent that’s the same sex as you are. If you’re a guy, do a guy, if you’re a woman, do a woman’s voice.
Now here’s the deal. Step two is you’re going to transcribe that commercial by hand. Don’t use an automated system on your computer. Listen and transcribe it by hand. There’s something about actually writing the commercial out in longhand that helps get it into your DNA. This is for your eyes only. So it’s the actual writing an ad that’s going to help you really understand the spot.
And then the next step, step three, we’re not ready to perform yet, is to listen to it over and over and over again until you’re almost sick of it. What you’re listening for is how that professional voice talent interpreted the spot, how they’re, what their tone is, what their timing is, how they’re emphasizing it, how they, how you feel when you listen to them, because that’s how they were feeling when they performed it. You’re going to learn a ton from doing that, just that one step.
And now you’re ready to record. So you turn on your recording gear and you try to copy the professional line by line, step by step, every nuance of inflection. By now you know this spot pretty well, right? Then you listen back and you compare how you did it with how they did it. And I guarantee you if you do this practice, this process for about 15, 20 minutes a day, you are going to get a lot better really fast. I’m Susan Berkley. Back next week with more inside voiceover.
