OPINION: How not to record a voiceover

So, you’ve found the right voice artist, and booked into a studio. It’s now time to brief the artist on the style, pitch, and feel you’re after to make your client’s product pop. Voice talent, like all actors, thrive on pertinent and engaged direction, and although they are skilled at offering un-directed, off-the-cuff reads (all part of a day's work for in-demand voice talent), a good director’s input will do wondrous things to their performance, and thus your TVC. Like Keith Richards and pharmaceuticals, it’s a symbiotic relationship.

Having sat on both sides of the glass (as voice talent and director) I know very well the high of clear, well-articulated direction and the thrill of delivering a totally ace read. I also know the torture of messy, confused direction, which—from my experience—boils down to three familiar scenarios:

Scenario one: The missing client

The voice talent slips on her 'cans', checks out the script, and listens to clear, precise guidance from the agency director. She proceeds to voice the spot, absorbing new comments to further finesse her performance. It is a marriage made in heaven: Awesome, director and fabulous talent. Six takes recorded and it’s almost a wrap. Oh, but hold on, where’s the client? Busy, late, at a meeting, outside the studio on the phone? Come review time, the client rocks up, or dials in on speakerphone (how can anyone judge a good read over the phone?) with a list of suggestions and new ideas. Back to square one. The director offers something intelligible to the talent and off they go again: the energy a little bit less focused; the mood a shade less enthusiastic.

My advice: Get your client in the room from the start. Chain them to the chair if need be and involve them right from take one. Let’s face it, they know their product better than anyone. And besides threesomes are best when everyone’s involved. And spare a thought for the talent as well; two hours voicing 25 takes for a 30-second TVC is not the way to go. Good talent will nail it in one hour max, usually less.

Scenario two: Spoiled broth

The talent arrives at the studio and is met by the agency director and a ‘party’ from the client’s office who all have an opinion on how best to read the script to sell their product. Lost in translation, the agency director attempts to convey the sentiment behind these offerings. The talent slips on his cans, totally confused, and takes a shot and what he estimates as the ‘middle way’. After each read, the clients cut in and out with, er, useful pointers:

Client One:  ‘A little slower and quieter please.’

Client Two: ‘Can you pick up the pace in the last paragraph’.  

Client Three: ‘It needs to be much louder.’

It is a cliché that too many cooks spoil the broth, but it is nevertheless true. Conflicting direction from a brood of directors will create a disjointed, unconvincing voiceover that won’t do justice to the campaign. Better to be tactfully firm with the client, canvas them for their ideas but keep a tight grip on who’s directing—after all, isn’t that why you are there? Client’s comments are very welcome, but takeover bids are not.

Scenario three: Wait...what?

The third and final scenario involves a singular, well-intentioned director who offers difficult-to-digest and muddled direction. I canvassed our jobbing voice talent for this one, and got some gems:

• “More forceful, but softly forceful.”
• “Read loudly but be quiet in the loudness”
• “Be sensual and sexy, yeah, sort of slutty”
•  “Are you British? Great. Now, can you do it in American?”

There are some wonderful voice directors out there: experts at managing client expectations and input with ease. They are astute to the way words sound and can hear the smallest inaccuracies and errors in pronunciation and enunciation (more on this in my next column). They are skilled at motivating voice talent to deliver a performance that really works—flawlessly read, perfectly paced, with wonderful energy and tone. This is the way forward, in my humble opinion. Scenario Four: The singular, empowered, awesome director.