When you’re listening to the radio while driving your car, do you keep it on one station, or do you flip through different channels? What makes you stop — a favorite song, the latest breaking news, or perhaps a commercial that really grabs your attention? If the voiceover talent reading the script is doing a great job in acting the part, then you may stop because the topic sounds exciting or relate-able. A good voiceover actor really brings a script to life!
Voiceovers can be a fun, flexible and an incredibly lucrative career! Last year, the industry grew 7% to $11.7 billion! Having a “marketable voice” is definitely important in voiceovers but there’s a lot more to it than that. Voiceovers are voice acting. You need to do more than just read the words on the page. Before you read a script, you want to ask yourself a few basic questions that will help you analyze the product, as well as understand your listener.
1) What audience is the script intended for?
2) How can you connect with the product? Because voiceovers are voice acting, think about personal experiences that you can relate to. If you can’t relate to it, how can you pretend (aka, act) to relate to it?
3) What is the emotion that you want to convey while reading this script?
4) Visualization plays a key part in voiceovers. It helps voice actors picture the person they’re talking to, as well as the product that they’re talking about. While you’re reading the script try to visualize someone who would be interested to hear what you have to say about this product.
One thing that is just as important as how you read the script is how you breathe while you’re reading the script! You should learn how to take intentional diaphragm breaths to sound fluid and natural. You don’t ever want to sound like you’re running out of air — because that will definitely make you sound like you’re reading a script. There are two important things about breath control to keep in mind: 1) breathing properly using your diaphragm; and, 2) knowing exactly where in the script you should breathe.
Analyzing copy, which is another name for a voiceover script, is very important in voiceovers. Another important skill to master is breathing! Using proper breathing techniques as a voice actor is critical in helping you sound natural and conversational. When you’re reading a script, you should never sound like you’re running out of air. When we start running out of air while we’re talking, we just take a breath before the lack of air is even noticeable. Therefore, when you’re doing voiceovers, breathing properly and breathing in the correct places within your script are essential skills to hone.
In order to breathe properly as a voice talent you need to intentionally engage your diaphragm. This will help you control your breath, help with your phrasing, and give you stamina for longer reads.
How to take a diaphragm breath:
1. Stand with your feet slightly apart and raise your arms up straight over your head. Then lower them gently, while focusing on keeping your ribs raised. You don’t need to do this to take a diaphragm breath; however, it helps to position your body when learning how to do it properly.
2. With your hands slightly above your waist position your finger tips so they’re towards your belly button and your thumbs on your back. Also, not needed to take a diaphragm breath but it will be a good indicator if you’re doing it correctly.
3. Once your hands are in place and your ribs are raised, then focus on taking a low, deep breath. This will feel more like a “filling up like a balloon” sensation, or a downward motion, instead of filling your lungs up with air. When you take this breath, make sure that your shoulders do not move up. In actuality, your stomach should move OUT when you INHALE and move IN when you EXHALE. This is very similar to how a baby’s stomach moves while it is sleeping.
4. You should also feel your fingers moving outward with your inhaled breath as well as feeling slight movement in the palms of your hands as your entire diaphragm is moving outward.
5. Here are some exercises that you can practice to help learn how to breathe with your diaphragm:
a) Sit down on a chair with your legs together in front of you. Then bend over so that your chest is touching the top of your legs. Let your arms hang down towards your feet and take a low deep breath. Focus on feeling your stomach moving against your legs.
b) Lay down flat on your back with your hands placed on your stomach. Then relax and take a low, deep breath. You should see your stomach moving UP when you INHALE and DOWN when you EXHALE. You should also feel the movement in your hands, which is a great indicator if you’re doing this correctly.
c) Lastly, try lying down with your body curled over a large yoga ball (or equivalent) with your arms hanging along side, kind of like you’re hugging it. Then roll back and forth to position yourself so that your stomach is the center of your weight, not your chest. Then focus on taking a low, deep breath and feel your stomach move OUTWARD against the ball while you’re inhaling.
Breathing properly is very important in voiceovers, but so is knowing where exactly to breathe. You want to make notations in your script ahead of time telling you where you should breathe so you don’t accidentally run out of air. When notating your script, you want to keep in mind natural phrasing and conversational pauses as well.
As far as how to notate your breaths, that’s entirely up to you. Pick markings that you will remember. Voiceover talent will sometimes use a mid-air comma (like a musical breath notation), or a line like this | or this / or you can connect the words with a long, continuous line in an arch shape to notate NOT to breathe in between them.
So grab some copy, a pencil and remember to breathe.
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