The Seminar That Almost Wasn't

I've mentioned in a couple of past posts an all day voice over seminar that is part of my training. Well, after two storm delays, it finally happened--although the weather was bad this day too.

Held on Saturday, January 18th, 2014 at the Embassy Suites Boston-Marlboro, and taught by SAV's Steven Wahlberg (yes, but it's a very distant relation), seven of us artists-in-training learned all there is to learn about The Business. That is to say, all we can learn in one day! I'll give you a relatively quick overview here.

The day was divided up into six sessions: three in the morning, then lunch, and three more in the afternoon, with a short break in-between each session.

Session 1: Introductions and Studio Techniques

The morning started with introductions of ourselves. In class we had four former teachers (including myself), and three musician/singers. Steven comes from finance--he used to be a stockbroker.

We then moved on to talk about the two main kinds of voice-over: narration and commercial. 80% of the work these days are narration, which can be anything from documentaries, audiobooks, PSA's to on-hold messaging and airport/elevator announcements. (More on this later.)

Session One ended with a discussion of some studio techniques. Most important: Be Yourself. Use what Steven calls R.B.S--Relax, Breathe, Smile. But do your homework and preparation--mark up your copy and get into the part. After all, we are actors!

Session 2: Pitch Vs. Dynamics

A quick break, and back for Session Two: Pitch Vs. Dynamics (Volume). Pitch is how low or high your voice is; volume how soft or loud.

Picture a graph with Volume on the X axis (softer to louder) and Pitch on the Y (lower to higher). We used a 1-5 scale.

In turn, Steven had us each say the sentence "I like chocolate". The class had to determine at what point on the graph our voices are. It was decided that I'm pretty average, at around (3,3). Then he picked a random point and we had to repeat the sentence at that place. This takes some practice; it's easy to change volume, but not pitch.

The lesson here is to think of your voice as an instrument. A good way to start is recite the scale-doe, ray, mi, fa, so, la, tee, doe-- at a certain volume and go up on pitch, then do the opposite: keep at one pitch and go up and down in volume. I'll be doing this on my long commute, when I'm alone in the car!

Session 3: Articulation and Pace

We did an interesting exercise for this session. We all had the same copy--a script about the Northern Lights. In turn, we read the script with a carrot held in our teeth, right at the front of the mouth so there was room for our tongue to move. (This exercise used to be done with a cork, but no one uses cork anymore.) We all had a laugh because of how ridiculous it looks, but there is a serious point.

You have to articulate your words, make sure they are understood. Practicing this exercise will help determine what words are "crushed", and you can practice more with those words. Be careful, though,  you don't want to over articulate.

The morning ended with an exercise on pacing, which is how fast you read the copy.


The Pace Scale

<-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------->
0                                                                     5                                                                           10


On the Pace Scale, a zero is very slow and hard to listen to. A 10 is very fast.

To practice pacing, we used a short Lunesta spot. Lunesta is a prescription drug, so we actually have to vary our pacing. For the main part of the read, you want around a five, but you want to really speed up at the end, say a 7 or 8, for the legal disclaimers. Why? Well, the dirty little secret is twofold: 1. The ad agency wants to spend most of the time (for a 30 second spot, call it 26 or 27 seconds) talking about the good of the drug. 2. You're not really supposed to pay attention to the disclaimers.

When thinking about pacing, it's always better to go long than short. If the finished cut is supposed to be 30 seconds, and your raw cut is 33 or 34, that's OK because post production always cuts to time. But if you give them a 30 second cut for a 30 second spot, they will end up short.

Lunchtime!

At around noon, we broke for lunch, which was catered by the hotel and paid for by the school. I had the turkey club wrap w/fries, chocolate lava cake with vanilla ice cream, and a bottle of San Pellegrino Sparkling Water. Mmmmmmm, so good.

Session 4: Emotions

Back half of the day now, and we come back to work on emotions.

The main emotions are: Shocked, Happy, Sad, Grim, Funny, Mysterious, and Excited. Of course, there are others--Proud, Hopeful, Sensual/Sexy.

In this session, we all read a short piece of copy from our workbooks. We had to pick an emotion and the rest of the class, with out looking, only listening, had to guess which one we were doing. I chose excited. Most of the class got it. Then we did another round, in which Steven told us, via handout cards, which one we had to act out. I got proud. No one guessed right.

Session 5: Narration Vs. Commercial

We said in the beginning that these days narration is 80% of the work; 20% is commercial. Now we got deeper into the differences.

For narration, the main goal is to inform-NOT to persuade, convince, or sell. These have long run times; the finished cuts are usually an hour or more. You have to sound like you're interested in the topic. You're the authority, but don't be condescending.  

Narration can run from TV shows (Mike Rowe on Deadliest Catch) to character work (in audiobooks).

Conversely, commercials are a call to action, the main goal is to persuade. These are very short--generally from 15-60 seconds.

Session 6: The Home Studio, Marketing, and Wrap-up

For the last hour, we moved away from performance and talked about the business part of The Business.

First, the home studio. While you may have to occasionally go into a professional studio, most work can be done at home with some basic equipment: computer, interface, headphones, and a microphone/mic stand. For software, Audacity, Pro Tools, or (for Mac users) Garage Band will do the trick. That's it!

Next, marketing. Social media is big here. Start a website, open a business page on Facebook and join groups on Linked In. Contact advertising agencies in smaller markets. Join P2P (pay to play) sites like voices.com, voice123.com, and voplanet.com, among others. Just get your name and demo out there.

And don't get discouraged. For the first year or so, you'll be spending 90% of time looking for work and 10% actually doing work.

Finally, as a wrap-up exercise, Steven asked the class to evaluate each of our voices and what kind of work we would be good for. When it came to me, my classmates thought that I have a relatable, guy next door kind of voice, and I would be good for, among other things, electronics, hardware, and beer.


In the end, it was a long, fun day full of information and good people. It was worth the wait.