Perth Film School

Voice training is so much more than turning on a mic and talking- to enable yourself to have a successful career in the business, you need to dig deep and make sure that the most important element in this job is in the best shape: your voice. Have you heard of the saying, “it’s not what you say, it’s how you say it”? This is implied in the voice acting world too. Make sure you take the time to improve your voice, your ability to convince people and your commitment to the script. The following are some tips that should help you:

1.) Speak Clearly

With any voiceover- no matter how fast- clarity is key. Every single word needs to be heard by the listener, thus, any messed up sentence could damage that. Try practice speaking with correct pronunciation and enunciation. It can feel a little much at first, but on the recording it will sound just right.

2.) Speak With Confidence

If you hesitate or mumble throughout a line, it shows a lack of confidence and hurts everything, especially your voiceover. Own what you say, make it yours and speak with all the confidence in the world. Imagine for example, that you’re trying to karate chop through a cinderblock- any bit of doubt will lead to a broken hand, and not a broken block.

3.) Mean What You Say

Before I spoke about confidence; this tip is about speaking with connection to your material. You have to believe what you’re talking about. When you speak with enthusiasm, people can hear the difference. It’s very subtle, but truly resonating with your script will make your voice sound much more believable and convincing.

4.) Treat Your Voice With Kindness

Your body is your instrument. Watch how professional musicians take care of their instruments: they obsessively clean, maintain and fix it if need be. How to you handle your voice? What do you do to take care of it? Here are some tips for it:

Keep hydrated throughout the day
Avoid places where you have to shout over noise to be heard
Sleep for seven hours a night (at least). A tired voice sounds bad, and a tired body won’t make that any better
Avoid whispering. It’s hard on your voice and strains at your vocal cords

5.) Warm Up

You should always start each morning with warm ups. Stretch your facial muscles. Go through your progressions. Do your lip rolls. Hum. Relax your neck muscles. Do your breathing exercises. Even if you’ve never spent time to warmup, just take five minutes in the morning to prep your voice.

6.) Start “Sight Reading”

In music, sight reading is the ability to read a sheet of music- something that you’ve never seen before- and play it on your instrument. For major projects that could take hours and hours- like performing the voiceover for an audiobook or educational video- it can be very time consuming to read and re read the script again before even starting your voiceover! Instead, practice speaking well during the first read-through:it might take a while before your mouth and eyes start working in sync, but it will blend nicely over time.