For quite some time now, with a few obvious exceptions, the trend in voiceover work has been away from the classic announcer sound and to a real or natural sound. Now, you might think this would be bad news for those of us who do voiceovers professionally. After all, just about anyone can and does talk and everyone who talks sounds like a real person. Right?
Well, sort of. First, what a casting director or voiceover producer means by “sounding natural or real” is kind of like what they mean when they say they want models who look like real people for their magazine or television ads. Somehow all the “real” people still end up looking pretty stunning, don’t they? The same applies to the world of voiceover. Real or natural performance is still acting, just different acting than it was 25 years ago.
My friend Caryn Clark recently attended a local networking event that helped her think through some of these ideas about why hiring a professional voice talent is still the best plan if you want to do the most effective audio and video projects. Caryn’s blog post caught the attention of Stephanie Ciccarelli, who in turn posted about the subject on Vox Daily. Both Caryn’s original post and Stephanie’s post resulted in some very interesting comments.
thanks for spotlighting this, bob.
and i love your analogy to on-camera “real people”.
if and when a client takes the “real sound” direction to its most ridiculous extreme in a voiceover, it will mean cutting the copy by 75% to make room for all the “uh”s, and “y’know”s, and “man”s, and “yo”s and “yaknowwhudimean”s, and “totally”s, and “dude”s, and casual profanity adverbs and adjectives.
“word”.
Rowell,
Very good points. Dude. Or something like that. Thanks for adding to the conversation.
Be well,
Bob
Hi Bob,
That really was an eye-opening experience for me. I too really like your analogy of “real” people in voice and on camera … yup, they’re still stunning on camera, for sure. Well, except for maybe the unibrow girl on the Planters Peanuts commercial. 🙂
Thanks Bob!!!
Caryn,
You’re right. There are some exceptions, but I think most of those are more for some specific characteristic like the unibrow rather than because the look like “real” people in the most ordinary sense of that word.
Thank you for adding to the conversation.
Be well,
Bob