Listen, here’s what YOU as a provider of service, product, or commodity should know BEFORE you spend your money on advertising. Find the right voice to sell the product or idea. Don’t record your own voiced commercial, that’s why professionals like myself have been doing it for decades we’re pros, we know HOW to sell your idea, product or widget. I know, I know you’ve be told “you’ve got a great voice for radio, you should record your commercial” WRONG, I guarantee that the sales rep that told you that, only said that so they would get the buy, anything to get you to sign the contract.

Secondly, let the professionals create the concept idea to successfully promote your product, idea etc. That’s what they are for, they CREATE GREAT advertising campaigns. I know this is probably something you’ve heard before, but I’m just trying to help guide you down the right path.
We (voice over actors, producers, writers, engineers) have been doing this a long time, we KNOW what we’re talking about. Take our advice, listen to our spec spots with an open mind and then make an informed decision. It’s your money, spend it with confidence.

The reoccurring character voice (for example: Nestle Bunny) has got to maintain that sound throughout the campaign, if you get a cold and you need to voice this character you should probably try to reschedule the session for at least a day maybe two, if you’re character has a cold and the client is good by it, work it into the copy, rewrite the script so that the obvious change in the sound of your characters voice fits the script. Easier said than done, because in most cases the client has already seen 5 revisions in the script,approved the one you are given and is a little leery about changing it again. But with a little coaxing and some tweaking by the creative director you CAN pull this off.

Keeping the reoccurring character fresh is just as challenging, many times we forget the voice if it hasn’t been used in a few months, I keep audio files of all my character voices and when I need to refresh it, I just listen back to a previous campaign and get warmed up by listening and parroting the voice until I get a match. You have to exercise your voices often, and I suggest that you do so in the shower, in the car, talking to your 2 year old, wherever you can and keep the creative juice moving forward.

Next time: Wow, you can do that?

Too many times I’ve heard commercials (especially in micro markets) that the same VO is ALL the characters in the spot. First and foremost find as many people as you can to audition for the parts in the building, from the receptionist to the GM if need be. Second, just because the production calls for a “type” of voice, doesn’t hold true for ALL production.

You know the characters you do best are the ones you voice in your car on the way home as you listen to talk radio for instance and you try to emulate the imbecile caller from *city* that has no clue as to what he or she is talking about, or the lady in the grocery store with 3 toddlers in tow trying to get them to behave. Listen to those voices, develop your own ‘character’ to wrap around those types of characters and write the commercial to fit the voice over.

If you’re selling cars, make fun of those over hyped but very well produced mega car dealer ads by having all the production values, but perhaps the VO is a smarmy 88 lb weakling, or even better, if you know a child that can read, and I mean really read and is a drama queen/king, then have them do the VO, run all these specs by the account exec, give them to the client, and sell your ideas on WHY you did what you did. Your job is to sell that clients product and this is but one way of doing it. Next time, we’ll chat about developing the characters in a more pristine environment for say, funeral homes. yes I said it, and I’ll stand by it.

A. A laptop with Windows XP (if you can) and then get Adobe Audition or your favorite audio daw editor (Soundforge, etc)

B. A great USB Powered Mic or ZOOM H2 or H3 Digital Recorder

C. A wireless broadband card.

Your record your breaks, edit them down to the timed length you need and have a 30 or 40 music beds from your prod library already loaded in the laptop, mix it down and email it to yourself via gmail or some other email program. Your board op then opens the same email program at the station and plays it back. The quality is incredible, it will sound like your right there with no drop off, hiss, or any other drop outs that we all have expericenced with Martis Trust me!!, your clients will like it, you’ll like it and it will make you more money in the long run. Questions, just ask me and I’ll be more than happy to help

Well it certainly wasn’t easy, but it can be done, we all have talents, mine happens to be that I can method act on command.. tell me how old I’m supposed to be, what my motivation is and who am I talking to and I can deliver a believable character in moments. However,,,, if the copy is bad to begin with, then we have a whole different ball of wax to melt.  But let me go back where I was.. ummm where was I .. oh yeah, developing your characters when you are the only voice.. I use Adobe Audition exclusivly as my editing tool, so I was able to pitch my voice over on one of the characters slightly without losing it’s believablity, I used an entirely different accented voice on the other read and the Announcer part was my normal speaking voice. Add the a bevy of effects, and light sound bed for the announcer tags and voila’ done.. but there is a caveat to this method of production, you can’t do it very much or you’ll end up doing the same characters over and over again and that just won’t work.

If you listen to the voices in your head, make sure one of them knows what’s going on.

Yes, I understand your frustration, because I’m one of the voices that is trying to cut through those same big deep Don LaFontaine voices that everyone seems to have selling their products or narrating their presentations. All I want is a chance to prove my worth and still make a decent living in an economy that is remeniscent of the Great Depression.

Please feel free to listen to my demos anytime and honestly critique my work I really would appreciate your business.

What was created was some great quick pieces of imaging that conveyed what we wanted to get across, We were inviting ourselves essentially to your lunchtime routine.  I took our ZOOM mic walked through the building and simply asked everyone what they were having for lunch, then pulled some movie, tv drops I got from Audio-Clipboard, created a beatmix and viola’ there you have it. I’ll put it out on the server as right now I’m not in the capacity to do so, and then repost it here for you to listen to.

I would love to be able to work for your company or radio station in a freelance capacity. Is your imaging out of house? I can help, you give me the voice and I produce, or use my voice, it’s not too bad either..that’s how I roll.. what do you do?

Well, this is an interesting bit of stuff, I’m trying to add audio to this page, and finding that I’ve got to jump through some hoops I wasn’t expecting. Good thing for docs page. I believe I can use the WP themes here and use this as my dot com. Media addition will be a challenge