How to:
voice overs
March 2022
2 min read
Using voice over in animation or video is a great tool to create an element of trust and help audiences resonate with your brand and key messages.
Read on to find out how to effectively chose, source and direct a voice artist to record the perfect audio for your content.
Selecting your voice
artist
Firstly, in order to find a suitable artist, it is important to reflect upon the type of project you are creating. This is because voice artists will often specialise in different areas, for example: corporate videos, narrative animations or commercial adverts. Match your project to their speciality.
You will also need to know your target audience, because this may affect the age, gender and dialect of the voice artist. You can use these factors to best resonate with your audience.
To help your decision further, most voice artists will have demos that you can listen to on their website or portfolio. Some voice artist will even record a short demo of your script, so you can get an idea of how the final product will sound.
Some voice artists record in a professional studio, and others will record in a home studio. Both can be of great sound quality, but again, you can use demos to determine the quality of the recording you will receive.
The script
Make sure the voice artist has received your script within plenty of time before the session, so that they can familiarise themselves with the text and ask any questions they may have.
It is also important to make sure the script they receive is a final version, as making lots of changes to the script during a session will most likely cause confusion.
However, when hearing your script being read aloud by the voice artist, there might be some small tweaks you would like to make to ensure it flows nicely. This is very doable and artists are often adaptable to small, on the spot tweaks.
Directing
If you would like to direct the recording session you can join the voice artist, often remotely, while they record your script. This means you can input and make sure you are happy with the final recording.
You can give the voice artist some background about the project, target audience, objective, and where it will be showcased. This information can help the voice artist better understand how to deliver your script.
Additional detail like tone, pace and energy is useful for the voice artist to get this right for you.
To warm up, a run through of the script can be useful to see what works and what doesn’t. In addition recording a number of takes with a different tone/pace can help to choose what will work best.
If you are ever unsure about anything in a script, it is best to record alternate takes which can later be edited. This avoids later re-record parts or the whole script at a cost.
Pickups
After the recording session, the voice artist will send you the files. Depending on what you/the creative agency would like, the voice artist may do some clean up, or give you the raw files.
Pickups are often granted by the voice artist if anything changes down the line, but this is usually at an extra cost. Always check and agree this with the voice artist before the recording session.
