British Voiceovers Love Direction
I’m a British Voice Over, always looking to be as productive as possible for my clients around the World. It’s widely accepted in the Voiceover community that Client Directed sessions are the most productive and time efficient way to do business.
There are lots of advantages, including:
- Immediate Feedback From The Client
- Getting the job done in one session
- No back and forth with revisions
- Forging a stronger working relationship between client and voice artist
Thats perfect for me when I’m narrating an English text, to a native English speaker, not necessarily always in the UK, but you get the idea. If it’s a subject I’m familiar with, like something medical, that helps too. I had a 30 year background in UK healthcare before becoming a voice artist by the way. Personally, if it’s ever possible, I’ll always prefer a remotely directed session for the reasons above. It’s a great way to organise my time, the client gets what they want quickly and things get done much quicker, so everyone’s happy.
Remotely Directed Voiceover
A remote directed session allows both the client and the voice over artist to be in the same virtual room online. I work from my studio in Hampshire, UK, whilst the client connects with me online from their studio. It’s done sometimes via platforms like Skype or Zoom etc and its a great way to get feedback in real time.
Studios with engineers will often opt elect for a more stable, high quality connection such as Source Connect, or ipDTL. This allows me to focus on performance whilst they record at their end.
Self Directed Voiceover
There are occasions though when I think a directed session isn’t the best approach.
It tends to be when there’s either a lot of technical language, or even more so when there are lots of foreign words to negotiate.
The benefit of a self directed session with these projects is that I get to do my own research, practice the pronunciation in a safe place and tie it in to my performance.
Medical Narration
The problem with any text that’s heavy on technical language is a tendency to focus on accurate delivery, often at the expense of everything else. This is often the case with medical narration.
Client briefs for this kind of work often focus on technical accuracy and clinical literacy, with almost little attention given to the style of the delivery.
What can happen is that the performance comes across as wooden. The aim was to impart knowledge and information to an audience, but if the narration doesn’t engage the audience then there’s little point.
Having the ability to practice the pronunciation in slow time allows me to do the most important thing when recording – deliver convincing narration that engages the listeners.
Pressure Of Performing Live
If I’ve only just learned some new medical terminology, or familiarised myself with terms in a foreign language, having other people (experts) staring and listening as you record isn’t the best way to get the best performance out of me.
Museum Guides & Audioguides
One of my favourite VoiceOver clients is Digital Tangible, they’re an Audioguide company based in Spain. They make use of my British Voiceover services for the English versions of their many high quality audioguides in museums and at exhibitions across Europe, as well as City Guides.
Each guide presents its own linguistic challenges, be they pronunciation issues in a language thats alien to me, or the explanation of something deeply technical.
I enjoy the linguistic gymnastics involved with these projects and so far it’s only the Dutch language that’s proven less than intuitive. Seriously, (English speakers), try breaking down the following phonetically:
‘located in the Vrijmetselaarsweg’
It’s not exactly intuitive to a British Voiceover that that ‘ Vrij ’ is pronounced ‘ Vray ’. in my opinion.
Sample Recordings
To get around the problem of a presenting challenging text, in a foreign language (for an English Language Narrator), this company provides scratch recordings of tricky words by locals or specialists. They anticipate the challenges that a British VO will experience and see the value of taking time at the start to set me up for success.
The benefit is that I get to hear how it should sound, as spoken by a specialist, allowing me to analyse the phonetics and once again prepare in slow time before doing the recording. Once thats nailed, I can start to think about intonation, performance and how best to deliver it convincingly in British RP English.
Technical Language on Directed Sessions
A live directed session would undoubtedly get us there is the end, but remember that the whole point of a directed session is to get quality performance direction and deliver quickly.
We’d probably be going back and forth until the pronunciation was accurate, but with all those people in the room thats as far as the session will probably take me.
It’s going to be wooden again, not relaxed and not as good as it could be.
In the end, this compromise is time well spent and it stops the endless need for revisions due to inaccuracies.
When I receive the scratch recordings, I’ll usually just do a quick read back for them myself; nothing mixed or polished, just checking the pronunciation.
If there’s still a need for performance direction, thats fine. We can organise it and then just focus on style, pacing and tone etc.
I’m a big fan of directed sessions, but when it comes to technical and foreign language content, a non-directed session always gets my vote to start with.
Do you agree, drop me a line and I’ll be happy to pick up with you ?
Engage Listeners in Your Medical Text, City or Museum Guide
If you’re in need of a quality, British Male Voiceover talent for your medical text, a city or museum guide, Feel free to connect. If you’re a Dutch Medical Institution planning a guided tour of the history of surgery in the Nederlands, I can handle it. I might just need a day or so to warm my lips up. What ever you need, I’ll be happy to chat things through.
A no obligation, free audition of your text is available for you.
Best regards
James Fowler
