the imaging voice

Written by Justin Coombes-Pearce

The different types of voice over work

In the old days when we thought of the term voice over we often imagined a tall handsome man standing behind a shiny microphone with one hand cupped behind an ear unleashing his dulcet tones to inform us why ladies should be choosing a particular brand of washing powder in their laundry, thankfully that is not the industry today.

While there is still work out there for those with that announcer style voice the industry has grown and matured into a diverse world full of opportunities for pretty much any style of voice.

Here are some of the different types of opportunities available to voice talent today.

Commercial

Contrary to popular belief this form of voice over is mostly for voice actors as it generally requires playing a role of a character. Playing a character does not always mean a funny voice it more often than not means playing a role of what may seem as an everyday person, more importantly a believable character. As much as we still hear many commercials with one announcer reading a script in an in your face “buy now” style, the more affective form and most widely used form of commercial is through creative writing and role playing by the voice actor.

Television Promo

This is one form of voice over that many people believe is easy, my theory is that it only looks easy because the people doing it are so good at their job they make it look easy. Reading a TV Promo script can be one of the most challenging forms of voice over as it requires the voice talent to become part of the pre produced promo. What many seem to forget is that TV Promo voice over’s are also selling a product. Whether it is the Prime Time News, a Drama Series or the Late Night Movie the aim of the VO is to make it a “must see”. There is an art to it and out of the select few who have gone on to be the familiar voices we trust on our television sets there is still only a handful who have mastered the art.

Narration

There are so many possibilities that can fall under the banner of Narration. It could be a documentary, corporate or training video, an audio tour guide at a museum or even interactive training with a new software package. One of the wonderful plusses of this type of voice work is that more often than not the clients are looking for someone who can sound pleasant and real while being engaging and understandable. This is not necessarily an easy feat and I will go into more detail about sounding real a little later. Nonetheless there are so many different possibilities and opportunities for this type of work it can sometimes be a great starting point for people.

Animation and Character

Wow, what an exciting field to work in, well so I am told. Now this is voice acting to the extreme and really is a specialty field. I should explain something here. I really don’t place people who do impersonations of existing cartoon characters here as to me a true character voice is someone who can create a host of original and believable characters. These are often used for animation and character driven advertising campaigns and I guess puppets come to think of it and so on. Remembering that it is far more than producing a funny voice, it comes back to something I will continue to refer to… believability. A perfect example of this is The Simpsons voices, no matter how far fetched those characters are they are still believable and you would rarely if at all stop and imagine the voice actor behind the microphone doing the voices while watching an episode. Keep in mind that all the voices on the show were all on camera and stage actors before they were cartoon voices and we quite often forget how incredibly talented those performers are because they make it look so easy. They do this because they are so good but you too can be good with the right training and development. We will get to training shortly.

Audio Book

This is probably the fastest growing industry in the voice over world and there are many voice professionals making a lucrative career out of reading audio books. There is an art to it of course and it can also be dissected into numerous categories. There are people who specialize in reading character driven fiction and there are those who read information driven non fiction and each is an art in itself.

Podcast

Believe it or not many of the podcasts you tune into are presented by hired voices. Quite often the person who has a message to get across and especially those who have a product to promote and sell will hire a voice that will present better than themselves. Like narration this voice will need to be pleasant and real and more importantly they will need to sound like the information is coming directly from them, this is in fact a huge part of voice over and voice acting as a whole and we will go into more detail shortly.

Radio Imaging

We all have favorite radio stations and more often than not we become very familiar with the voices that come on between the music reminding us what station we are listening to… and why. Like TV promo this quite often seems easier than it actually is. Remembering that a large selection of the voices who do these sweepers and station id’s are also the producers of all the fancy effects that go along with them. Radio or voice imaging as it is widely known requires a voice that generally pierces through the music on our radios, sending a clear message without sounding offensive. One of the bonuses of this form of voice over is that there are a multitude of radio stations worldwide and quite often a collection of them are looking for a fresh new sound at one time. If you can become that sound then you can make a nice little income, well at least until the stations decide to reformat again.

Now this is obviously not the whole voice over industry wrapped up into 7 neat little packages, rather it’s an overview of a large chunk of the available work for voice professionals.

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