During the webinar you'll learn:

• How to understand FULLY what all specs mean
• Know the difference between your VOICE and THE SELL
• How to get out of your EGO and into the writer's perspective
• When it's OK to improvise
• What an ALTERNATE read means
• How to create winning alternate reads
• How to nail the SELL and re-nail it
• How to re-create your winning audition in the actual session
• How to create more "range" in your auditions
• The 4 Easy Steps to cold reading
• And more!

To sign up for the event or to learn more, just follow this little blue link!

3,500 free voice over scripts

The good people at Edge Studio have put together a collection of over 3,500 voice over scripts that are completely free to use as you see fit.

Commercial script categories include:

• Business
• Food and Beverage
• Health and Beauty Aids
• Kid's Products
• Retail
• Transportation
• Travel and Entertainment
• Character
• Dialogue
• Promos
• Trailers
• Imaging
• Public Service Announcements

Narration script categories include:

• Animation, Cartoon, Video Games, and Toys
• Audiobooks
• Biographies
• Corporate
• Documentaries
• E-learning
• Inspiration, Relaxation, and Meditation
• Medical and Pharmaceutical
• Podcasts
• Promotional
• Self-guided Tours
• Telephony

Getting access to the scripts

To grab up these scripts for yourself, all you have to do is head on over to their website (by clicking on the link that follows) and signing up for their free newsletter. I know that many people are afraid to hand out their e-mail address — and rightly so. But the Edge Studio newsletter is pure information that only comes out about once a week or so. It will never clutter up your inbox and, in fact, give you even more helpful advice for your voice-over journey.

To grab the free voice over scripts, click here.

But this approach can often lack the ever-important emotional punch.

In this post, I'd like to share with you a wonderful voice acting technique that will help you to breathe life into the lists that often appear in voice-over scripts.

The purpose of the list

Quite often, the lists that appear in commercial scripts are meant to introduce the benefits of the product or service being discussed. For example, in a typical car spot you might see a sentence like this:

"You get air conditioning, power steering, anti-lock brakes...even dual airbags."

Each of these benefits is meant to wet the listener's appetite and entice the listener into buying this particular car. Which means, of course, that as a voice actor it is your job to make each one of these benefits sound like "mana from the gods" without sounding like an announcer or crossing the boundary into the land of "sappy, melodramatic overacting."

And just how does one go about that?

Making it personal

In order to breathe life into these often-dull and lifeless scripted lists one must first ask oneself, "What does each one mean to me personally?"

Using the example script above, think about how you feel about having air conditioning in your car — especially on a hot summer's day. Imagine your relief when you finally escape the oppressive, baking sun by hopping into your air-conditioned car. If you're as old as I am and can remember the days before power steering, imagine the first time you ever drove a car with power steering. Think about what anti-lock brakes and then dual airbags mean to you (hint: the reason they are listed is because they are a safety feature that brings peace of mind.)

Now that you have your own, personal answers to the importance of each of the items in the list, practice reading each one out loud with those emotions firmly in mind. Don't read through all four items at once — not yet. Instead, practice each one individually until you solidify the image each one has to you. With that accomplished, then try reading the list. As always, record yourself and listen back to your performance. If you formed personal images of each item in the list correctly, then you should be able to hear it in your read.

Conclusion

Hopefully this post will help you make lists sound more believable. But please keep this in mind: this is only the tip of the list-reading iceberg. There is a lot more that can be said on the subject (a few being smoothly flowing from one item to the next, reading the list so that it sets up the sentence that follows, and taking into account the overall goal that the script is trying to achieve.) But, if you are a beginner to voice-over acting, these tips will help you get even closer to voice-over perfection.

If you are a beginner to voice overs, memorize the following list:

• Setup
• Body
• Resolve
• Button (optional)

Let's look at each in a little more detail shall we?

The Steup

The purpose of the setup is to grab the listeners attention and draw them into the vocal world you are creating.

The Body

In the body, the meat of the message is delivered. It is designed to hold the listener's attention by answering the vital who, what, where, when, why, and how questions. Often the solution to the problem and the thinking behind solution appear here.

The Resolve

The final must-have section is the resolve where the most important information is restated along with the product and/or company name plus a slogan (if there is one.) The restated information MUST linger in the listeners mind for the spot to be effective.

The Button (optional)

Tagging along at the very end of some commercials is the "button". You won't find any life-or-death information here. But a well crafted button will add humor, cleverness, or finality to the spot helping it to remain even longer in the mind of the listeners.

Finally: an example!

Let's take a look at an example of a real script. I've gone ahead and colored each section to make them easier to spot Setup-Body-Resolve-Button:

Ever since man first put soup in a can, not much has changed. It still tastes like soup in a can. Now there’s something better: Myers Country Fresh frozen soups. Frozen as soon as they’re cooked, so they taste the closest to homemade. Rich Cream of Broccoli, hearty Chicken Noodle, creamy Seafood Bisque, and more. Fresh frozen in their own microwaveable bowls. Myers Country Fresh frozen soups. So fresh, we just couldn’t put them in a can. Now, go grab your spoon!

One thing to keep in mind is that a company's slogan is not necessarily a button at the end of a script. In the example, "So fresh, we just couldn’t put them in a can." is the slogan. The button is the "Now, go grab your spoon!" portion.

One final tip: when reading the copy of your latest voice over job, remember to shift your body weight from one foot to the other as you transition from one section to the next. This physical motion will actually help your voice make the aural transition as well; just remember to stay on mic!

Voice acting is all about creating believable characters. Now, I don't know about you, but I find it a struggle to create a believable character out of absolutely nothing. I could try to imagine what it's like to be a different person — say an uber-rich software tycoon or an ultra-suave ladies man. But since I am (much to my dismay) neither of them, it is impossible to know exactly how they feel. Or is it?

Let's say you were asked to play the part of an ultra-suave ladies man. What you could do is recall in as much detail as possible a time when you had successfully asked a woman out on a date — or better still — a time you felt extremely romantic and passionate. Choose the most vivid and detailed memory that is stored in the grey matter of your mind. Make sure that you can still feel the honest emotions of that event. That's important. Then, with that memory in mind and those honest and deep emotions flowing through you, you read the copy. If you've done it right, you should have continued to strongly feel the emotions all throughout the read. And when you listen back to it, you should be able to hear those emotions coming out in your performance.

This is what "making the copy your own" really means. It means that you use your own real experiences to add life and believability to your reads.

(NOTE: Be sure to check out the post called List of acting emotions for practice to learn more!)