| How To Become Better At Radio Voice-Over Work |
| Written by Lauren Hulbert |
| Saturday, 28 November 2009 08:19 |
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In the current climate, every extra penny that you can bring into your household budget counts. Well, an obvious way of achieving this is to harness a new career. One such career, often overlooked - but surprisingly lucrative is radio voiceover work. In this article, I want to give you a simple, step-by-step plan to ensure that you have plenty of voiceover work coming your way.
In the current climate, every extra penny that you can bring into your household budget counts. Well, an obvious way of achieving this is to harness a new career. One such career, often overlooked - but surprisingly lucrative is radio voiceover work. In this article, I want to give you a simple, step-by-step plan to ensure that you have plenty of voiceover work coming your way. The only way to improve a skill is to practice it. However, the way you practice will make a difference to the speed at which you improve. You don't have to spend a lot of money to start. Just talk to yourself in the mirror and get used to hearing your voice being made out loud. Talk into your voicemail system or use your office dictation machine to listen to yourself on playback. You can make great improvements in your voice-over skills using these very cheap techniques. Then consider investing in some better recording equipment. You could buy a computer microphone and use your computer's processors to help you improve your voice over talent. Another great way is to get into public speaking - as daunting as it might seem. Now, public speaking is often thought to be the most scariest thing in the world for some people. Yet others seem to thrive on the experience. It comes down to drive and practice. Harness the skill of public speaking by talking at parties or work affairs or joining toastmaster clubs in your area. You need to take the first step - as that really is the hardest. Once you generate momentum, you will notice that maintaining momentum is much easier (not easy - just easier). You need to ensure that you notice how well you control your sound, your diction and your breadth of voiceover options. This step will be the one that allows you to apply for a greater range of voiceover jobs. So, to improve your sound, you should start off just talking in your natural tone. Don't try too hard at the start. Listen back to your self on tape and try to work out what you could do to improve your tonality, your dicition and your pace. Controlling your breathing is the key skill. You then need to keep sounding clear, but try to change more unusual aspects of your speech and workout what you need to do in order to create a given result. What do you need to do to sound happy or sad? What about creating a voiceover from somebody from the North or South? Remember to judge your recordings on the basis of believablity and comprehensibility. Keep a diary or some ability to record your findings and experiments so that you learn and improve your voiceover talent more rapidly. Remember to practice consistently is the key to enhancing your voice-over talent. Try to set aside 30 minutes a day for 3 months, note your findings and strive to improve. You will be one of the top 1% of voice over providers by the end of the next season if you do this. About the Author: Getting better at voiceovers is simply a matter of working hard on your voice and noticing what you need to do to make your voice-over talent better |