Category Archives: Helpful Hints

Some tips for creating “Character” voices

Posted on by admin
Some tips for creating Character voices
15 Jan

Voice talents are accustomed to using their own voice and their own manner of speaking when they work to create narrations and voice-overs for TV, movies, and even for telephone greetings and messages. However; there may be times when a client specifically asks for a certain type of voice to be used, or for a particular set of characteristics to inform your voice-over: the client may want you to portray a person or character different from yourself. Sometimes, they will require a more mature, older-sounding voice for their documentary, or someone with an accent. This may be an intimidating prospect for some voice talents; but it is actually a chance for you to showcase your versatility and step out of your comfort zone. You may already have some quick impersonations you can perform, but it can’t really hurt you to know how to portray other people, or to tweak your voice to make it sound the way the client wants. After all, the most successful voice talents are known to be “chameleons”: people who can portray men, women, children, and even fantasy characters. Here are some tips for trying out different “character” voices:

Look for inspiration in real life – Perhaps you know someone with a distinct voice with certain quirks like lisps or mispronunciations. You can use them as inspiration for a character voice, or as a “vocal template”.  Then, tweak the basic voice by adding your own quirks and unique characteristics (like a drawl or expression).

Try to study and imitate different accents – See if you can do a convincing accent: British, Boston, South American…try a variety of accents to see if they are easy for you to pull off. Watch talk shows and news programs to see how people from different countries talk; and see if you can do the same. Try out different voices to see which one seems more appropriate for the script.

Practice – This is the only way that you will ever get better at doing different voices. Constant practice is the key to nailing authentic accents and characters. Try to stay in character during auditions, and try your accents on native speakers to get their reaction and feedback.

Doing vocal work using a different voice than your own may seem daunting at first; but the more that you do it, the more comfortable of an experience it becomes for you. Vocal versatility will ensure that you’re not just a “one-trick vocal pony”, and that you have more to offer the client than just your well-modulated speaking voice.

ProVoice USA offers Professional Voice-over and Audio Production services. We have extensive experience in creating narrative audio for TV, radio, and online projects with no-haggle pricing. Call us up at (877) 865-3459 or send us an e-mail at info@provoiceusa.com to learn more about our services.

Top 3 Reasons for Hiring a Professional Voice Talent

Posted on by admin
Top 3 Reasons for Hiring a Professional Voice Talent
20 Jun

Are you having a hard time deciding whether or not you should hire a professional voice talent for your commercials? This decision could be a breaking point in making your commercial or advertisement highly saleable. If you are still hesitant, consider these top three reasons for having a professional voice over liven up your commercials.

  1. Brand Familiarity

Customers want to hear a familiar voice. People respond to well-modulated, clearly spoken words with good diction. Hiring an experienced voice talent will spruce up your commercials and make your audience remember your taglines and your brand. You will want your customers to relate to your videos and immediately recognize that it is you. It is even better to use the same voice over for a period of time so that your audience will recognize the voice, thus, they will recognize your brand.

  1. Versatility and Personality

Having a professional means you will have the opportunity to maximize their abilities at your disposal. They will also be able to listen to your directions and suggestions to help create the memorable scenes and segments that you want people to immediately identify. Professional voice talents may cover a number of different subjects, undertake a number of different projects, and add personality and character to your commercials.

  1. Authenticity and Style

Having a professional voice over actor can give authenticity to your commercials and advertisements. Professionals have extensive acting background in front of a camera or onstage. Working with a talented voice over professional will make the world of difference to your productions through their use of various tones and their ability give coherence to your voice over productions.

Where to Find the Pros

Voiceover talent can be delivered to you via email in as short as 15 minutes by ProVoice USA. When you choose ProVoice USA, you deal DIRECTLY with the talent. You are not paying for a middleman. Have a listen to the demos and read some testimonials from satisfied clients—we think you’ll realize that you’ve found the one voiceover site that’s worth bookmarking. Every project is taken seriously and done with the highest standards. We hope that ProVoiceUSA.com can fulfill all your voice over talent needs. Check out our website at http://provoiceusa.com to listen to our demos.

How to Improve Your Speaking Abilities

Posted on by admin
How to Improve Your Speaking Abilities
07 May

If you’re someone who has an interest in doing voice overs, you should know, as with everything, you must be prepared for the task you are to do. Before you pull out a mic and start recording, take in mind these tips to improve your speaking abilities.

Speak clearly

This is a definite no-brainer. Whatever voiceover — no matter how fast or wacky — clarity is key. Practice correct pronunciation and enunciation; every word needs to be understood by the listener.

Speak with confidence and mean what you say

These two things go hand in hand. Even if you mean what you say but don’t speak with confidence, there is a chance no one would believe you. But if you speak with confidence and don’t mean what you say, no one will believe you either because even you don’t believe yourself.

Treat your voice with kindness

With voice over acting, your body is your instrument so you must make sure to take care of yourself. You should always get enough rest, keep hydrated, and avoid straining your voice.

Relax

Take a deep breath and smile. Worrying won’t help so just trust in your voice training and do your best with everything you have to do.

If you are looking for TV or radio commercial voiceover talent, a professional sound for your phone system, website, or a narration for your corporate video, then ProVoiceUSA is perfect for you.

They are a full service professional voiceover and audio production facility, located in Southern California, near Los Angeles. They offer the best in quality and customer service at the lowest rates around. With over 20 years of professional voiceover and audio production experience, ProVoiceUSA is here to provide you with the right voice for your project.

4 Tips for Creating An Effective Voice Over

Posted on by admin

Male Talent Recording an Effective Voice Over | 4 Tips for Creating An Effective Voice Over | ProVoice USA

Despite being a regular subject of debate among filmmakers, voice overs remain an immensely popular narrative tool. That may be because for every poor or improper use of a voiceover, there are numerous high profile examples of extremely effective voice overs, in everything from cinema to commercials. So what makes a voice over effective? Speaking from years of experience, ProVoiceUSA has some insights that can help.

Ask Yourself If It’s Necessary

As with any tool in your filmmaking or narrative arsenal, not every technique is effective in every situation. Whether or not a voice over will be appropriate for your narrative will depend on what message you want to send, and how you want your audience to feel about it. The ideal situation for most voice overs is when you need to deliver a complicated message in a short amount of time.

Match The Voice With The Message

There are countless messages, and nearly as many voices to deliver them. Don’t settle for a voice that is just adequate for the story or message you are sharing; choose the perfect voice, one that doesn’t just transmit your message, but enhances it.

Provide Originality

Your audience has seen a lot of stories before, heard many voice overs. To make your mark on the audience, you need to make yours stand out. This may be by having multiple actors engaged in dialogue in the voice over, or putting a new spin on a popular style, or even having the actor sing the lines.

Don’t Put Too Much Weight On Voice Alone

There’s a lot of good that a well-done voice over can do, but rarely is it intended to carry a performance on its own. If the visual story is weak, or poorly made, even a good voice over won’t be able to fully compensate for that. Place the emphasis where it belongs. Similarly, try to develop your production so that it can still be understood with the sound off, as modern viewers commonly watch videos without sound, particularly on mobile devices.

In Conclusion

A good voice over can dramatically enhance a narrative and turn a decent film or video into a great one, while used incorrectly, it can hurt the effectiveness of a narrative. These tips will help you pull off the former. On top of that, the team at ProVoiceUSA has all the voice talent you could wish for your project! Contact us today to schedule a recording session and hear how it’s done.

3 Popular Myths About Voice Acting

Posted on by admin
3 Popular Myths About Voice Acting
21 Mar

People don’t often give much thought to the significance of voice acting, despite how prevalent it is in the media they consume every day, from TV ads to animations to movies. The rising popularity of audio books has blown up a whole new field of vocal performance and acting, but still people don’t know much about the industry. That can make it hard for people trying to break into voice acting to find their way, or for regular consumers to understand what the voice actor career is like. ProVoiceUSA is here to help shed some light on some of the biggest myths about voice acting.

You Need Popular Character Voices to Succeed

Some people believe that in order to make it in voice acting, you need to be able to mimic popular actors or cartoon characters, and that can make a good foundation. Sometimes the best and most valuable voice you have is your own.It’s good to practice developing your own style and the ability to mimic popular characters, for a well rounded skill set.

Since It’s Just Your Voice, It’s Easy To Get Into

Because you’re never on screen, some people believe that voice acting must be easy to do, and this is one of the most prevalent myths in the industry. While it may not necessarily require any formal acting training, voice acting is still demanding and requires skill that any good casting director or agent will be able to recognize. Training is always beneficial.

It Doesn’t Take Much Effort

Similar to what we mentioned above, many audiences get the impression that because you don’t have to physically appear that voice acting isn’t taxing or difficult work. On the contrary, it can be incredibly hard on one’s throat, and more than one voice actor has had to cut their career short because of damage to their vocal chords. Imagine doing a well known voice, like the Cookie Monster, for hours at a time, and still needing to ensure that it is emotive enough for the story.

Voice acting is a unique industry full of opportunity, and the team at ProVoiceUSA knows all to well the challenges that come with it! We have everything an aspiring voice actor, or company in need of voice talent could ask for. Contact us today to learn more.

3 Ways to Better Control Your Voice

Posted on by admin

Top-Notch Vocal Performance

Voice acting is a profession that demands a lot of endurance from a fairly sensitive part of your body. The strain on your vocal cords can be pretty taxing, and more so if you don’t properly control your voice. Fortunately, your ProVoiceUSA team can help. There are a lot of ways to practice good voice control, and we thought we would highlight some of the big ones.

Breathe Well

Good voice control starts before a single sound comes out. Good voice control starts with good breath control. Fortunately, breathing comes even more naturally to us than talking, so it’s a great place to start the right habits. Learn how your body feels and moves when you breathe deeply and fully, then learn how to do breathe while keeping your upper body still.

Limber Up

Like with any kind of exercise, your body benefits greatly from some loosening up beforehand. You can stretch your voice just like you might stretch your legs before a run. There are a wealth of excellent vocal fold exercises that are good to do, beginning at least fifteen to thirty minutes before making a recording.

The Lip Trill

Lip trills are, you guessed it, a lip exercise. They help you loosen your lips for better pronunciation and also help warm up your vocal chords. The end result will be more coordinated breathing and vocal fold control.

Voice control can make all the difference between a good recording session and a great one! That’s what makes the big difference in our top quality voice work at ProVoiceUSA. Contact us today to schedule a recording session and hear how it’s done.

Caring for your Voice as a Voice Actor

Posted on by admin

Caring for Your Voice and Livelihood

As a voice actor, your voice is your one and only tool, your professional portfolio, and the source of your income. Caring for your voice should be a number one priority, no matter how harsh a role can be on your voice. At ProVoiceUSA, we understand this better than anybody. Here are a few tips you can follow to help keep your most vocal and valuable asset healthy and strong for all of the work you do.

Hydration

Of all the things you should do for your voice, the best thing you can do is keep your vocal cords hydrated. Not only does it keep your voice from drying out and becoming hoarse, it will protect your voice from unnecessary strain while acting. Water keeps the vocal cords loose and flexible. You should drink a good amount of water at least an hour before every performance, and keep a water bottle handy during each session.

Keep Sinuses Clear

Taking care of your sinuses is also important, as it determines the resonance of your voice. Keep in mind that a decongestant spray or tablet will work in case of emergencies, but it will also dry your mouth out. If things get bad, consult with an ear, nose, and throat doctor. Some actors who have been diagnosed with deviated septums have found a lot of success with surgery.

Physical Exercise

You might not think it, but good physical exercise is a great way to maintain your voice. Voice work depends on a lot of breathing control. You’ll find that the better your fitness level, the bigger lung capacity you’ll have and consequently more control. Without a lot of breath control, long-form voice work like audiobooks becomes a lot more difficult.

Here’s a short list of other things voice actors should avoid to keep their voices strong:

  • Caffeine (it dries the throat)
  • Alcohol (same as caffeine)
  • Smoking (while some actors do this to change the quality of their voices, smoking can make work in a booth very difficult for yourself and others)
  • Eating right before a session

Remember to care for your voice: it’s your moneymaker! For the best voice work and some of the fastest turnaround in the business, you can rely on the professionals at ProVoiceUSA to get the job done. Contact us today.

Becoming Competitive in the Voice Over Market

Posted on by admin
Becoming Competitive in the Voice Over Market
19 Jan

Becoming a voice over actor in this day and age is about as difficult a field to break into as you’d find. And it’s a common misconception that having a naturally resonating and well-toned voice will automatically find you work in the industry. Some artists may say that becoming a talented and successful voice artist requires a little bit of luck. Perhaps that’s true, but along with talent, practice, and hard work, there are some things you can do now to improve your chances of finding work. Here are a few we at ProVoiceUSA have found.

Find Professional Representation

Finding your way into the industry on your own is nearly impossible these days. If you’re serious about finding work as a voice actor, you need someone who can actively advertise your unique voice and offer quality services to you. This is where ProVoiceUSA can come in handy. With the right demo and a quick turnaround time, you can present yourself as a reliable and high-quality voice actor.

This leads to the second point…

Produce the Best Demo Possible

Like an artist’s or writer’s portfolio, a voice-over demo needs to demonstrate the best and highest-quality work you can produce. If you have the voice over gear at home or in a private studio, you could do it yourself, but a better method would be to save up and splurge on a coaching and recording session at a professional studio. This may set you back on average $1000 or more, but you’ll have the best example of your work possible to show potential agents and clients. It might also pay off to research and pick the right studio to produce the right demo for you: some specialize in commercial work, some in television, and others in video games and interactive media.

Practice Perfect Timing

With voice work, it all comes down to timing. Practice reading different scripts or pieces of writing with different enunciations and inflections, keeping track of yourself with a timer. Remember, it’s about eighty words for thirty seconds. Eventually, this will become instinctual. One of the best skills a voice actor can have is performing lines within the perfect time frame.

If you have what it takes to become a professional voice actor, contact ProVoiceUSA today. We offer only the finest professional voice-over work in the industry with great response times and competitive pricing.