By Christopher Tester

British Male Voiceover Artist

You've booked a voiceover job, but the client wants to listen in and give you live direction. If that is your reaction, then this video is for your directed voiceover. As voice talents, sessions are something that we should be proactively offering to clients. It's the quickest way of ensuring that they get exactly what they need with every level of detail. Still, especially when we're starting out, voice actors can be terrified of this because of the extra demands that it places on us both on a technical level and also on a performance level.

Now, I've already covered this subject in two previous videos. This video is about preparing as a voice actor for a session, and this one is about preparing as a director for a directed session. So, I thought the next logical thing to do, madman as I am, was to record myself during a directed session from my home studio to see how I implement some of the points in those two videos but also some additional things that I thought might be useful in picking up as well. 

So, without further ado, here's the session, and apologies in advance for the audio quality!

Session - LIVE Directed Voiceover

I know that's my job, but it was quite a spur-of-the-moment opportunity. I've got the scripts and everything, and I've also managed to have a look at the Italian version of the film to get a sense of the pacing and the tone that you guys are looking for. So, hopefully, we'll get what you need. What if the past and present could meet? What if, to save the landscape, we changed it. So, that's just an example of we've got the pacing of the audio all, okay. Now we're just waiting for the actual clients to come in with the idea being that we'll play the actual film on screen but without the original Italian audio so that there's enough bandwidth for them to hear my voice properly. So, we've got my door here, and then the video that they're going to play is going to be here as well, but I've also got the script here in case. They make any changes at the last minute, decide to change the words or anything else like that. So, it won't completely throw my famous last words. I'm gonna press record now. 

So, I don't forget to press record when I'm recording hello hi, and I've already done my annotations in red on the script, but I've changed my color to green as well for their annotations potentially. So, I know the difference between my notes my original notes and the notes that the client may give me live over the phone. Sure, yes, of course, yeah now, I've been able to watch that through a few times as well. 

So, I've got a good understanding of the pace and also the tone of voice that you're all looking for as well. So, there's a slightly heartfelt kind of feel to things which I understand, and yeah, we'll see how things go when you're ready and see how heartfelt I can if the past and be could meet whatever to save the landscape. We changed it. I'm ready when you are. What if the past and present could meet what to save the landscape. 

We changed it, that's fine, a little less institutional, and would you like that all the way through the script, or would you like it at a particular point because I know we've got there's kind of like two main sections aren't there. There are the questions where we're kind of suggesting all of these inspiring things that will make a whole kind of change, and then we go like Thomas, Alvarez, and Edison. We never stop asking questions. So, maybe there's a bit more of a kind of like warmth in confidence, a little bit there I can try that, and then you can see if you hear any difference whatsoever and what I'm delivering or not, and we can go from there.

So, there's now quite a bit of talking in Italian, which I don't understand, but it's just to make sure that the end client is going to be French listening to English. So, making sure that my delivery is clear enough for them at the same time as being more conversational. So, while they talk in Italian again, this is just about making sure that the tone is lighter, how much of a change they want in the middle, whether or not you run on a particular word or whether or not you have a more sense of wonder to it. It's just giving them options for the fine-tuning now that we know what the reader is now some more feedback whilst honey is here for the feedback. 

Now despite all of this feedback and playing back, I've not stopped recording because it may be that they're using the time codes of the entire session. So, I want to check at the end about that rather than using this time to cut everything up which they might not want, and he came, she saw, and she covered me in cat hair. Yeah, sure, so what I could do is give you kind of in the wild essentially as they call it, and I'll give you. I'll do six of those and see if any of them are right. So, just to confirm, what I will send through is that I've got a total of nine takes here, and then I've also got uh those uh six tags at the end, so what is best to send through.

Do you want me to send it through as one audio file with all of those takes on, or would you like me to separate them? So, you've got nine takes, plus the tags at the end are a separate file as well, which would be best. I'll just send you the nine takes in the order that they were recorded, plus the tags, no worries at all. I'll deliver that as a dropbox link. So, you can download it directly from my dropbox. Fantastic! This will be with you in five minutes. Okay! Thank you! Bye! Okay! 

So, now that's the session done with, and I've established how they want the final files to be delivered through. So, first of all, I'm going to stop recording. I'm now going to immediately save this before I make any changes raw unedited. I'm going to call it as well as the project name. So, that's in the bank now, and then I'm just going to go through and leave just the takes I can see from here with the wavelength. It's basically anything that is loud where I'm close to the microphone is when I'm actually doing a take. So, there are nine takes in total recorded in an hour-long session. So, the session had lasted 58 minutes in total from when I started this, and I had just over eight minutes of audio. I will export it as a wav file highest possible. I go to my dropbox. I go to the client folder that I have for this client.  

Now, I'll just upload it, which will take 40 seconds, and then I will email that to my client if they have any feedback or anything else like that. I'll let them know, and then I'll also send an invoice along with my email at the same time. Actually, what I'll do is I'll request a pop number because this client needs to generate a pop number for the order. So, I'll make sure I ask that of the client at the same time as I email this through. 

So, I hope that's been of some use or interest to you and how I conduct a directed session normally that one was really pleasurable. 

Conclusion

So, to conclude, I just wanted to consolidate some key takeaways from this video. Firstly, always check in with the engineer in good time to make sure that you've double-checked the levels and that you've got the right script always recorded on your end, even if it is being remotely recorded. You don't know what might drop out. Have a very clear setup for desktop management has a very clear annotation system. So that you don't get lost in the notes and you can accommodate rewrites to a script. Once you receive some direction, always repeat it in your own words to show that you understand it, and if you don't actually understand it, then it buys you a little bit more time. Always clarify who the end client or the actual audience is proactively offering different ways of doing pickups.

So, whether or not that's a partial pickup or doing wild, i.e., and a, b, and c version of a line, always clear what needs to be sent through and in what format. I hope that's been of some use to you. As I said, there are those two other videos on the subject as well, and I am going to be adding next week another one that is more about the different kinds of options for connecting that you could pick as a voice talent. Thanks so much for watching! Please do like, subscribe, please do spread the world, and I look forward to seeing you next time!