In this video, I provide an overview of ten things that can be adjusted to make a voiceover sound more conversational.
My name is Chris and today I'm going to look at why so many people are asking for voiceovers to be conversational. And how this can best be achieved. It's probably easiest to start by what isn't meant by conversational voiceover. And that's typically known as the announcer voiceover. This is when someone is talking at you, as opposed to, to you. Like this.
Voice over: And claim free notice this week in an American fight over thousands truckloads of living room furniture, seven piece living room groups that include a sofa, loveseat, coffee table to end tables and two designer lamps.
Over the last decade especially, there's been a clear shift from talking at someone from a place of authority to talking to them from a place of authenticity. Essentially, it's about being a real person, about sharing your personal testimony. And this is why the analogy of talking to a best friend is often given when trying to direct a voiceover to be more conversational. Because those friend conversations that we have with our friends are most trustworthy, most authentic and most credible. It is a personal offering of experience and advice, not a transaction. Check out this advert for right move.
Voice over 1: This is the place we are happy. This is where we, and you..
Voice over 2: This is where we bring home.
Voice over 1: And where we bring home.
Voice over 2: This is where we grow up.
Voice over 1: And where we go.
Voice over 2: This is where she.. and where we are at.
Voice over 1: This is where we are at.
Now I'm currently in the process of actually searching for a house myself. So this probably did strike a particular chord for me. But essentially what I'm talking about is completely borne out by this advert. There is no authorial voice telling you how great the platform is, instead, it's understated, it's almost confessional, it’s heartfelt and it's real. If you think of voiceover as a spectrum, with the hard sell being on one side then the other extreme isn't conversational. The other extreme is completely flat without any intonation or emotion whatsoever. So it's a balancing act, but you have to navigate from project to project. So rather than asking a question is a script conversational or not, you've got to place it somewhere on that spectrum to some degree. So let's start by ten tips on how to get a more conversational delivery. Tip one, don't get too loud. If you're talking to loads of people, then obviously you're going to be projecting to a certain degree. But if you're actually having a conversation with a friend in a pub, or any kind of similar scenario, then you're rarely going to get too loud unless you're particularly angry with them.
So if you find yourself getting loud or projecting too much during a conversational read, you know that it's something that you'll need to adjust. The essence of a conversational read is sharing information with someone, engaging their reaction and responding organically. Then if you're being very loud, then you're not really monitoring their response to what you're saying in the first place. So if you find yourself getting loud and you're not supposed to be angry, then it probably means that you're pushing too much. Tip two make a clear choice about who you're actually speaking to and I don't just mean a friend. Quite often a voiceover will be told to imagine they're talking to their best friend about a particular subject. But the problem with that is that the voiceover’s best friend might not actually be interested in the subject of the project. Instead, it is much more useful to imagine that the person that you're speaking to has a vested interest in the subject that you're talking about. Tip three, have an emotional state. And I don't mean a heightened emotion, but have an opinion about what you're talking about and how that makes you feel. The vast majority of scripts, set up a problem, and then introduce the product or service or brand as the solution. And you need to have a very clear idea about how each one of those stages makes you feel, you might start frustrated, and then feel relief, you might start angry, and then feel ecstatic. The important thing is to be clear about those emotional stakes and invest in them.
Tip four, speak from your throat rather than from your diaphragm. Especially if you're a trained actor, you quite often want to get on voice and start projecting. And that's fine if you're actually acting on stage. But generally, and this combined with what I was originally saying about volume, it'll end up being too much on a microphone. Instead, you really need to imagine that you're speaking very, very close to the other person next to you, like you're in a pub, for example, in real life heartfelt conversations, we tend to speak from our throat, because otherwise really resonating from the diaphragm becomes a bit too forceful. It essentially goes back to projecting at someone rather than talking to them. Tip five, if you're listening through headphones, then take them off, or at least take one of them off so that you can actually hear your own voice. Listening to our own voice through our headphones, as we're speaking makes us even more conscious of the sounds that we're making.
So conversely, if you take the headphones off, you'll have more energy and focus to spend on the person that you're actually talking to, rather than how you sound. Obviously, during directed live sessions, you can't completely take your headphones off because you're going to be getting feedback live from the person on the other end of the line. So rather than being dependent on taking the headphones completely off, just try taking the one headphone off during your day to day recording. Tip six play with Elisions and contractions. Sometimes the script really does need to be incredibly clear and specific and that's absolutely fine. But sometimes that runs the risk of sounding a bit robotic. And that's not how we sound in real life. That's not how we sound in real life. So it's always worth checking with a client in advance if you can make little adjustments like changing as you are into you’re to make it all flow a little bit better.
Tip seven, play with rhythm. If the authoritative voice the announcer a voice is generally quite consistent in tone and rhythm because it knows exactly where it wants to go. Conversational voice has a lot more ebb and flow to it, generally. Sometimes we know exactly where we want to go to make a point but often we're searching so you have all of these suspensions and stumbles. I wouldn't recommend just inserting lots of uhms, and aah to try and represent a form of authenticity. But I would say be aware of the ebbs and flows of normal speech and try and replicate that rather than just being consistent and definite. Tip eight, think in terms of thoughts rather than words. Quite often, especially in announcer reads, we're thinking about the how rather than about the why. In other words, how we're sounding rather than why specifically, we're speaking. In more conversational reads, the focus is really on the why, why we're sharing this with our friend? It's not about the exact words that we choose the how.
So having a clear understanding about the actual ideas that you're trying to communicate is much more important for a conversational read. Tip nine, try a lead in. Sometimes you can be so concerned about sounding right from the very first word that you can barely even speak when you get to the microphone. So try improvising a bit of the conversation that you might actually be having with the person that you're speaking to, so that the copy comes organically from that exchange, rather than just starting. And Tip ten, physicality. When we're talking to our friends, then we gesture we express ourselves through our hands and our physicality, as well as with our words. Essentially, you're sharing your emotional state, and therefore you need to be expressive both physically and vocally, rather than instructive or objective. Going back to Tip three about having an emotional state, this must be reflected in how you are whilst actually delivering the text. Even if it's a very simple imagined activity, like the frustration of putting on a watch that doesn't quite fasten, or the relaxation of lying back and having a cigarette. These will all subtly change the way you actually engage with the listener without you having to focus on how you're sounding. Even thinking in terms of the different clothes that you might be wearing could influence your physicality in a useful way. For example, if you're wearing something quite formal and restrictive, then that could give you a certain sense of status and authority as opposed to just sitting in a T shirt. All of these things might adjust your performance only fractionally, but they're useful to be aware of. Just to give us an example, I'd like to share two different readings of the same script, one which has a bit more weight to it, and one which is closer to a more conversational tone. First, let's try a quite standard corporate read.
Chris Voice over: Work. Life. Balance. Three tiny words. An impossible a question that humankind is trying to solve for centuries. What would it mean to your life if you could achieve all of your goals? If family, fitness and personal finance could come together with career progression and big promotions? introducing Wequilibrium, a productivity app that seamlessly brings together your personal and professional goals into a streamlined schedule that puts your dreams within reach. Download it for free at wequilibrium.com today.
So physically, I'm going to think about being less on voice, taking one of my headphones off speaking from the throat rather than going down into my chest resonance. Rather than speaking to a generalized audience, I'm going to imagine that I'm speaking to someone who shares exactly the same problems as me, that they're struggling to get the work life balance, right. As a result, maybe the physicality is going to be a little bit more fidgety to begin with.
I'll try and play with the rhythm a little bit more as if I'm discovering these thoughts as I'm actually having them. And I might also try a couple of lead ins, which can then be cut out in editing.
Chris Voice over: I’ll tell you. Work. Life. Balance. My God, they're just three tiny words. An impossible equation that humankind has tried to solve for centuries. What would it mean to your life, if you could achieve all of your goals? If family fitness and personal finance to come together with career progression and big promotions? Well, there is something that work for me. Introducing Wequilibrium, a productivity app that seamlessly brings together your personal and professional goals into a streamlined schedule that puts your dreams within reach. You can even download it for free at wequilibrium.com today.
Okay, so I'm not saying that one right is better than the other. But I am saying that there are some very clear variables that we can adjust, depending on how conversational we actually want the script to sound. Thanks so much for watching. If you did find this video useful, then please do like and subscribe, and I'll bring you something new next week.