Getting Started in VO, Part 8: Acting

Some Tips from an Old-Timer

I often hear young folks interested in voice acting say that someone—a relative, a friend—told them they had a great voice and that they could easily imagine them doing commercials, or games, or animation. But voice is only one half of the equation. The other half is acting.

And it occurs to me that I have waited long enough to address this subject.

Because the reality is that no matter how good your recordng equipment or your booth or your website are you won’t produce good recordings if you don’t understand something about acting.

If you have ever acted you have a bit of a leg up. And hasn’t everyone acted, at least once? It doesn’t matter where you performed. You needn’t have appeared on Broadway or in a Marvel movie. Maybe you did the Nativity play in church. Or school plays in elementary, middle or high school. If the bug bit, you might have continued to act in college or community theaters. And for a smaller percentage, you may have decided that you wanted to make acting your career. You might have auditioned for and been accepted into a professional training school, like the ones at Yale and Julliard. Or you may simply haved moved to one of the larger cities and begun auditioning.

If you did any of these things, you very likely have SOME understanding of what it means to act.

Now I think a lot of folks make a big mystery about what acting is. At heart, I think it’s quite simple. You are pretending to be someone else. The operative word here is pretending. And the character you are pretending to be is trying to influence another person—in this instance, the audience for the commercial you are recording, or the audiobook, or the game—to do something. Your read has an intention.

Simply put, acting is pretending with intention.

As simple as that? Yep, as simple as that.

You did it all the time as a child while playing with friends. You’d go out in the backyard or down to the school playground or wherever, choose characters and act out stories of your own devising (often based on a favorite cartoon show).

You were acting.

And you still do. You interact every day to the people in your life, so you are already aware of the methods we all use to influence others. We might charm, or wheedle, or provoke sympathy, or browbeat, or shame.

What makes this unique when we are “acting” on stage or recording a commercial is that we are trying to be someone other than ourselves. We are playing a character.

What is a character? A character is someone who is not ourselves but is made up of things in ourselves that we know about from experiences in our life. When you stop and think about it, you probably do that every day as well.

Do you ever impersonate a friend’s voice when telling a story? You’re acting.

Do you speak in funny voices to make someone laugh? You’re acting.

So, here’s how we apply that to voice acting. You may be asked to audition for a commercial. Generally, the casting folks let you know what your character is. Maybe you are supposed to be a “Grandpa, 60-70 years old. Can be a bit of a curmudgeon but actually has a heart of gold.” Presumably the lines in the scene you are reading allow all of that to be presented.

But here’s the trick. Once you’ve decided how your character might sound, you assume the character but you don’t PLAY the character.

Again, this is best understood when you think about what you do in real life.

When you are speaking to another person and trying to influence them in some one, do you “play” yourself? No, of course not. You already know the character—the character IS you. You concentrate on what you need to say to get the response you want from the person you are talking to. You play your intention.

The other big difference between what we do in real lfe and what we do when we are acting is that in life we are making everything up. In a commercial, or an audiobook, or a game, we have a script. Ah! But here’s the rub: we have to make it appear as if we DID make up the lines we are speaking.

We need to make our audience believe we are the character and that what we say is what our character would say in this situation and given these circumstances, and HOW he or she would say it.

A little more complicated, right?

But still, it’s worth remembering that all we are trying to do when we act is to—more or less—do what we would do in real life.

The best actors, the ones we tend to watch or listen to over and over, are the ones who accomplish that. Yesterday my son came over to my house and we watched DOG DAY AFTERNOON, the Sidney Lumet film that my son called “perfect.” The star of the film is Al Pacino. In the movie, Pacino plays a lower class troubled Brooklyn man, Sonny, who tries to rob a bank. He manages to be both ridiculously inept and heartbreaking. But even better, he is NOTHING like the character he played in the GODFATHER films, Michael Corleone. There’s a vague physical resemblance, naturally, but in every other way these are two different human beings. Everything about Sonny is slightly hysterical and wild. Everything about Michael is restrained. Sonny sweats and his eyes often bug out. Michael NEVER sweats and his are almost half-lidded, like a snake. Sonny is loud and unpredictable. Michael rarely raises his voice and is ALSO unpredictable.

In both cases, Pacino gives a performance that is appropriate for the character he is playing and the things he does and says.

And that is what WE try to do.

As with anything we choose to do, the more we practice, the better we are likely to become. This is a bit tricky for an actor because usually an actor needs an audience to practice his craft. For a VO actor, it’s a little bit easier. All you have to do is record yourself and then listen to the results. Having been the actor, YOU are now the audience. What do you think of the performance you gave? Do you believe what the character said? Are you persuaded? Do you notice little things that can be improved? Great. Record yourself again. And again. And again.

If you want to go forward, there are books to read on the process. One I would recommend is: The Art of Voice Acting: The Craft and Business of Performing for Voiceover by James R. Alburger. It’s a bit pricey so see if your library carries the book or ebook. But it is an exhaustive look at the subject.

If you live in a city or town where you can take acting lessons or improv lessons, you might want to give it a try, if only to get over the nervousness of performing in front of other people—if you book a job, you’ll have to do that with others listening.

And there are all sorts of places where you can take lessons in acting for voiceover. I often turn to a site called Actors Connection when I am looking for a class to take (and yes, I still take classes, after doing this job for 50 years!). I would also recommend Edge Studio.

So there’s something to get you started with. If you have any questions, feel free to reach out to me here on the website.

I have one final blog article to share with you soon…