Voice Overs

So...I had an idea for what to talk about and then Joe made me look at a bunch of pictures from his summer internship and now I don't know what it was.

Apparently that is how important this blog is to me; easily forgettable at the sight of a self-service espresso machine.

OH I KNOW!...Nope, nope. Lost it.

Oh okay. Here it is. So I wanted to tell you about my Voice Over experiences as of late.

So my internship is going really well, but it's winding down. Looks like I'll likely be out of there in a week and a half and back to full-time skulking/blogging as a profession. And in true form of winding-downery, everything has turned to chaos. Of course, our last week includes about twenty thousand presentations. (Or five. But, you know. Still. That's a lot.) So we've been a bit on the busy side.

Today we spend a lot of time editing an animatic, which is something between a storyboard and a commercial, so we can see how timing will play out. We went into the recording studio and met the voice over talent for our impending ad. She was very nice, drove a minivan. Her voice sounded pretty normal, although you could tell it had a lot of layers to it when she talked. But then she got in there into the sound proof booth and just blasted us away. Like, "Oh, you think you wrote words? WA-BAM. Now they actually sound important." What was interesting, too, is that she put her whole body into it. Like, big smile, hand gestures, all that.

It's true that you can tell when someone is smiling without even seeing them. After the talent left, they asked me to go into the studio to record someone sniffing in, just a quick sound effect that they needed. First time I did it there was a bit of a snot situation, which was pretty embarrassing. But then the next time I was all clear. I thought I did fine--I mean, how hard is it to sniff? But they were like "Yeah, can you smile when you sniff this time?" So I did and they were like, "Perfect."

That kinda blew my mind a little.

Actually, before the talent came in, they asked me to read the voice over, for placement and timing's sake. I went in there and just read it through, and my Creative Director clicked his mic on and said into my headphones, "Yeah, you know how the voice talent does it? All breathy and sexy? Do it more like that." Which I did. It was awkward for multiple reasons and I'll tell you why.

A) My male creative director is telling me to be sexier and it is not cause for Human Services to come in and have a discussion with him.

B) The very idea of me trying to be sexy in the first place. I will tell you what I typically do to be sexy in real life: I attempt not to make weird faces, rub makeup in my eye, show my snaggle tooth, or fall down a flight of stairs. Easier said than done, my friends. Easier said than done.

But honestly, I have been told and thought myself that I could actually be a good voice talent before. Until I heard the direct comparison between my own attempts and a professional's. I mean, really. How does she get so many sounds into one word? There were little squeaks and laughs and general feelings in wonderment. And that was just in the word "the."

The woman's good. She's good. I've got to practice. I don't think Joe will mind if I walk around all day practicing my sexy voice. "Why, hello big boy. Mind if I join you? My teeth must also be cleaned within this bathing space."