Tags:

Peter Rofe, Commercials, Commercial Copy, Analysis, Recording, Audio, Voice Acting, Interpreting Copy, PDR Voice Coaching

Transcript of How to Analyze and Break Down Commercial Copy

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Julie-Ann Dean: Welcome to Voiceover Experts brought to you by Voices.com, the number one voiceover marketplace. Voiceover Experts brings you tips, pearls of wisdom and techniques from top instructors, authors and performers in the field of voiceover. Join us each week to discover tricks of the trade that will help you to develop your craft and prosper as a career voiceover talent. It's never been easier to learn, perform, and succeed from the privacy of your own home and your own pace. This is truly an education you won't find anywhere else.

This week, Voices.com is please to present Peter Rofé.

Peter Rofé.: Hey guys, this is Peter Rofé. I am a voiceover coach, I'm a voiceover artist and I produce voiceovers including demo reels and reel spots that broadcast. I have a company called PDR Voiceover Coaching that's located in Greenwich Village.

Today, I'd like to talk a little bit about analysis, commercial breakdown and analyzation of commercial copy. Before I start talking about the specifics in copy breakdown, I just wanted to talk a little bit about commercials as a whole. They're really a big part of our life, our everyday lives and most people listening to commercials happen to be in their car transporting themselves from point A to point B, commuting back and forth to work and typically, people are certainly not listening to the radio to hear commercials. What they're trying to do is to get traffic updates, weather reports, news, sports, music of course and these commercials are there as basic interruptions to what they're trying to do.

So the commercial announcer and the commercial itself already has a strike against it so what we have to do as voiceover artists and voiceover announcers is try to engage the audience in a personal conversation so that the audience will actually listen to us rather than just hear us. You can hear a noise but you don't have to concentrate and focus on noise. You can block it out whereas in commercials, you can also hear it in the background but it's certainly not going to speak to you and of course, get you to do something that's beneficial for you which will generate revenue for a specific product or service which is what commercials intend to do.

So as commercial announcers, we really have to try to speak directly to our audience and one of the things that we need to do when we pick up a piece of copy and that's any copy in commercials is figure out who the audience is. It's very important that we understand the complexities of the audience. Not every spot is written for every person so what I kind of came up with was five simple questions to ask yourself when you look at a piece of a copy for the first time.

First of all, you should read your copy for comprehension sake first without acting it out loud or performing it. So you really need to understand the text and what the text is saying. It's very much like reading a newspaper article or a novel. Then you want to start listening to that little voice inside your head that's reading it along with you. That's your instinct. Everybody's instinct is different from everybody else's instinct and that's what makes us individuals which is why voiceover is so amazing is that we can really bring a part of ourselves to every read that we do and that is really an essential part of the process and the casting process as well. Casting directors are looking for people who bring themselves to the scripts.

Today, what's really popular is conversational. The reason being is the conversational read is so vital to our society is because pop culture is really excited by reality. I mean, if you watch television, what's on TV 90 percent of the time? Reality-based shows. And so advertising agencies obviously follow pop culture and trends and it seems to me that reality TV is something that's here to stay. It's part of our culture now and spots are written in a very conversational style.

Even when spots are written in an announcer style like introducing and things like that, things that you wouldn't normally say in everyday life. You still approach the copy as a real person. For those of you out there who have really gifted voices both men and women, you still want to try to find a more real tone to your conversation and try to use the copy as a means to really colloquialize things so that it does sound like you're having a conversation with another person even though you might - it might not be a two-person read, it should still sound like you're responding to somebody and there's some give and there's some take.

Getting back to the actual commercials themselves, like I said I came up with five simple questions to ask yourself when you look at a piece of copy. One is you need to know the gender of the person that you're talking to within that audience. Hey, that's a 50-50 right there.

The second thing that you want to ask yourself is age range. Ad agencies like to categorize us all with these ten year blocks of age range so the audience could be 35 to 45 or 55 to 65 or 25 to 35. Those age ranges are very, very specific.

The third question you want to ask yourself is, "What is the economic status of this person that I'm talking to?" Everybody has different economic situations. Some people are affluent, some people are poverty-stricken. Some people are comfortable, some people are middle-class or lower middle-class. There are a lot of different things that you can be economically speaking and those products and services absolutely correlate to economics.

The next question, the fourth question is locale. Where is this person coming from? Is this person an urbanite? Is this person a suburbanite or does this person live out on the farm in rural America? So you basically have three choices, urban, suburban and rural. Each of those people is very different.

The last question which is actually the most important question of all which is why it's last is predicament. What is the predicament of the person that you are talking to within the context of the spot? There are usually predicaments and issues within the commercial context. For instance, you have a problem you needed solved. The specific product or service will solve your problem. That will get people to pick up the phone, go online, buy a product in the store all because they need to solve problems, everyday problems, mundane problems, big problems. So that's typically how psychologically commercials work.

So you've got those five questions, gender, age range, economics, locale and predicaments. One you've asked yourself of those questions, try to be as specific as you can. Now your answers may vary and your answers may actually be a little bit different from what the copywriter intended your answers to be but your read will always be more specific when you know the audience at large that you're talking to.

Now we go one step further. We know who the audience is. Let's just say the audience is a 25 to 35-year-old male, urban, economically strapped individual who needs a vacation and I'm just throwing that out right now. Let's just imagine that that's our audience for this particular commercial that we're talking about. Well, what you would do as the voice announcer is try to find the person that exists in your own life that parallels this larger audience so that now, you're talking to your friend Steve. Who is that guy? And so you bring Steve into the booth with you and you imagine that you're saying this to Steve that you're actually engaged in a conversation with Steve.

What happens is that you bring yourself to the read because you're talking to Steve. You bring Steve into the read. Steve represents the audience therefore you bring the audience to you. You don't alienate the audience, you actually engage the audience. That's a very important thing when you analyze your copy ahead of time and when you actually deliver your copy and each read that you do should always be considered the firs time you're saying these words. It's not take 12. It shouldn't take - sound like take 36. It should sound like I've never said this to you before and I'm in an organic real time conversation with you right now.

So that's what you do when you get a piece of copy. You break it down, you ask those questions, you figure out your target audience. You then pick a person that exists in your life that represents this audience and you deliver your spot and I can guarantee you, it's going to be a lot easier. Thanks for having me today. I appreciate it and I look forward to hearing from you all.

Julie-Ann Dean: Thank you for joining us. To learn more about the special guest featured in this Voices.com podcast, visit the Voiceover Experts show notes at Podcasts.Voices.com/VoiceoverExperts. Remember to stay subscribed.

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Links from today's show:

PDR Voice Coaching

Your Instructor this week:

Voice Over Expert Peter Rofé

When Peter Rofé began his career -- like many actors -- he searched long and hard for a decent way to support himself. He discovered that voice-overs could be an extension of one's acting career and a respectable way to earn a decent living without compromising artistic integrity.

Peter believes from experience that voice-over artists benefit greatly from studying with a coach who has a good ear, a wealth of knowledge, and plenty of industry experience. That's why former clients will tell you that Peter's hands on approach and work experience make him one of New York's City's top voice over coaches.

Peter offers a wide range of services, from teaching clients privately to conducting group workshops, producing high-end demo reels and offering introductory classes and marketing seminars. He has also taught voice over courses at The Barrow Group and Stonestreet Film & Television Studios (Tisch School of the Arts, New York University). In addition, Peter has coached veteran television broadcasters and business executives for speeches and corporate functions.

Coaching sessions focus mainly on technique and copy interpretation with a strong emphasis placed on commercial, straight announcer, and animation reads. Special attention is also given to non-announcer (conversational) reads, which have become so fundamental in today's industry.

Demo reels are produced in his state of the art recording studio with an experienced engineering staff. It is strongly advised that all of his students produce demo reels when they have reached a competitive level." I try to produce tapes that agents and casting directors want to hear, so copy is carefully chosen and tailored to exhibit each actor's style, versatility, and sense of humor." Many of Peter's clients have signed with top commercial agents and have landed work in commercials, promos, cartoons, and industrials.

Peter also co-authored a book with Randy Thomas, called Voice For Hire: How to Launch and Maintain a Lucrative Career in Voice Over. It will be published by Backstage Books and will be available in bookstores Spring 2008.

Enjoyed Peter's episode? Leave a comment with your thoughts!