Join Voice Over Expert Pat Fraley in his podcast lesson, "Anatomy of a Character Voice Demo." Hear the process of an actual character voice over demo being produced including the selection and creation of evocative characters, appropriate music, and doing what's needful in a timely way.

Download Podcast Episode 98 »

Transcript of Anatomy of a Character Voice Demo

[Opening Music]

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 has 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 pleased to present Pat Fraley.

Pat Fraley: Hi. This is Pat Fraley and this is kind of an anatomy of a character voice demo. The talent by the way is Pamela Chollet. Our goal was to produce a character voice or animation demo comprising of about a dozen evocative, unique and developed characters.

The first step was to have Pamela start recording her characters at home and one by one, send them to me via e-mail in MP3 files. She would slate in character in record. I told her not to worry about being clever. We'll deal with scene and dialog later. I would listen to her efforts and e-mail her notes on adjusting the characters. I would give her notes on the various characters hopefully to advance her efforts. Sometimes, the characters were not evocative enough. They were characters that I had kind of heard before and they needed to be her own swing on them making them more unique.

Sometimes, the characters lack development and as much as they weren't motivated and the acting was weak or they didn't have an agenda meaning a pervasive condition or agenda like fame, attention, being naïve. I guess it averaged out to be about two exchanges on each character.

Here's a recording of what she did at home on a character she named Fontaine Belford, an aging actress.

Pamela Chollet: Darling, it's Fontaine, Fontaine Belford. And I'm about to give you the greatest single audition ever given anywhere by anyone. Your emotions will go up, down, in, out and beyond with my stunning array of incredibly perfect choices. I will weep, dance, love and walk as every man and as no man. Acting, above acting. Fission, baby. Fission! I will flare. I will sear. I will be on fire. Line.

Pat Fraley: After she accumulated her 15 to 18 characters, it came time to write the scene or dialog piece. This is a critical stage. Eighty percent of all character work for animation is comedy-driven. So we had to be funny, very funny, not just cute or humorous. Like one of my mentors Bob Holt used to tell me, it's not good enough to make them laugh. You got to make them bleed from the ear.

Most often, the demos I hear are just not funny. They're on the way to funny but they're not and part of the importance of writing is selecting a location or the perfect location in situation for the character, the perfect scene and focus on whom the character is speaking to. They had to be brief so we could end up with about a dozen characters in a one-minute plus demo. When we were close to the dialog we wanted, we went to the studio and started recording. Really, we only recorded a few of the characters because the MP3 she sent me were so clean and she's very clever, which is unusual. And so, she was coming up with funny lines that we could use. That was out of the ordinary. By the time we had accumulated the characters, we were in a position also to see an emerging style to them.

With Pamela's unique low, dusty voice and her sort of bent sense of humor, it was a no-brainer to focus on those characters she did best and where she would be hired, femme fatales, old broads, quirky characters and a couple that were totally outside that range to show the potential of range. For the character Fontaine, we decided we would use that as the first character on her demo and be responding to the announcer who slates her name.

I like the sound of an upper class Brit introducing character voice demos. The contrast between stuffy and silly works well to my ear. I was tapped to do the announcer for her like this.

Pamela Chollet.

We recorded her line in the studio. Here's how I directed her.

What you want to do is back off the mic and, "No," like you - and I go, "Pamela Chollet!" Right? "Pamela Chollet" And you go, "No, just Pamela. Like Cher!" Like you have the idea about Cher before you say it and then I want you to do it once where you go, "No. Pamela! Like Cher." That's when it comes to - you know what I mean? Two different way - I think - just give me a one two three.

Pamela Chollet: No, just Pamela, like Cher. No! Just Pamela, like Cher! No, just Pamela! Like Cher.

Pat Fraley: Give me, "Like Cher," a couple of those.

Pamela Chollet: Like Cher! Like Cher. Like Cher.

Pat Fraley: Very good. I was on the button.

Pamela Chollet: Like Cher.

Pat Fraley: After editing the lines, these are the raw takes married.

Pamela Chollet.

Pamela Chollet: No! Just Pamela! Like Cher.

Pat Fraley: Now, it was a matter of music and sound effects. I wanted old school, corny acting music. I found this.

[Music plays]

Pat Fraley: Then, just as a concept really, we liked the idea of placing her in a stuffy apartment with a nasty little rat dog in her lap. Here's the dog.

[Dog barks]

Pat Fraley: Here's the mixed snippet.

[Music plays]

Pat Fraley: Pamela Chollet.

Pamela Chollet: No! Just Pamela! Like Cher.

[Dog barks]

Pat Fraley: We repeated this process for the rest of the demo. I decided in post-production to put some characters on the phone, some with music behind them, some dry without sound effects, some with sound effects to place them in an actual scene. Here's the final result.

[Music plays]

Pat Fraley: Pamela Chollet.

Pamela Chollet: No! Just Pamela! Like Cher!

[Dog barks]

It's Mary. Just Mary.

I guess that's when he hit me. When I woke up, he was running my head through the check-out then trying to get a price on me.

The hounds are nipping at our heels. But tonight, we dance.

[Music plays]

And all I remember after that was seeing my ten pudgy fingers pulling and twisting and gouging out the candies and just shoving them in my mouth.

Did that hurt? Oh, blood. Eek! I may have to sit down and put my head between my knees.

And welcome back to our show. The show that is all about you.

Let me tell you. There's more laughs than computers and machines.

I am big. It's the microphones that got small. [laughs]

Pat Fraley: Know that all performers have a different journey on their demo. Some have more characters available to begin with. Some need more time accumulating their list. Some are more facile with coming up with comedic lines. Some need guidance in establishing their style. It's all a matter of doing what's needful in a timely way. I hope you found this helpful. And thanks for listening.

Julie-Ann Dean: 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.

If you're a first time listener, you can subscribe for free to this podcast in the Apple iTunes Podcast Directory or by visiting Podcasts.Voices.com. To start your voiceover career online, go to Voices.com and register for a voice talent membership today.

[Closing Music]

Julie-Ann Dean: This has been a Voices.com production.

Links from today's show:

Pat Fraley
Pat Fraley Free Lessons

Voice Talent Pamela Chollet

Your Instructor this week:

Voice Over Expert Pat Fraley

Patrick Fraley has created voices for over 4,000 characters, placing him among the top ten performers of all time to be cast in animation. He has produced dozens of award-winning audiobooks, such as, Adventures of Tom Sawyer, A Very Easy Death, and The Light in The Piazza. Pat produced and performed all 100 voices on the award winning audiobook, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, which People Magazine hailed as, "The best yet of this evergreen." Patrick teaches events, workshops, and seminars on various aspects of voice over across the country, and has created a variety of instructional books and CDs, all available at PatFraley.com. He is a member of The Voice and Speech Trainers of America, and holds a Master of Fine Arts degree in Professional Acting from Cornell University.

Did you enjoy Pat's episode? Leave a comment with your thoughts!

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Join Voice Over Expert Marc Cashman in his podcast, "Practicing." Learn what it means to practice and why it is important to practice well. Marc shares tips on how to develop a good practicing regime that makes you happy and gives examples of phenomenal artists such as Joshua Bell and Wynton Marsalis who pushed themselves to practice throughout their childhood and teenage years and are now reaping the rewards.

Download Podcast Episode 97 »

Transcript of Practicing Your Craft

[Opening Music]

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 has 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 pleased to present Marc Cashman.

Marc Cashman: A few years ago, a student sent me an article about world-renowned musical artists and how they felt about practicing. Every one of them said that they didn't like to practice but they all did it. In fact, they felt they had to practice to stay on top of their game and to keep up with or stay ahead of their competition. There are many things in the field of voice acting that can be studied and that's knowledge, things you learn abstractly and mentally. But skills, well, those are things you develop as you work on them or practice. They usually involve some physical coordination and most times, they get easier the more you do them. You can learn about them in books, TV, the internet, in lectures and classrooms but you can't learn to apply them unless you practice.

I started piano lessons when I was about seven years old. My piano teacher sat me down and showed me the things I was supposed to practice for the next week, different scales and a short piano piece. He showed me how to sit, where to place my fingers, how to move them, and what each exercise and piece should sound like. I was supposed to practice at least 30 minutes each day until the next lesson and when he showed up the following week, his initial comments were either, "Marc, it sounds like you practiced,' or, "Marc, it sounds like you didn't practice." Teachers have a way of knowing right away whether you buckled down or slacked off.

I don't know how many times I've had people tell me, "I think I've got a pretty good voice," and then ask, "Do you think I would be good at voiceover?" And my answer is always the same. You can have the most beautiful-sounding voice in the world but if you don't know what to do with it, it's useless. You can learn skills but you will never realize your full potential unless you practice.

Now, practicing a lot doesn't always mean you'll get better the more you do it. You could be practicing wrong techniques, doing things incorrectly, practicing bad form and strengthening bad habits. That's why it's so important to work with an experienced instructor who has mastered the skills you're trying to achieve, who's giving you specific and corrective feedback so you can build a strong foundation of skills while you're learning.

Sometimes, the exercises you practice will feel natural and easy when you're starting out. Other times, they might feel awkward or downright impossible. If you experience the latter, that's okay. You're attempting to do something new. So feeling frustrated or self-conscious about being uncoordinated is normal. But the more you practice, the easier the exercises will become. It's just like learning a musical instrument. It's muscle memory and you're building up your mental and physical muscles. The more familiar you get with a piece of copy, the more it will sound natural and conversational because you begin to internalize it and not struggle with the mechanics of speaking the words.

What you practice is crucial. If you have a good instructor, you'll have specific exercises to practice, vocal warm-ups that include articulating all the consonants and vowels, singing, wrestling with tongue twisters and sibilant words and phrases. These exercises are a great way to develop the necessary eye-brain-mouth coordination needed for all professional voiceover work. And they're just like practicing musical scales. They're exercises you need to perform over and over again until they flow effortlessly. And don't rely solely on your teacher to get material to practice. The internet has a plethora of ad in text copy for you to practice that you can download for free and there are myriad VO books on the market with hundreds of different exercises.

How you practice is important. Make sure your diaphragm and lungs can expand easily, that your posture is correct, that you're projecting your voice properly and consistently moving air, letting your voice surf on waves of words. An experienced teacher will give you resistance exercises to build up your tongue, mouth and facial muscles. They'll also give you advice on what or what not to eat or drink before warming up. Also, recording your self is a great way to practice. This way, you can critic your self, finding weak points that you can concentrate and improve on. And a reminder, as you listen back to your voice, don't beat your self up if it's not coming out perfect.

We've all heard practice makes perfect too many times. Now, I don't know about perfect but I definitely know practice makes better. You strive to be your best. You aim for perfection but perfection is elusive. If you practice to keep getting better, you'll be able many times to hit those perfect moments, those times when you're in the zone, flawlessly executing a voice performance. But if you expect to be perfect every time you get behind the mic, you're setting your self up for disappointment.

Where you practice also makes a difference. If you have a home studio, whether simple or elaborate, practice there. It's great when you can kind of recreate the environment where you'll eventually be performing, your proximity to the microphone, with or without headphones, determining a sitting or standing position, adjusting for a line of sight, that's where you can see the copy clearly but still beyond mic, and proper lighting are all things that you'll encounter in the real world. The more comfortable you get, the more at ease you'll be in an actual session. If you're serious about voiceover and don't have a home studio yet, look into setting one up. They're very inexpensive now. Sometimes, under $500.

Getting back to the artists I mentioned at the beginning, remember they said they didn't like practicing but they did anyway, well, they found ways to make practicing interesting, challenging and fun. Amy Nathan, author of Beating Those Practice-Time Blues relates to Joshua Bell, world-renowned violinist, said he had plenty of fights about not wanting to practice. Wynton Marsalis didn't always want to play trumpet. He wanted to play basketball. Andre Watts said he liked playing piano as a kid but didn't always like doing the work.

How did they approach practicing? Joshua Bell said, "I'd set up challenges for my self, like I wouldn't stop until I did a difficult passage a certain number of times in a row without a mistake. By the time I did it that many times, I had learned it and made a game out of it." Wynton Marsalis learned how to warm up with his trumpet exercises from basketball. He said, "In basketball, you practice your foot movement, your floor game, going to either side, your jump shot, free throw shooting. It seemed like the intelligent thing to do the same with trumpet, to work on all the different aspects of technique." You can do the same with copy and text and your practicing should obviously include the pieces you're working on.

I send my students scripts to practice before they show up for class or one-on-one sessions and then correct them if necessary. Flutist Paula Robison recommends finding a warm-up exercise that makes you happy. She says, "It should be filled with music from the first note so you warm up that part of your playing too." So find text passages or ad copy that's interesting and/or entertaining to read out loud. And practice at the volume you would be speaking in a session, not whispering or muttering to your self.

How do you get inspired to practice each day? Listen. Listen to the voices of people you admire, your favorite audiobook narrator, your favorite documentary narrator and demos from the top talent on Voices.com. Listen to get inspired but don't be intimidated. These are people who have practiced for thousands of hours at their craft and continue to do so to stay on top of their game.

People ask me all the time, "Will I ever be able to be as good as the amazingly talented people I hear?" And I tell them that there's only one way to level the playing field when going up against voice actors with a lot more experience, have great skills. And there's only one way to develop and eventually apply those skills, practice.
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.
If you're a first time listener, you can subscribe for free to this podcast in the Apple iTunes Podcast Directory or by visiting Podcasts.Voices.com. To start your voiceover career online, go to Voices.com and register for a voice talent membership today.

[Closing Music]

Julie-Ann Dean: This has been a Voices.com production.

Links from today's show:

Cashman Commercials
The Cashman Cache of Voice-Acting Techniques
Ask The Voice Cat Blog
Marc Cashman Voices.com Website

Your Instructor this week:

Voice Over Expert Marc Cashman

MARC CASHMAN creates and produces copy and music advertising for radio and television. Winner of over 150 advertising awards, he also instructs voice acting of all levels through his classes, The Cashman Cache of Voice-Acting Techniques in Los Angeles, CA. Enjoying the distinction of being one of the few voice-acting instructors in the U.S. who is on "both sides of the glass"-- he creates, casts and produces copy and music advertising for radio and television clients such as Kroger, Charles Schwab, Quizno's, Pella Windows and Pabst Blue Ribbon Beer among many, many others.

In addition to his production schedule, he's been an instructor at USC Graduate School and does pro bono work for numerous charitable and public service organizations. He instructs voice-acting of all levels through his online and tele-coaching programs, his V-O classes, The Cashman Cache of Voice-Acting Techniques in state-of-the-art studios in Los Angeles, CA, and produces voice demos. He also has a monthly online column, Ask the VoiceCat, plus blogs and podcasts through Voices.com, VoiceOverXtra.com and NowCasting.com.

Cashman Commercials © 2009

Did you enjoy Marc's episode? Leave a comment with your thoughts!

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Join Voice Over Expert Debbie Munro in her podcast "Understanding Your Client's Needs and Being Believable". Deb puts a new spin on why you should care about your business clients and treat their projects as if they were your very own. Your job is to be believable. Be a real voice actor... voice over is acting! If you don't learn voice acting, you will never truly connect to your copy or your character. Put everything you have into a voice over to achieve success for both you and your client.

Download Podcast Episode 96 »

Transcript of Understanding Your Client's Needs and Being Believable

[Opening Music]

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 has 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 pleased to present Debbie Munro.

Debbie Munro: There are always characters in the copy. I've talked about this before. For those of you that are new to my podcast, please do listen to some of my previous ones. Best thing to do is start thinking first of who the audience member is, so you can decide who your character needs to be. If you don't learn voice acting, you're never going to truly connect to your copy. You will be able to put on a great voice. And you may even get hired on that great voice. But if you don't truly act, if you don't truly connect to character and finding out who you are and really, truly meaning what you're saying, why would the client hire you?

The client put everything they have into this little baby, every ounce of money they have. They put every ounce of time that they have. They put a lot of effort into this stuff. It goes through a million hands before if it ever gets to ours. That's why we have to deal with so many points all the time. But if I was a client, and I put all my investment into this project, have you ever done that? Have you ever put everything you have into one little basket? Doesn't that basket hold a lot of value to you? We need to hold that same value on that project. Each and every project we have, we need to put the value of who is saying it and why they're saying it and how we can make that realistic for the client because we need to believe in the product whether we do or we don't.

We need to believe that we're the teacher whether we are or we're not. We need to believe that we're this hard sell aggressive salesman who really needs to make a sale before his wife kills him or not. Our job is to be believable. Our job is to convince you that you must have what we're selling and that's not an easy task. So I encourage you all if you have avoided taking training with me because you think I focus on character too much, give me a chance. Let me show you why I do that and let me assure you. It has nothing to do with animation.

There are a lot of different characters. We all have characters in us. In fact, your brothers, your sisters, your aunts, your uncles, your nieces and your nephews and your friends are not only the best characters you could ever develop and bring to the table. But they're also potential clients. Don't forget that.

It's hard for me to talk for such a short amount of time. I have lots to share with you. If you want to listen to some more of my podcasts, please go to my website at DebsVoice.com and click on Mic & Me and my podcast section. And also, in my Chanti Cast section where we're starting to also post the tip of the months turning them into little mini podcasts. We're going to get a CD compilation put together for you very soon so keep watching for that. Please keep in touch. We would love to hear from you. Send us an e-mail or sign up to our newsletter at Newsletter@MicNMe.com or info@MicNMe.com.

Until next time, everyone. Take care. I'm Debbie Munro.
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.
If you're a first time listener, you can subscribe for free to this podcast in the Apple iTunes Podcast Directory or by visiting Podcasts.Voices.com. To start your voiceover career online, go to Voices.com and register for a voice talent membership today.

[Closing Music]

Julie-Ann Dean: This has been a Voices.com production.

Links from today's show:

Debbie Munro
Debbie Munro's Voices.com Website

Your Instructor this week:

Voice Over Expert Debbie Munro

By employing over a dozen years wisdom in voicing and acting, Debbie Munro puts her talents to work to meet the challenging demands of today's fast paced voice market. Tired of not receiving constructive feed back on how to improve her craft, Debbie set out to make a difference for actors by creating, The MIC & ME Workshop Series. Keeping focused on the Global Freelance market, Debbie has combined her extensive Voice Over, Acting and Off Camera training into a series of practical, exciting workshops that will take you to that next step, no matter what your level.

Fueled by experience, talent, and unbridled enthusiasm for doing what she loves to do best - getting behind a microphone and speaking her heart out, Debbie is proud to share her insights, techniques and secrets with you. She works very hard to create courses that shed an honest look into the world of voice acting allowing you to work at your own pace, know if this is the industry for you and how to keep working. Her passion alone will engage you and give you the encouragement you need.

Did you enjoy Debbie's episode? Leave a comment with your thoughts!

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