VO Tips

Ladies and Gentlemen, introducing a new video series that will help you become a better voice over talent, or even just a better communicator. Copy Checkup is a self-produced video series that breaks down simple sections of copy and shows the different ways that the phrases can be enunciated.

You can either click here and watch it on my youtube page or click below and watch it on the page for the post. Enjoy!

Dan O’day, radio and voice over Guru is running a contest on his blog.

He posts an ad for Target that he says (and I completely agree) is completely awful, posts the general idea of the copy, and says rewrite and revoice it. So I did.

Here’s the result:

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If you would like to participate in the contest, submissions can be made until the 8th, so you’d better hurry!

Good luck!

You’re really missing out if you don’t know about this awesome resource for scripts:

Script Collection

I was writing a script collection until I came across this AWESOME resource on Jeff Kafer’s blog.

There are thousands of scripts in this collection and they all seem really great. DEFINITELY take advantage of this resource for your demos.

Going off of the last post, People. If you have thousands of connections and nothing to offer when they find you, you might as well not waste your time.

Sounds a little harsh, but it’s true. If someone finds you on your Myspace, Facebook, personal website (do you have one?), or they contact you by phone, are they going to be impressed with what they see or hear, or will they blow you off because you sound like an amateur?

There’s one way to prevent that: Practice.

I never say practice makes perfect, especially when it comes to voice over work. Practice makes persistence. You can’t always be perfect when it comes to voice over. Perfection lies in the ears of the producer or the client, not with your ears. Something may be perfect to your ears but completely wrong for the listener.

How do you practice using your voice? There’s a lot of great practice methods I use all the time.

If you can read any of these faster and cleaner than him (especially the last one!), send it to me and I’ll post it here. This is AMAZING! Thanks Rodney! Rodney’s website

Let’s just admit it: There is some copy out there you wish never existed. It is redundant, half the sentences in the darn thing make no logical sense, long words are used but their placement is incorrect (trying to make the author look smart, but actually achieving the opposite), etc. There are about a million different kinds of boring and terribly written copy, so what do we do about it?