Here are some voice tips for our professionals.
A voice actor is communicating character. You must be comfortable with the environment in which you work which is inches from a microphone. The space you have to express your voice is very tight and picks up everything. It is best if the performance of your work is within the space of a single take: assume your character, read the script and perform on your very sensitive little stage a consistent voice, attitude and tone, varying speed, pitch and shaping your vocal muscles without stress (or your voice will change).
The most important technical skill we need is a clean start and end cut point that does not slice into anything you are saying. Breathing correctly for a good microphone and a pop filter are essential. Correct microphone position means you are not crouching over or straining to get near.
It is important to be consistent, to breathe properly and warm up your voice before recording to provide us with a standard format for our editors to work with you. We want to preserve your natural timing but to fit it with other parts we need a 2 second gap at the beginning and end of each line. The best tapes are done in one session: lead in gap, LINE, lead out gap, repeat for next line, repeat until done. We need a single take of each line in sequence in-character and correct. Some people like to read the script to understand each character and others do it cold (reading from the script). If you read any fill (lines by other characters) simpy do them off mic so we can see it is far quieter. We want you to be the artist that we cut and paste into a production. Trust yourself. You are more likely to get the best take on the first take and a rhythm and modulating speed is important. So most will probably need to read the script (without voicing it) first. You can rehearse however you like. We provide a sonic space for your voicework, and add layers of environment special effects and tone.
Dark Comedy is still in a script and business development phase. With multiple works in progress. We are aiming to produce a number of series, if you accept a role, you will need to record the entire series in one session. We have so far produced three pilots with Warren Saunders’ So That’s It Then, this has inspired a 6 part series in production.
