How to Choose the Right Voice Actor for Your Project (a step-by-step guide)
Do you need to hire a voice actor for your project, but don’t know where to start?
Here’s how you can shortlist and choose the right voice talent whatever your project.
Step 1 - define your audience
Who is your intended audience? And what would you like them feel?
For example a company explainer might require a sense of peer to peer knowledge sharing. The audience should feel engaged and empowered.
Whilst a children’s animation will require strong storytelling and characterisation - the audience should feel entertained and excited.
Once you have defined who the voiceover is talking to, and what you want them to feel when they hear it, you’re ready for step 2.
Step 2 - Create a brief for your voice actor
After understanding who it is we are talking to and what emotion we are trying to elicit, there are a few other key things to include in your brief that really help us as voice actors, including:
Music, brand values or guidelines, and visuals (like storyboards or existing video).
Even if these assets are WIP or unfinished they are still helpful to us as they help us get a sense of the ‘tone’ of the overall piece.
Music is particularly important because it really sets the pace.
If a film is going to end up having really emotive classic music underneath it, that’s going to influence how we deliver the voiceover.
The same goes if it’s going to have something super peppy and upbeat.
The last thing you want to end up with is a disconnect between the voice and the sound bed because you didn’t share the music with the voice actor.
Step 3 - Define the usage
Be transparent about where the end product is going to be used, and either offer a competitive fee for the work - or allow the voice actor to create a quote themselves.
If you need guidance about how our fees are structured, see my blog about rates here.
So by now you’ve defined your audience, written your brief - and outlined the usage.
Step 4 - Source the talent
Good places to look for talent include LinkedIn for recommendations within your network, voiceover agencies, casting websites, and of course searching for voice talent’s own websites online.
Remember we a friendly and close knit community who are keen to lift one another up. This means the flow of recommendations is strong within our network. Just ask!
Many agencies list their clients online and allow you to search by accent age and genre, some good agencies include Nordlings, Voice Fox and Soho Voices.
Casting websites like Voice 123 and Bodalgo also allow you to search by accent and genre and create shortlists within the platform.
Step 5 - Get auditions from your shortlisted talent
Once you have favourited a handful of talent, you can ask each of them to demo a short excerpt of your script, from which you can make your selection.
This is where a well written brief comes into play as the better the talent understands what you’re looking for, the stronger your set of auditions is going to be.
If you are in a hurry or really don’t have any script you can share, then you can also ask talent to share existing pieces they’ve done in the past, that fit the same type of criteria.
Step 6 - Knowing what to listen for
So the auditions are in and you’re ready to review them. How do you make your selection?
The right voice will :
Make you feel that they have really understood the brief and objectives outlined
Sound natural and authentic.
Maybe they have taken the time to offer you more than one option of how they might interpret it, showing you that they have range and can take direction.
The audio quality will be pristine.
FAQ
Q: how long does recording a VO take?
A: With the exception of long form projects (audiobooks, long eLearning modules, medical narration etc) most projects can be turned around within 24 hours
Q: What about revisions?
A: Speak to your chosen VO upfront about this. Some include 1 or 2 rounds of revisions in the price, others charge a fee for them.
Q: How much to voice actors charge?
A: See my blog from earlier this year “How much does a voiceover cost” for a comprehensive breakdown of this.