What makes a good voiceover...and what are the hallmarks of a mediocre one?

When a voiceover is good, it sounds as right as your own internal dialogue.

That might mean it slips under your radar so much that you barely notice it. It feels like you're thinking it.

Or it might mean that it feels so real and poignant that it makes you cry. Or the timing might be so good that you laugh out loud. Depends on the context.

When it works, that person, that voice actor, as wonky and flawed as they inevitably will be, connected.

Their life, their pain, their joy, slipped through the ether into your experience of that moment. They spoke to you. Just to you. And your heart heard.

When a voiceover is bad it's bad because it's empty.

It might follow a predictable pattern that your ears anticipate, and cringe at when it lands.

Maybe it sounds like an actor 'doing acting' or a narrator 'saying words', or AI.

They don't mean it, and you know it.

It might have the right colour, the right shape, but it misses. No one cares. No one remembers.

When I was at school I had a badge pin that read "Blessed are the cracked for they let in the light".

It meant something to me at that time, as someone who didn't ever feel like they fitted in. It meant, it's ok to be different, your gifts matter.

Now when I think about it, it feels like a push back. Against the homogenisation of everything we consume.

Blessed are the messy and the flawed, because they are real.
And that's where the light is.