Voice-Over Class

For those who don't know, voice-over is utilitized in radio, TV, film, and many other types of media formats requiring a unique, skilled voice to narrate a documentary, advertise a product or service, tell a story, navigate a member through telephone voice messaging options, act as a fictional animated character on a TV show or on film.  You hear voice-over artists/actors all the time when you are listening to the radio, watching TV, and seeing movie trailers at the movie theatres.  Don LaFontaine (who sadly passed away back in September 2008) was known as "The Voice" for movie trailers.  Here is his website:  http://www.donlafontaine.com/DLF2007/index.html.  Voice-over work is one of a few things I love doing; breathing life into scripted words.

  I finally decided to get formal voice over training at the London Academy of Media Film & TV.  "Previously on 24.....the following takes place between 12 Jan 09 to 13 Jan 09...."  I barely made it to the class located in London, near Euston Square.  The commute from Swindon to London was a long and grueling one due to the traffic and the neverending tube (subway) delays which was to be expected.  After arriving at the designated place and being 5 minutes late, I befriended Kahina (or Kiki) as she likes to be called, who was one of the students there.  She was standing outside the studio trying to finish her cigarette.  After briefly speaking with her, Melinda Lawler (our voice coach) opened up the door to let us in the studio after cheerfully greeting us.   Three other students were already inside the studio (Pete, Flora, and Polly).  Pete and Flora are from Scotland and I love their accents to death. Polly is from Kent, UK, and is the most cheerful, down-to-earth person I ever met.  Kiki is Algerian but was raised in France, and currently lives and works in London.  Melinda briefly introduced herself and I was impressed with the amount of work and experience she has attained as a voice-over artist and coach (http://www.melindalawler.com/).  Afterwards, she went around the room asking us a little about each other.  Each of the students has such interesting  backgrounds.  Most of them are immersed in the field of media in some way. ..apart from me. :-(  Melinda showed us some breathing and relaxation techniques and had us follow through with these techniques to allow ourselves to be in that total state of relaxation.  She handed us sheets of text to practice verbally, and coached us on delivery, breathing correctly, and annunciation.  We each had our turns and were corrected on the spot if she thought our pitch was high, or breathing was wrong, etc.  We were each presented with a monologue.  She was sifting through a small stack and mentioned, "Rob, I've got a monologue perfect for you!"  She did the same for all the other students, and gave us time to look over the material and practice it.  After a short while, Melinda asked each of us to go up to present the material.   I was the third one up to do my reading in front of the class.  I read it all the way through with confidence bellowing out that deep voice of mine.  To my surprise, she was very impressed and recommended I go into acting.  "Dayem!" That was a huge compliment coming from someone already in the field.  I felt so humbled.  The other students performed extremely well reading their monologues and I was quite entertained by them.  We broke for lunch afterwards and we all went to a nearby pub to eat and enjoy each other's company. After lunch, Melinda asked us to go through a list of written advertisments to see which one's we would like to have professionally recorded on a showreel.  We were given a few minutes to make our selections.   I was surprised we were only allowed to pick three selections.  I thought it would be more considering that these will be added on a CD.  Melinda said that due to time-contraints, the recording engineer could only do so many and with the 6 of us times the three selections, I can see where she was coming from.  We were allowed to practice for the remainder of the day.  Kiki and Flora had the sexiest voices when they did their parts for cosmetic-related commercials.  They were so convincing, they made me want to buy stock in the products they were doing voice-overs on! LOL!  Melinda recommended I do the advertisements for the Matrix DVD, a TV preview of the show called the Bodyguards, and a film preview for a British documentary series. We each took turns going into the booth to practice our selected lines while receiving constant feedback from Melinda.  About this time, Veisha (not sure of the spelling of her name) walked in.  She was one of the students in our class that just made it in and she was thrown into picking up her lines and going for it.  It was getting late and Melinda released us for the day.  The following day, we met back at the studio.  Melinda had us go through the breathing and relaxation techniques again.  We were given sheets of text to work on more vocal-related exercises.  Then it was the moment of truth...Tony (the sound engineer) walked in to set up the sound recording equipment.  He was about to get our voices professionally recorded.   We each took turns going in the booth and were given two takes for each advertisement we had to read. This continued on until everyone had their turn.  After that, we were done! Melinda mentioned how much she enjoyed us being there.  She appeared to be in a rush and left.  Tony was left behind to pass out our voice-over diplomas and to work the rest of the showreel for us to include background music and sound effects.  The showreels will be mailed to us later once the post-production part of it is completed.  We did our lengthy farewells while exchanging phone numbers, email addresses, and business cards for those that had them.  I really learned a lot from this class.  Hopefully I can get picked up to do some voice-over for commercials, or better yet be one of the men behind the voice you hear in movie previews...muahahahah! (Rob is closing his eyes dreaming again folks!).  Here is my website (http://www.voices.com/people/robz) if you would like (or care to) listen to my voice.