How to choose the right voice-over artist for your video content

Finding the right voice talent can seem like a daunting task. Especially if you’ve already spent a large portion of your budget on producing a video. So, you wouldn’t want to ruin it with a voice-over which perhaps doesn’t fit the content.

In general, what works best for video is artists whose voices are engaging and make people want to keep listening.

A great example of such a voice is, none other than, Sean Bean! Here he is in the studio narrating a video game.

You may think: “Well I’ll just choose a talent whose voice I like and job done.”, which may be true in some cases. But there’s a few things you may want to consider first.

After all, video content is 50% visuals and 50% narration, so voice-over is just as important.

So, how do you choose the right artist?

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Make sure you have a final version of the script

This may sound like the most obvious thing, but it’s often overlooked.

Once everything’s been recorded and sent back, you have a listen and…. Meh. Something’s not quite right with it. Maybe there are parts which don’t work that well, or maybe the grammar isn’t right.

Whatever it is, a good practice is recording the voice-over yourself first. No need for professional equipment, you can even just use your phone. Record yourself and listen.

This will give you an idea of the pace and whether it flows correctly. It’s not going to be perfect but it will give you a better idea of how the script sounds when spoken out loud.

Make sure you do this before sending it off to your voice-over agency. Time is money, you don’t want to pay for additional studio time for tiny amendments which could have been made in the pre-production phase. It pays off to be prepared.

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Think about your target audience

It may be tempting to go with a voice-over artist whose voice you just love, regardless of whether it fits in with the content of the video. But as discussed earlier, the voice needs to resonate with your audience, to engage them in the right way.

This could lead to questions such as:

• ‍Should the artist be a male or a female?
• ‍How old should the voice sound?
• Does it need to be fast-paced or more relaxed?

Whatever the answers are to these questions, make sure you always put yourself in your viewer’s shoes. This makes choosing the right artist easier.

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Determine the tone and style

Does voice-over need to sound professional and authoritative? Perhaps it has to sound upbeat, or articulate and slow.

Aside from the gender, age and pace of the audio, you want to evoke the right emotion.

Let’s say for example, you have a women’s shampoo advert. You’re probably going to want a young woman, probably the same age as your target market, talking about how great the product is in a lively voice, while waving her hair around… you get the picture.

Now as much as we love our good friend Mr. Sean Bean he may not be the best fit for this particular project.

… or could he be? We don’t really know.

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Listen to different samples

Don’t just narrow in on one person’s particular voice, listen to a few samples so you can make an informed decision before making your choice.

Usually voice-over artists will have multiple samples in a broad range of different tones and styles. These can cover different industries such as e-learning, video games, audio books, TV adverts etc.

Some artists' voices are very adaptable, a great example of this is Jim Cummings, the voice of many Disney characters:

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Need multilingual voiceovers? – Leave enough space

Avoid cramming too much text into the smallest amount of time possible. It might be tempting because of people’s ever shortening attention spans.

But, if you’re looking to localise your content into other countries, the videos might need to be extended. The reason? Text expansion.

Languages like Spanish, French and German for example, expand over English by about 20%. This doesn’t also account for words taking longer to say in these languages.

If the original video in English already has a fast voice-over and there’s no room for editing it down, the voice-overs in the other languages could end up coming out like this:

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This can be negated just by adding in a few extra seconds. There’s also text contraction as well, but we’ll talk about that another time.

So, there you have it! Everything you need to know about getting the voice-over right before starting your video project. Hopefully, you’ll save a bit of money and time by following our advice.