Thursday, 19 March 2009

Voiceovers - love 'em or loathe 'em?

One discussion I remember reading on Tom Kuhlmann's great blog over at Articulate was about whether video-makers and screencasters like myself tend to voice their own videos or hire professional voice talent.

The responses were about 50:50, with people who did occasional video-making or screencasting as part of a wider job being more likely to hire a pro.

I've just read a tweet from Niall Harbison who doesn't seem very keen on recording his own voiceovers, but mind you, recording 60 voiceovers at once must be very draining :-)

When I shoot a screencast, I record the voiceover at the same time, so that I can get it perfectly in sync with what's happening on screen.

And yes, I do my own voiceovers. That's thanks to having a highly accomplished amateur actress for a mum. She saw that I had speech and drama lessons as a child. So I'm not afraid of speaking in public, which in essence is what voiceovers are - there may be nobody there when you're recording them, but you know your voice will eventually be heard by more people. I know plenty of people don't like public speaking. I do :-)

1 comment:

  1. I think there is a difference between public speaking and Voiceovers.

    I personally find it harder to do voiceovers than public speaking. Strange, I know!

    With public speaking you can gauge how your audience is reacting and change the way you are presenting, however you cannot do this with voiceover work. The reason I find it difficult to do voiceover work is because I am thinking about this all whilst reading the script which can cause me to stumble as you well know from when we collaborated on a voiceover piece.

    I do however really enjoy getting infront of people and talking.

    ReplyDelete

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